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Biomedical subjects

J N Schreuder

Publications and source records attributed to J N Schreuder.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

Posttraumatic re-experiencing in older people: working through or covering up?

Posttraumatic re-experiencing is a key symptom of earlier psychotraumatic experiences. It is important to establish whether we are dealing with nightmares or re-enactments. Posttraumatic nightmares are an expression of intrapsychic concerns and conflicts and, in and of themselves, need not impede exploratory psychotherapy. The nightmare entails both regression to the perceptual level of a small child and reactivation of early childhood anxieties. Before it is possible to work through the psychotraumatic experiences, it is necessary to contextualize the early childhood anxieties that are so closely related to the themes and anxieties of later life. If this is not possible, it will have to be decided to resort to therapy that rather covers up the experience and explores the current significance of the posttraumatic complaints. Posttraumatic re-enactments have an isolated position in the representational world and are accompanied by hyperarousal and intense vegetative symptoms, which is why they are considered an impediment to exploratory psychotherapy. Posttraumatic re-nactments require treatment of the symptoms before subsequent exploratory psychotherapy can be considered.

Age Factors↗

The assessment of posttraumatic stress disorder: with the Clinician Administered PTSD Scale: Dutch results.

The Clinician Administered PTSD Scale was employed with 76 traumatized Dutch subjects from different treatment centers and one social rehabilitation center. Subjects were traumatized either in childhood, in adolescence, or in early adulthood. The CAPS showed an overall agreement with clinical diagnosis of 79%, with a kappa coefficient of .58. Interrater agreement on the CAPS subscales of intensity (intrusion, avoidance, and hyperarousal) varied from .93 to .98. The internal consistency for all core symptoms of DSM-III-R at the CAPS intensity level for current PTSD was .89, and for lifetime PTSD .86. Concurrent validity was established by correlating the CAPS with the Mississippi Scale, the MMPI, and the Impact of Event Scale. All correlations were significant beyond .001. Finally, the CAPS items, both core symptoms and associative features, are discussed in detail at item level.

Female↗

The development of the Self-Rating Inventory for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.

In this study a newly developed Self-rating Inventory for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is presented. The instrument consists of 47 items, reflecting DSM-III-R criteria, associated features and items corresponding to the disorder of extreme stress not otherwise specified. All items are phrased in a trauma-independent way and are measured on an intensity scale. The instrument was validated on 76 subjects with war-related trauma and 59 psychiatric outpatients, one third of whom were traumatized. Test-retest for the scale was 0.90. The coefficient alpha appeared to be 0.96 for the 47-items scale and 0.92 for the 22 DSM-III-R subscale. The scale correlated significantly with the Clinician Administered PTSD Scale, the Mississippi Scale for Combat-related PTSD, the MMPI PTSD subscale and the Impact of Event Scale. The overall efficiency of the Self-rating Inventory for PTSD was comparable to the overall efficiency of the Mississippi Scale and superior to the MMPI PTSD subscale. Factor analysis on the 22 DSM-III-R items showed 4 factors, representing numbing, intrusion, avoidance and sleeping problems. It is concluded that the Self-rating Inventory for PTSD is a powerful instrument for diagnosing PTSD in survey research. The instrument appears to be capable of differentiating not only between PTSD and non-PTSD subjects but also between traumatized non-PTSD subjects and non-traumatized psychiatric patients.

Adult↗

Amitriptyline metabolism in relation to antidepressive effect.

The relationship between amitriptyline (AT) metabolism and clinical response was studied in 14 outpatients treated with a daily dose of 150 mg AT. Riboflavin was added to the medication to check compliance. On days 0, 2, and 7 and at 3, 6, 9, and 13 wk after onset of therapy, blood samples were drawn from the patients 3 (+/- 0.5) hr after the first morning dose and a sample of the first morning urine was taken to check riboflavin. Serum levels of AT and its metabolites, nortriptyline (NT), E- and Z-10-hydroxynortriptyline (E- and Z-10-OH-NT), total (E + Z) 10-hydroxyamitriptyline (tot-10-OH-AT), and desmethylnortriptyline (DNT), were measured by means of HPLC while minimizing adsorption onto glass. On day 0 and after 6 and 13 wk the severity of the depressive disorder was scored by means of the self-rating depression scale of Zung.28 Mean steady-state concentrations of AT, NT, and E-10-OH-NT were in the order of 100 micrograms/l and tot-10-OH-AT and Z-10-OH-NT approximated 20 micrograms/l. DNT concentrations were under 15 micrograms/l. There was great variation in metabolic pattern between patients. After 6 wk concentrations of all compounds were approximately 15% lower than at 3 wk, indicating a weak autoinducible effect of AT or its metabolites. Steady-state concentrations of AT correlated well with that of NT (r = 0.64; P less than 0.05) but not with that of E-10-OH-NT.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Adult↗