By Rick Nauert PhD Senior News Editor
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on July 7, 2010
Teenage Competition: Helpful or Harmful?Are teenagers too competitive? Does being competitive influence teenage girls more than boys? Is being competitive a good or a bad thing when you’re a teenager?
New research suggests the answer is: “it depends.”
Researchers say competing to win is detrimental to girls’ social relationships and has been linked to higher levels of depression, whereas this was much less the case for boys.
However, competing to excel is beneficial to the well-being of both genders.
A new study by Dr. David Hibbard from California State University and Dr. Duane Buhrmester from the University of Texas finds that the influence of competitiveness on psychological well-being and social functioning in adolescents depends on both the type of competitiveness and the teenager’s gender.
Their findings are published in Springer’s journal Sex Roles.
Competitiveness can be both a virtue and a vice. One person’s win can be another person’s loss and the drive to be better than others, when taken too far, can appear ruthless and selfish.
Consequently, competitiveness may have social and emotional downsides and its effects are likely to differ for males and females. Indeed, research shows that competitiveness is rated both as more typical of adult males and as more desirable for males than for females.
To date, the implications of competitiveness for males and females during late adolescence – a time when high school seniors are looking to assert their identities for jobs that involve varying levels of ambition and competition, while at the same time working to establish close friendships and romantic relationships – have not been investigated fully.
Hibbard and Buhrmester’s work looks at the effect of two types of competitiveness on teenagers’ psychological well-being and social functioning in late adolescence: competing to win (that is, to dominate and outperform others), and competing to excel (that is, to perform well and surpass personal goals).
A total of 110 twelfth-grade high school students from the Richardson Independent School District in Dallas, Texas, their best same-gender friends and their parents completed questionnaires assessing a combination of competitiveness, gender-role orientation, self-esteem, depressive symptoms, loneliness, aggression, empathy, close relationship qualities, and school grades.
The authors found that teenage boys scored higher on ‘competing to win’ than girls but there were no gender differences for ‘competing to excel’ scores.
For girls, competing to win was linked to higher levels of depression and loneliness and to fewer and less close friendships. Competing to excel was linked to higher self-esteem and less depression for both genders, but was largely unrelated to social functioning.
Hibbard and Buhrmester conclude: “The overarching issue this study explored was whether competitiveness as a motivational orientation is good or bad for males and females. The findings clarify, to some degree, western cultures’ ‘ambivalence’ about competitiveness. The view that competitiveness is the road to emotional well-being is supported to the extent that one is talking about competing to improve oneself or excel. On the other hand, if one is talking about competing to win or show dominance over others, then females seem to pay a socio-emotional price.”
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Friday, June 25, 2010
New Software Can Detect Depression in Blog Posts
By Jessica Ward Jones, MD, MPH Associate News Editor
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on June 25, 2010
A new software program can tell whether a blogger is depressed.
The program scans online text and blogs, identifying not only obvious keywords, but even subtle clues that can determine the blogger’s psychological state.
“The software program was designed to find depressive content hidden in language that did not mention the obvious terms like depression or suicide,” said Professor Yair Neuman of Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, who led the study.
“A psychologist knows how to spot various emotional states through intuition. Here, we have a program that does this methodically through the innovative use of ‘web intelligence,’” said Neuman.
Many people with depression are undiagnosed. While there are a number of screening tools available on the Internet, only individuals who suspect they may have depression are likely to use these tools.
To design the program, named Pedesis, Professor Neuman and his team first used extensive English language web searches to define word patterns associated with depression, analyzing the text associated with the search term: “depression is like….”
For example, the program might detect words that express different emotions, like colors that the writer uses to metaphorically describe a situation, such as “black.” Other concepts associated with depression that might trigger the software include terms like sleep deprivation, or loneliness.
To test the program they analyzed more than 350,000 texts from 17,031 bloggers. (Permission from the bloggers was obtained prior to the study.) The Pedesis software identified the 100 most depressed and the 100 least depressed bloggers.
A panel of four clinical psychiatrists reviewed the posts from each group and found that there was a 78 percent correlation between their clinical impressions based on the texts and the software’s diagnosis.
Computer-generated diagnosis or online therapy is not a substitute for human interaction, but may provide a useful screening tool. “No one can actually replace excellent human judgment,” says Neuman. “The problem is that most people are not aware of their situation and they will never get to an expert psychologist.”
Although the Pedesis program was originally designed for academic purposes, Neuman hopes that these findings could be useful clinically, to screen for potential suicides. If implemented on a widespread basis, a screening process might increase the user’s awareness of his or her condition, and provide recommendations. If the blogger agrees, he or she could seek professional help.
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on June 25, 2010
A new software program can tell whether a blogger is depressed.
The program scans online text and blogs, identifying not only obvious keywords, but even subtle clues that can determine the blogger’s psychological state.
“The software program was designed to find depressive content hidden in language that did not mention the obvious terms like depression or suicide,” said Professor Yair Neuman of Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, who led the study.
