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At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources
PubMed1989

Long-term use of valproate in primary psychiatric disorders.

Thirty-five patients, all with major depressive illness, bipolar disorder, or schizoaffective disorder, were retrospectively identified as having received valproate either alone or in combination with lithium, after having failed to adequately respond to previous lithium and/or carbamazepine treatment. Clinical evaluation and Global Assessment Scale (GAS) scores indicated that at baseline all but 3 of the patients experienced serious psychiatric symptoms, serious impairment in social or professional functioning, or significant impairment in reality testing. Mean GAS scores after a mean duration of at least 1 year of valproate administration improved in 7 of 9 depressed patients, 12 of 12 patients with bipolar disorder, and 11 of 14 patients with schizoaffective states. Mean increases in GAS scores were 27.7 points for depressive disorder patients, 34.5 points for mixed bipolar disorder patients, and 17.1 points for patients with schizoaffective states. For patients with either depressive disorders or mixed bipolar disorders, that mean change represented a level of improvement sufficient to elevate the majority of the patients into the mild symptom range or the virtually asymptomatic state. That improvement was confirmed by the investigator's global evaluation of patient response with regard to affect: valproate administration produced significant affective responses in 7 of 9 depressed patients, 12 of 12 patients with mixed bipolar disorders, and 11 of 14 patients with schizoaffective states. The responses of patients with bipolar and schizoaffective disorders to valproate treatment compared with valproate plus lithium treatment were also evaluated. Patients in both diagnostic categories demonstrated very similar and quite substantial improvement in mean change in GAS ratings and global evaluations, regardless of whether valproate was administered alone or in combination with lithium.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

Early transferences and transference-like reactions.

Some patients manifest intense transferences or transference-like reactions in the earliest hours of psychotherapy. Although these reactions may actually represent transference, they may also arise from other sources, such as aspects of a patient's character, displacements from former therapists, impaired reality testing, information about the therapist, and therapist's behavior. Clinical examples are presented, and their management is discussed.

Anxiety↗
PubMed1989

The order of schizophrenic thought.

Analysis of schizophrenic thought disorder reveals structures and regulatory processes that govern its phenotypic expressions. In particular, the three primary variants of this thought disorder--combinative thinking, drive-dominated thinking, and loss of reality testing--can be viewed in terms of thematic structures. Schizophrenic communication is characterized by an affective rule-governing process that channels information into case-grammar thematic structures. The author elaborates an earlier proposal that transformational grammar subunits should be identified and modeled to schizophrenic thought and explicates the use of these specific structures and processes. He then suggests clinical interventions and future research applications.

Afferent Pathways↗
PubMed1977

Brentano's Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint and Freud's early metapsychology.

Brentano's Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint and Freud's early metapsychology, particularly the Project for a Scientific Psychology, show some interesting similarities. In psychological theory, both men stressed the motivated nature of thought and a conception of a "psychological reality" that is superior to "material reality." Both saw consciousness of one's own mental activity as arising retrospectively and having a calming effect on emotions. Both emphasized a process of "judgment" or "reality testing," made possible only by the presence of a strong unity of consciousness of ego. Methodologically, both agreed that the retrospective analysis of subjective experience is the principal tool of psychology. Freud eventually agreed with Brentano that psychology proceeds best when separated from physiology. They applied similar criteria to "proofs" of the unconscious, with Brentano concluding negatively, and Freud, positvely, after considering new evidence. This article considers the similarities and concludes that they suggest some sort of influence of Brentano on Freud.

Austria↗
PubMed1977

A psychogeriatric activity group in a rural community.

Three senior students in occupational therapy and a faculty member collaborated with a community mental health center in implementing and conducting an Outreach Activity Group for socially isolated, psychogeriatric clients residing in an outlying rural community. The students gained experience in five areas: learning the structure, functions, and funding of a community program; identifying the role and function of occupational therapy in community-based mental health; making use of administrative and consultative role functions; leading a group; and, with other health professionals, identifying ways to lessen the problems faced by the psychogeriatric client in the community. The group was helpful in maintaining the psychogeriatric client in the community by promoting self-esteem, self-expression, new interests, constructive use of leisure time, reality testing, interpersonal relationships, and perceptual motor stimulation.

Aged↗
PubMed1989

The relationship between psychological differentiation and performance expectation in alcoholics and normals.

Sixty subjects (20 alcoholic inpatients, 20 outpatient alcoholics, and 20 surgical controls from two Veterans Administration hospitals) were tested on field independence-dependence (measured by the Rod-and-Frame Test), realistic/unrealistic self-expectations (on the Level of Aspiration Board), and degree of alcohol dependence (on the Alcohol Dependence Scale). Response bias and current intelligence were controlled. As predicted, alcoholic inpatients were more alcohol dependent than outpatients, both groups of alcoholics were found to be more field dependent and more unrealistic in their self-expectations than controls, and field dependence was related to unrealistic expectations. Patterns of differentiation and expectation were similar in both alcoholic groups. Results support the consistency of differentiation levels within clinical groups and the relationship between field dependence and unrealistic self-expectation.

Achievement↗
PubMed1990

Transcending death during early adulthood: symbolic immortality, death anxiety, and purpose in life.

