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Biomedical subjects

M Rutter

Publications and source records attributed to M Rutter.

At least 199 records · Page 11Linked to original sources
PubMed1984

Institutional rearing, parenting difficulties and marital support.

A prospective follow-up study was undertaken of two groups of women first studied in the mid 1960s when they were children: 94 girls reared in institutions to which they had been admitted because of a breakdown in parenting, and 51 girls in a general population comparison group. Both groups were interviewed in detail when aged 21-27 years and home observations were undertaken for those with young children. The institution-reared women showed a markedly increased rate of poor psychosocial functioning and of severe parenting difficulties in adult life. However, the support of a non-deviant spouse and of good living conditions in adult life provided a powerful protective effect.

Adult↗
PubMed1984

Parental psychiatric disorder: effects on children.

A 4-year prospective study was undertaken of the families of 137 newly referred English speaking psychiatric patients with children at home aged under 15 years. The group comprised a representative sample of such patients living in one inner London borough. Teacher questionnaires were obtained yearly for all children of school age in the families, and for age-, sex- and classroom-matched controls. Detailed standardized interviews were undertaken yearly with parent-patients and with their spouses. A comparison was also made with a control group of families in the general population with 10-year-old children. Patients' families differed in terms of a higher rate of psychiatric disorder in spouses and a much higher level of family discord. Both parental mental disorder and marital discord tended to persist over the 4-year period, but persistence of both was much more marked when the parent had a personality disorder. The children of psychiatric patients had an increased rate of persistent emotional/behavioural disturbance, which tended to involve disorders of conduct. The psychiatric risk to the children was greatest in the case of personality disorders associated with high levels of exposure to hostile behaviour. Boys showing temperamental risk features were most vulnerable to the ill-effects associated with parental mental disorder.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1984

Parents with children in care--I. Current circumstances and parenting.

Interview data on a consecutive sample of families with children multiply admitted to residential care by one inner London borough were contrasted with those from a comparison sample from the same geographical area. The in-care group were twice as likely to be experiencing current parenting problems with 5- to 8-year-old children, but were distinguished from the already disadvantaged comparison group as much by other kinds of family difficulties as by parenting problems per se. It was therefore argued that parenting cannot be seen as an attribute of individuals irrespective of their current circumstances.

Child↗
PubMed1984

Parents with children in care--II. Intergenerational continuities.

Intergenerational continuities in parenting problems were studied through a retrospective comparison between families multiply admitted to residential care in one London borough and a comparison group from the same geographical area. The childhoods of the parents differed mostly in the frequency of severe family discord and harsh parenting. When both parents were considered intergenerational continuities looking backward were virtually complete. Possible linking mechanisms involving either effects on personality development or the transmission of social/material disadvantage are discussed.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1984

Observation of parent-child interaction with two- to three-year-olds.

A method of home observations of mother-child interaction is described. Its development is outlined in terms of the relevant conceptual and methodological issues, and the concomitant tactical decisions involved in development are discussed. The scheme focuses on parental responsivity, affect, social communication and social control, and a novel combination of time-interval and event-sequential recording is used to discriminate parental functioning in these areas. The measures have been shown to have a satisfactorily high level of reliability, and preliminary analysis indicates construct validity.

Affect↗
PubMed1984

Psychopathology and development: II. Childhood experiences and personality development.

Concepts and empirical findings are reviewed with regard to personality development and to the role of childhood experiences in that process. It is concluded that personality development cannot be reduced to the stabilisation of behavioural traits, to the production of a fixed personality structure or to the acquisition of social-cognitive skills, although there is some form of personality organisation in terms of habits, attitudes, concepts and styles of behaviour. Personality development takes place in a social context, with both continuities and discontinuities stemming from maturational and experiential factors and interactions between them. Chains of indirect linkages result from complex patterns of circular processes involving reciprocal interactions between children and their environments. No single mechanism is responsible and no one theory provides an explanation.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1984

Psychopathology and development: I. Childhood antecedents of adult psychiatric disorder.

