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Biomedical subjects

E Helmes

Publications and source records attributed to E Helmes.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
PubMed1988

Metabolic changes in Alzheimer's disease.

Patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and matched controls fasted for 24 hours, and serial glucose, pyruvate, lactate, beta-hydroxybutyrate, acetoacetate, insulin, and glucagon levels were measured. Patients with AD showed a glucose insulin correlation pattern over the 24 hours that differed from the control group. These differences may be secondary to weight loss or to other metabolic or nutritional factors affecting the AD patients.

3-Hydroxybutyric Acid↗
PubMed1988

Symptom patterns of alcoholism in a northern Ontario population.

Alcoholism is noted to be a common problem in Canada and particularly in native populations. We report here a survey of the frequency of evidence of alcoholism over a period of four months in a relatively isolated Northern Ontario population in which more than 80% were either status Indians or of partly Indian origin. Using questionnaire methods, "definite" alcoholism was found to affect 27% of adults seen at a clinic and probable alcoholism affected another 20%. This gives a minimum prevalence of 14.6% of the local adult population over a four month period on the basis merely of examination of less than one third of the adults in the community. Blackouts, tremors, bad temper, chest pain, unsteadiness, loss of appetite, vomiting, sadness and stomach pain occurred significantly more often in the alcoholic patients. Stomach pain, loss of appetite and vomiting were less prominent with alcoholism in this population than in a Southern population. The findings indicate the importance in general practice of looking for alcoholism, the ease with which this may be undertaken with a few very simple short questions and the importance of some characteristic patterns, especially blackouts, shakiness and unsteadiness as one pattern and stomach pain and other gastro-intestinal symptoms as another pattern.

Adult↗
PubMed1988

Eating attitudes as related to demographic and personality characteristics: a high school survey.

A survey of 577 high school students was conducted to assess attitudes toward eating and their relationship to demographic and personality characteristics. Students completed a demographic questionnaire, and Eating Attitude Test (EAT-26) and the Basic Personality Inventory (A-BPI). When a cut-off score of 20 on EAT-26 was applied, overall prevalence of disordered eating attitude was found to be 7.5%. Groups scoring in pathological versus normal ranges showed no significant difference in mean age, socioeconomic status or race. The former group reported significantly shorter height and lower body weight. Of the subjects, 6.06% reported weight below the 10th percentile. This subgroup did not vary from those above the 10th percentile on sociodemographic and psychopathological variables, nor in prevalence of abnormal eating attitudes. Analysis of the A-BPI data showed subjects with abnormal eating attitudes had increased psychopathology in several areas, with greater neurotic tendencies, lower self-esteem and higher levels of deviant thinking and behaviour.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1988

Comparison of three multiscale inventories in identifying the presence of psychopathological symptoms.

Two new multiscale inventories, the Basic Personality Inventory (BPI) and Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI), assess the domain of psychopathology. Both use modern principles of test construction that arose over the years since the introduction of the MMPI. These three tests were compared in terms of their ability to discriminate between the presence and absence of 11 symptoms of psychopathology. Symptoms used in the analysis were extracted from medical records and showed interrater reliabilities ranging from kappa = .412 to 1.00. All symptoms had incidences of at least 15% in the sample of 107 psychiatric inpatients used. The MMPI was scored for both clinical and Wiggins content scales. Parallel discriminant analyses were performed for each set of test scores for the presence or absence of each symptom. A conservative alpha level was adopted, and results favored the Basic Personality Inventory.

Adult↗
PubMed1988

Clinical correlates of ECT-resistant depression in the elderly.

Clinical findings in a group of 11 patients who failed to respond to at least one course of antidepressant (usually tricylic) treatment and at least seven bilateral electroconvulsive treatments (ECTs) were compared with the findings in a group of 19 patients with similar sociodemographic characteristics who were responsive to ECT. The major correlates of ECT nonresponse were onset of physical illness during the index episode, fewer life events preceding the onset of the index episode, and a higher frequency of preceding depressive episodes of longer duration in the nonresponder group.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1987

Factors associated with involuntary admission to psychiatric facilities in Newfoundland.

To assess what factors determine the involuntary status of psychiatric patients, we reviewed the case records of 5729 patients consecutively admitted to one of four inpatient psychiatric facilities, including a mental hospital, in St. John's between October 1975 and October 1978. Of the 5729 patients 5005 (87.4%) were voluntary and 724 (12.6%) involuntary. Involuntary patients were more likely than voluntary patients to be male, single and unemployed and to have been referred by police or transferred from another facility to the mental hospital, where most of the involuntary admissions occurred. They had higher rates of previous admissions to a psychiatric facility and of suicidal and violent behaviour, were more likely to have a diagnosis of schizophrenia or mania and were less likely to be suffering from depression or a neurotic disorder. In correspondence with differences in diagnosis, involuntary patients stayed in hospital more than twice as long as voluntary patients, were less likely to receive electroconvulsive therapy, minor tranquillizers and antidepressants, and were more likely to receive neuroleptics and lithium carbonate. Stepwise logistic regression analysis revealed that only the source of referral and a diagnosis of neurotic disorder had an independent effect on admission status. The findings are discussed in the context of the controversy over the parens patriae approach v. the legal approach to involuntary admission of psychiatric patients.