Robert Jay Lifton has originated a comprehensive theory of development based on the human psychobiological need to symbolize death and life continuity. He calls this condition the sense of symbolic immortality and argues that life is threatened whenever death is not transcended. A Sense of Symbolic Immortality Scale was built and administered to two groups of young adults (N = 136) in order to test the hypothesis that symbolic immortality develops with age (Drolet, 1986). Templer's Death Anxiety Scale and Crumbaugh and Maholick's Purpose in Life Test also were administered. Results show that established adults have a sense of symbolic immortality and a purpose in life significantly stronger than those of young adults. They show a negative relation between death anxiety and purpose in life, while purpose in life correlates highly with the sense of symbolic immortality. Finally, the premise that the sense of symbolic immortality helps cope with the fear of death is supported.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1991

[The programming of cardiac pacemakers--wish and reality].

To test the extent and quality of pacemaker programming, 340 programmable pacemakers were selected out of 1,204 impulse generators removed post-mortem. Their actual program was compared with the nominal parameters when first delivered. 177 (52.1%) of the 340 pacemakers still had the same parameters as on delivery. The multiply programmable impulse generators with telemetry were more frequently programmed (61.2%) than the simple programmable ones (43.0%) or the multiply programmable ones without telemetry (43.7%). Rate was the most frequently programmed parameter, followed by impulse amplitude, sensitivity and impulse duration. Refractory time and hysteresis were only rarely changed from the initial state. Apparently, programmability was not thought to be important enough. Programming without telemetry was seemingly too complicated. The reasons for this attitude should be investigated so that the discrepancy between wishes and reality can be overcome.

Equipment Design↗
PubMed1989

The statistical analysis of matched data in psychiatric research.

Clinical studies in psychiatry frequently involve the analysis of matched pairs, in which each patient is matched with his or her psychiatric clinician. If the response variable of interest is dichotomous, then McNemar's chi 2 test for correlated proportions may be applied to the resulting data. However, this test assumes that the set of matched pairs are statistically independent, an assumption that is violated if some clinicians are matched with more than one patient. In this article we present alternatives to McNemar's test for dealing with this problem.

Humans↗
PubMed1989

Evolution of motor activity tests into a screening reality.

Measures of activity have changed in ways that their utility in screening for neurotoxicity has vastly improved. New computer pattern recognition systems now provide rapid, objective tools for identifying animal behavior. Advances in data analysis procedures have replaced the percent change in overall activity level with measures of initiations, total time and temporal structure for multiple behaviors and sequences. These advances can distinguish hyperactivities induced by different mechanisms and rank their neurotoxic potential, a feat not possible with photocell devices generally used in laboratories today. With the recent technological improvements, it is possible that a measure of activity will become one of the best predictors of malfunction in the central nervous system.

Amphetamine↗
PubMed1990

Cognitive deficits and thought disorder: II. An 8-month followup study.

Schizophrenic (n = 21) and manic (n = 19) patients were followed up an average of 8 months after an index assessment during an acute admission. These patients were tested at both assessments with laboratory tasks measuring distractibility and reality monitoring and were examined with clinical ratings of positive and negative thought disorder. For manic patients, none of the measures predicted the patients' clinical state of followup, while negative thought disorder, although rare, was temporally stable. For the schizophrenic patients, both negative thought disorder and distractibility were temporally stable, and more severe negative thought disorder was found at index assessment in patients who were psychotic at followup. The differential utility of laboratory and clinical indices for the prediction of overall clinical state is related to these data.

Adult↗
PubMed1991

Concordance between two measures of dream bizarreness.

To assess the level of concordance between two published measures of dream bizarreness, 100 randomly selected dreams from 93 college students were scored for primary process using the Auld, Goldenberg, and Weiss scale and for dream distortion using Zepelin's scale. This analysis yielded a strong relationship between these measures, indicating adequate concurrent validity for the content analysis of the construct of dream bizarreness.

Adult↗
PubMed1991

Use of non-verbal construing and metaphor in psychotherapy.

This article begins by looking at the way we try to construe or make sense of the world in which we live. How in the very nature of such sense-making there is the potential for sowing the seeds of self-deception by trying to fit our (relatively simplified) bipolar constructs to a complex unitary universe. Non-verbal and verbal construing are compared. Verbal construing enables us to reach an even more sophisticated level of self-deception, via myths created by limiting metaphors--such as "man-the-machine." The institutions which we create and the people who are invested in them tend to solidify in-group myths, often with the help of metaphor. It is argued that personal, constructivist, and eclectic approaches to psychotherapy can be envisaged as enterprises to begin the process of demythologising clients in the safety of the therapeutic setting. In therapy, clients can experiment with empowering themselves in reconstruing the problem areas of their lives and actively testing out these new constructions against personal experience. Clients can also learn to explore the meaning behind symptoms, i.e., to give cognitive form to feeling with the help of their intuitive sensitivity.

Concept Formation↗
PubMed1992

Reading and visual memory: remembering scenes that were never seen.

In Experiment 1 (N = 16), under conditions of high memory load (60 pictures and 50 paragraphs) and a 1-week retention interval, undergraduate subjects reported their memory for photographs of scenes (cued recall and free-recall tasks). Subjects frequently reported memory for photographs that they had actually never seen, but had read about in a brief paragraph. In Experiment 2 (N = 40), the same pattern of results was obtained with immediate testing. Experiment 2 also demonstrated that the likelihood of subjects falsely attributing scene memory (based on reading) to actually having viewed a photograph was reduced when metacognitive awareness of imaging during reading was made salient. Awareness of image creation was induced by requiring subjects to rate the paragraphs with respect to imagery vividness. Although other measures of memory remained the same, subjects in the induced-imagery condition made 50% fewer confusion errors than subjects who read the paragraphs without imagery instructions. The results are discussed in the context of Johnson and Raye's (1981) reality monitoring model.

Adult↗