The childhood antecedents of psychiatric disorder in adult life are reviewed with regard to four groups of conditions that show sharply contrasting patterns of linkage between childhood and adult life. For emotional disorders the links are weak and the mechanisms largely unknown. About half of schizophrenic psychoses are preceded by non-psychotic abnormalities of behaviour in childhood; the processes involved are probably largely constitutional. Affective disorders only infrequently begin in childhood and the behavioural precursors of adult depression do not constitute a clearly recognisable pattern. However, adverse experiences in childhood may create a vulnerability to later depression. The child-adult linkages are strongest with conduct disturbance in childhood and adult personality disorder; the mechanisms in this continuity are probably both constitutional and environmental.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1984

The domain of developmental psychopathology.

It is the "developmental" component of developmental psychopathology that distinguishes this discipline from abnormal psychology, psychiatry, and even clinical child psychology. At the same time, the focus on individual patterns of adaptation and maladaptation distinguishes this field from the larger discipline of developmental psychology. In this essay a developmental perspective is presented, and the implications of this perspective for research in developmental psychopathology are discussed. A primary consideration is the complexity of the adaptational process, with developmental transformation being the rule. Thus, links between earlier adaptation and later pathology generally will not be simple or direct. It will be necessary to understand both individual patterns of adaptation with respect to salient issues of a given developmental period and the transaction between prior adaptation, maturational change, and subsequent environmental challenges. Some examples are discussed, with special attention to the case of depression.

Anxiety Disorders↗
PubMed1983

Children in lesbian and single-parent households: psychosexual and psychiatric appraisal.

Thirty-seven school-age children reared in 27 lesbian households were compared with 38 school-age children reared in 27 heterosexual single-parent households, with respect to their psychosexual development and their emotions, behaviour and relationships. Systematic standardized interviews with the mothers and with the children, together with parent and teacher questionnaires, were used to make the psychosexual and psychiatric appraisal. The two groups did not differ in terms of their gender identity, sex role behaviour or sexual orientation. Also, they did not differ on most measures of emotions, behaviour and relationships--although there was some indication of more frequent psychiatric problems in the single-parent group. It was concluded that rearing in a lesbian household per se did not lead to atypical psychosexual development or constitute a psychiatric risk factor.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1982

Temperament: concepts, issues and problems.

There are marked individual differences in children's temperamental styles-- differences thought to be constitutionally determined in part. The importance of temperamental features is evident in their links with various forms of psychopathology and in their effects on the manner in which other people respond to the child. For these and other reasons it has rightly come to be accepted that greater attention needs to be paid to temperamental issues in consideration of the processes of development, children's responses to stress situations, and the genesis of emotional, behavioural and learning disorders. However, major conceptual, methodological and theoretical problems remain. Problems of measurement are considered in terms of the relativity of measures, whether or not to take social context into account, the functional equivalence of measures at different ages, the circumstances to use in assessing temperament, the choice of measuring instrument and the categorization of temperamental features. The issues involved in the meaning of temperamental differences are discussed with respect to consistency, developmental change, genetic influences, brain damage and mental retardation, sex differences and the mechanisms by which temperamental variables exert their effects.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1982

Developmental neuropsychiatry: concepts, issues and prospects.

The empirical findings on the cognitive and behavioral sequelae of head injury in childhood are integrated with others in the literature in order to consider some of the outstanding issues and dilemmas that remain in the field of developmental neuropsychiatry. Particular attention is paid to the apparent nonspecificity of the cognitive sequelae of localized brain lesions in childhood, possible specificities in brain-behavior relationships, the probable importance of age effects in altering the impact of brain lesions, and the threshold above which brain injury may have persistent psychological sequelae.

Adult↗
PubMed1982

Syndromes attributed to "minimal brain dysfunction" in childhood.

The author considers two main concepts of minimal brain dysfunction: 1) a continuum notion, in which minimal brain dysfunction is viewed as a lesser variant of gross traumatic brain damage, and 2) a syndrome notion, in which minimal brain dysfunction constitutes a genetically determined disorder rather than a response to any form of injury. The evidence on the former indicates that subclinical damage to the brain may occur and may involve psychological sequelae-but the damage probably has to be rather severe, and the result is not a homogeneous syndrome. The second alternative remains a possibility, but the claims far outrun the empirical findings that could justify them.

Adolescent↗