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Biomedical subjects

M M Van Eerdewegh

Publications and source records attributed to M M Van Eerdewegh.

5 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1985

The bereaved child: variables influencing early psychopathology.

This is a 13-month follow-up study of 105 two to 17 year-old children bereaved of one parent, with 85 controls. Data were gathered on physical and mental health in the children and surviving parents, the child's sex and age and the bereaved parent's sex and psychopathology being included as risk factors. Dysphoria, falling school performance and withdrawn behaviour were significantly increased in bereaved children of both sexes at all ages, while temper tantrums, bedwetting and the depressive syndrome only increased in the age and sex categories normally associated with these conditions. A global index of psychopathology was increased compared with controls on most subgroups of bereaved children (P less than 0.0001), the highest scores for both sexes being associated with having a mentally ill (usually depressed) widowed mother. The results are discussed and suggestions made for future research.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1983

The reliability of retrospective treatment reports.

High levels of agreement are reported for retrospective assessment of treatment history using the Longitudinal Interval Followup Evaluation Baseline (LIFE Base), a recently developed structured psychiatric interview, in a sample of 47 subjects with a moderate to severe affective disorder. In a paired rater/observer design with interviews conducted at five different research centers, most coefficients of reliability (Kappa) were above 0.91. This is the first published reliability study of treatment data and should be encouraging to practitioners and researchers. Future research aimed at assessing the validity of treatment information obtained from patient records and clinical interviews is recommended.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1982

The bereaved child.

This is a one-year prospective study of one hundred and five 2 to 17 year old children of a consecutive sample of young widows and widowers in the community and of the children of controls. The children's reactions to the parental death were recorded at one month and thirteen months after the event in a structured interview with the surviving parent. The interview included items of general adaption to the death, school performance, behaviour problems, symptoms relevant to psychopathological manifestations (depression, anxiety, etc.) and general health. The results indicate a significant increase of dysphoria which disappears over time (P less than 0.0001), the persistence of a minor form of depression (P less than 0.03), an increase in bedwetting (P less than 0.03), and a significant degree of impairment in school performance (P less than 0.0001). There were no significant increases in behaviour problems and severe forms of depression. The children's general health was not affected. Those results are compared to currently available data on childhood bereavement and discussed in the light of conflicting reports relating parental loss to adult psychopathology.

Adjustment Disorders↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Schizo-affective disorders: bipolar-unipolar subtyping. Natural history variables: a discriminant analysis approach.

In view of tackling the problem of heterogeneity among the schizo-affectives, methods of univariate and multivariate statistical analysis (canonical discriminant analysis) were applied to the sociodemographic and natural history variables of four groups of affective disorder patients from the NIMH Collaborative Study on the Psychobiology of Depression Clinical section: the schizo-bipolar (SBP, n = 45), the schizo-unipolar (SUP, n = 30), the bipolar I (BP, n = 159) and the primary unipolar depressed (UP, n = 387) defined by Research Diagnostic Criteria. Two dimensions were identified among the four groups of 'affective' patients: the 'bipolar' and the 'schizophrenic' dimensions. They provided highly significant discrimination among the means of the four groups but were not very accurate in predicting group membership. The 'bipolar' dimension separates the UP from the BP and SBP, the SUP taking some intermediate value. The 'schizophrenic' dimension separates the BP and UP from the SUP, the SBP being intermediate. The two groups with the most similarities were the SBP and BP. The group with the most heterogeneity was the SUP, sharing similarities with the UP and SBP mostly. These conclusions are supported by results of familial aggregation on the same group of patients.

Bipolar Disorder↗