Adult↗
PubMed1987

Standardization and validation of the Multidimensional Observation Scale for Elderly Subjects (MOSES).

Objective, reliable and valid means of assessing the cognitive and psychosocial functionings of elderly persons are in demand for several reasons. Clinical needs for initial assessment, placement, and treatment monitoring are supplemented by the need for research tools for program evaluation and clinical trials. The set of behavior rating scales called the Multidimensional Observation Scale for Elderly Subjects (MOSES) was developed with these needs in mind. This paper describes the development of the MOSES scale and its rationale and norming on 2,391 residents of hospitals and residential settings. Internal consistency reliabilities in the .8 range and interrater reliabilities from .58 to .97 are reported. Validity correlations with the Zung Depression, Robertson Short Mental Status, Kingston Dementia, and the Physical and Mental Impairment-of-function Evaluation (PAMIE) scales were all satisfactory. The applications and advantages of the use of MOSES are discussed.

Activities of Daily Living↗
PubMed1987

The Parental Bonding Instrument: factorial structure.

The Parental Bonding Instrument was administered to 49 schizophrenic out-patients attending a depot injection clinic. Subjects were instructed to rate each of their parents as they remembered them in their first 16 years. Principal components analyses followed by orthogonal varimax rotations were performed separately for mothers and fathers. The results suggested that the instrument is measuring two dimensions of parental characteristics; namely, care and overprotection. The findings lend further support to the internal structure of the instrument. The implications of the results for the prediction of relapse in schizophrenics and the expressed emotion construct are discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed1987

Some calculations on the prevalence of dementia in Canada.

The epidemiology of dementia in Canada is not known. However, we report figures on the frequency of dementia in institutions in Ontario based upon the use of a multidimensional observation scale for the assessment of the elderly. These findings on institutionalized patients can be extrapolated to the whole elderly population, but the procedure is clearly too conservative by comparison with findings in other countries and in the light of the known occurrence of numbers of demented patients outside institutions. Ratios in different studies for the numbers of patients with dementia outside institutions and within institutions range from 1:1 to 6:1. Using a ratio of 2:1 and applying it to age specific population figures, a prevalence of dementia in Canada of 222,324 for those over 65 is obtained with a rate of 9.4% in that age group. When the figures projected in this way are compared with five epidemiological studies for the rate of dementia elsewhere, the Canadian figure which we have obtained ranks fourth out of six. This estimate provides potential figures on which to base the planning of services, provided that the inferential nature of the estimates is fully recognized.

Aged↗
PubMed1986

Effects of psychotropic drugs and psychiatric illness on vocational aptitude and interest assessment.

This study examined the vocational aptitude and interest scores of 326 inpatients at a large urban psychiatric hospital. The inpatient group performed significantly below the adult normative mean on eight of nine General Aptitude Test Battery (GATB) aptitude measures; the single exception was Verbal Aptitude. Further, GATB aptitude scores (adjusted for age and education) were significantly lower for patients who were receiving (N = 210) psychotropic medication than for patients who were not receiving (N = 114) psychotropic medication, again with the exception of Verbal Aptitude. Differentiation of patients into subsamples who were receiving particular drugs or drug combinations indicated that phenothiazines in combination with Anti-Parkinsonians were associated with the poorest GATB performances. Interestingly, self-reported vocational interests were not related in any systematic fashion to receiving medication. A variety of explanations that may account for these findings, including drug side-effects and severity or type of psychiatric disorder, were investigated. Implications for vocational counselors were discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed1985

Evaluation of two relaxation training programs under medication and no-medication conditions.

This study evaluated two taped relaxation training programs with 39 psychiatric inpatients, half of whom received minor tranquilizers in conjunction with relaxation training. It appeared that the procedurally enhanced relaxation program was able to produce slightly more therapeutic effects than the standard training program. Significant differences were found between the medicated and the unmedicated groups by multivariate analysis of variance on multiple measures, including heart rate and frontalis EMG. Procedural clarity in relaxation treatment research and the importance of considering contextual factors in the treatment setting are stressed.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1985

Hyperammonemia in Alzheimer's disease.

Postprandial blood ammonia levels were significantly higher in 22 patients with Alzheimer's disease than in 37 control subjects. In the Alzheimer group, fasting blood ammonia levels were significantly higher in patients whose EEGs showed triphasic waves than in patients without this change. The direction of change from fasting to postprandial blood ammonia levels was also significantly different between these two groups.

Aged↗
PubMed1984

Past and present perceived attitudes of schizophrenics in relation to rehospitalization.

Twenty-one schizophrenic patients from a depot injection clinic with frequent hospital admissions (relapsers) and 28 who had remained well for 18 months (non-relapsers) were compared using the Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI) and the Influential Relationships Questionnaire (IRQ), a modified version of the PBI. The scales measured patients' past and present representations of significant others, respectively. Results indicated that only present representations of significant others differentiated relapsers from non-relapsers. Subjects were followed up for a 9 month period. The readmitted (n = 8) and the non-readmitted (n = 41) groups were found to be different on the maternal care scales of the PBI and four of the six scales of the IRQ. The perceived attitudes of mothers of non-relapsers and non-readmitted patients tended to improve over time. The importance of the state-trait distinction of perceived attitudes in relation to re-admission to hospital is discussed.

Adult↗