Acta paedopsychiatrica最新文献

The development of a theory of self-control of brain processes leads to a model of disturbance of integration of brain processes in psychotic persons. The theory is that the "novelty-familiarity relation" of the current state of the processed information normally dominates the current mode of information processing. In the second part of the study adults with schizophrenia in remission and children with infantile autism were tested as to the manner in which they used newly introduced elements. The psychotic persons took the different character of the new elements less into consideration. The difference from the normal control persons is significant.

Thirty-nine Children (5-8 years old) in a child psychiatric clinic and 50 5-year-old and 50 7-year-old schoolchildren were interviewed about two events: "getting dressed" and "a day in school". Both the children in the clinical and in the normal group formed general representations of these events. Children in the clinical group mentioned fewer acts, props and locations. Nearly all the children in both groups described how one gets dressed in the correct temporal order, but fewer children in the clinical than in the normal group described a day in school in the correct temporal order. Fewer children in the clinical than in the normal group gave causal explanations. Within the clinical group children with cognitive/attentional deficits tended to have less complete and less organized representations than children whose primary problems are relational.

This study was conducted with a sample of highly stressed 4th-6th grade urban children consisting of matched subsamples previously classified as stress affected (SA) or stress resilient (SR). Separate in-depth interviews with parents and children provided objective self-ratings of a number of personal characteristics and expressive motor behavioral styles. Based on subsets of identical items from the two interviews, discrepancy (D)-scores were computed between parents' and children's self-ratings of ten personal descriptors, seven expressive motor behaviors, and their sum. Significantly lower D-scores were found for SR, compared to SA, parent-child dyads on all three of these measures. For the total sample, small parent-child D-scores also related significantly to indicators of fewer child problem behaviors and more competencies, assessed across multiple rater sources (i.e., parents, former teachers, and current teachers).

Related to the theoretical research on the use of music therapy in the treatment of autistic children there was made a postal survey about the attitude towards and the application of music therapy. The data of established paediatricians and paediatric institutions in FRG show that music therapy is already accepted in the treatment of autistic children. The implications of these medico-sociological data are discussed.

Maturity of defense style has been associated with the level of adaptive functioning, but few studies have assessed defense style using self-report questionnaires which can provide ratings with great reliability and objectivity. We compared self-perception of defense style (using Bond's Defense Style Questionnaire) with ratings of adaptation assessed retrospectively by two independent raters (using the DSM III-R Global Assessment of Functioning scale) in a population of 100 adolescent girls diagnosed as having either an eating disorder or depression. There was significant correlation between maturity of defense style and level of adaptation, with greater maturity of defense style being associated with higher levels of adaptive functioning. This effect was independent of diagnosis within this population.

A cross-sectional and longitudinal epidemiological study of children institutionalised for psychiatric disorders has been carried out. The differences of discharge distribution allows to describe an entanglement of three differents logics: the medical logic: diagnostic (Emotional and conduct disorder, Mental retardation, Psychosis), etiological organic factors, associated somatic disorder. the social logic: father's occupational level and etiological environnemental factors. the institutional logic: child's age when admitted, institutional categories.

Sixty boys diagnosed as having attention-deficit disorder with hyperactivity were divided into two equal groups, depending on whether or not they were taking medication for their disorder. These two groups were subdivided equally into younger and older groups, the cutoff being 11.5 years. All subjects were given the Children's Depression Inventory, the Coopersmith Self Esteem Inventory and the Children's Attributional Style Questionnaire. Teachers completed the Child Behaviour Checklist and Conners' Teacher Rating Scale. The results indicated that in the older subjects, the medicated group had lower social self-esteem than the nonmedicated group and in younger subjects the medicated group had higher academic self-esteem than the nonmedicated group. There were no significant differences among the groups with respect to depression; all four groups of subjects were mildly depressed. The younger subjects in general were more inattentive, nervous, impulsive and aggressive; and teachers did not report any less externalising behaviour in those subjects who were on medication. These results were interpreted in the light of findings from previous studies, and the lack of drug effect on externalising behaviour is discussed. Clinical recommendations are made for alleviating depression and improving self-concept by means of cognitive therapy, especially for older medicated ADDH children.

Very little is known about the treatment of children with an obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). No controlled studies have been conducted into the effects of behaviour therapy or other kinds of psychotherapy. There have only been three studies into the effects of antidepressants. After providing some general information on OCD, this article discusses the possibilities, effects and some of the difficulties of treatment.

The authors studied the typology, clinical picture, dynamics and therapy of reactive (psychogenic) depressions in 46 children, aged 1.5-4.5 years. Clinical-psychopathological variants of depression and types of dynamics have been described, which is important for prognosis and choice of adequate therapy.

A systematic literature search over a period of 7 years yielded 28 articles about social inhibition with few of them addressing the relationship between social and motor functioning. Two sets of empirical data are reported. Firstly, a replication of the study performed by Zimmer in 1981 on the relationship between social inhibition and motor skill performance has been carried out with first, third and fifth grade children. Contrary to Zimmer's (1981) earlier findings with pre-school children, no relationship was found between motor skills test and social inhibition at any of the three age levels studied. Secondly, a group of children who attended extra physical education classes because of delay in motor performance (called "motoric remedial teaching") was found to score significantly lower on the motor skills test and higher on the social inhibition scale than a matched group of classmates. These findings indicate that although social inhibition appears not to be related to motor skill performance in the normal population, a significant relationship is present in a special sample of motorically delayed children.