“A psychologist knows how to spot various emotional states through intuition. Here, we have a program that does this methodically through the innovative use of ‘web intelligence,’” said Neuman.
Many people with depression are undiagnosed. While there are a number of screening tools available on the Internet, only individuals who suspect they may have depression are likely to use these tools.
To design the program, named Pedesis, Professor Neuman and his team first used extensive English language web searches to define word patterns associated with depression, analyzing the text associated with the search term: “depression is like….”
For example, the program might detect words that express different emotions, like colors that the writer uses to metaphorically describe a situation, such as “black.” Other concepts associated with depression that might trigger the software include terms like sleep deprivation, or loneliness.
To test the program they analyzed more than 350,000 texts from 17,031 bloggers. (Permission from the bloggers was obtained prior to the study.) The Pedesis software identified the 100 most depressed and the 100 least depressed bloggers.
A panel of four clinical psychiatrists reviewed the posts from each group and found that there was a 78 percent correlation between their clinical impressions based on the texts and the software’s diagnosis.
Computer-generated diagnosis or online therapy is not a substitute for human interaction, but may provide a useful screening tool. “No one can actually replace excellent human judgment,” says Neuman. “The problem is that most people are not aware of their situation and they will never get to an expert psychologist.”
Although the Pedesis program was originally designed for academic purposes, Neuman hopes that these findings could be useful clinically, to screen for potential suicides. If implemented on a widespread basis, a screening process might increase the user’s awareness of his or her condition, and provide recommendations. If the blogger agrees, he or she could seek professional help.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
PTSD And Depression Common In Returning Combat Soldiers
How often do soldiers returning after seeing combat in Iraq and Afghanistan develop mental disorders like post-traumatic stress disorder and depression?
A new study funded by the U.S. Army finds 8 to 14 percent of infantry soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan return seriously disabled by mental health problems. Between 23 and 31 percent return with some impairment.
About half the soldiers with either PTSD or depression also misused alchohol or had problems with aggressive behavior.
Psychiatrists from the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research anonymously surveyed more than 18,000 soldiers who served in regular army units and the National Guard. The surveys were taken both 3 months and 12 months after their return from service abroad.
The researchers conclude that it's clear even a year after deployment, "many combat soldiers have not psychologically recovered." Because the time between deployment is often only a year to 18 months for active soldiers, a "sizable proportion" are likely returning to with lingering mental health issues.
Article by Scott Hensley/NPR
A new study funded by the U.S. Army finds 8 to 14 percent of infantry soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan return seriously disabled by mental health problems. Between 23 and 31 percent return with some impairment.
About half the soldiers with either PTSD or depression also misused alchohol or had problems with aggressive behavior.
Psychiatrists from the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research anonymously surveyed more than 18,000 soldiers who served in regular army units and the National Guard. The surveys were taken both 3 months and 12 months after their return from service abroad.
The researchers conclude that it's clear even a year after deployment, "many combat soldiers have not psychologically recovered." Because the time between deployment is often only a year to 18 months for active soldiers, a "sizable proportion" are likely returning to with lingering mental health issues.
Article by Scott Hensley/NPR
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Smoking While Pregnant May Raise Psychiatric Risks in Kids
By Madonna Behen
HealthDay Reporter
TUESDAY, May 4 (HealthDay News) -- A woman who smokes while pregnant increases her baby's risk of developing psychiatric problems in childhood and young adulthood, a new Finnish study suggests.
While there's plenty of evidence that smoking during pregnancy puts unborn children at risk for long-term health problems such as asthma, ear infections and respiratory disease, this research is among the first to find a connection between prenatal smoking and an increased risk for mental illnesses, such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and depression, in the mother's offspring.
Researchers at Turku University Hospital in Finland analyzed the birth records of more than 175,000 Finnish children born in the late 1980s, as well as their use of psychotropic medications as children and young adults.
Children exposed to prenatal smoking were 32 percent more likely overall to have taken a psychiatric drug than children whose mothers didn't smoke during pregnancy, the researchers found. The risk was even higher in the offspring of women who smoked more than a pack a day while pregnant. Their kids were 44 percent more likely to use psychiatric drugs than children whose moms didn't smoke.
Study author Mikael Ekblad said animal studies have shown that prenatal nicotine exposure interferes with the development of fetal brain cells. "In our previous study, published in the Journal of Pediatrics in February 2010, we found that prematurely born infants exposed to prenatal smoking had smaller frontal and cerebellar brain volumes than the unexposed infants. These brain regions are important for normal cognitive development," said Ekblad, a medical student and pediatric researcher.
The researchers collected data on all children born in Finland from 1987 through 1989. In addition to information about maternal smoking, they looked at gestational age, birth weight and five-minute Apgar scores. Using records from Finland's Social Insurance Institution, they also examined the children's use of psychotropic medications between 1994 and 2007.
Roughly 12 percent of the young adults had used psychiatric medications, and of this group, about 19 percent had mothers who smoked during their pregnancies.
The researchers found that exposure to prenatal smoking increased the risk for using all psychotropic drugs, but especially ADHD medications, antidepressants and drugs to treat addiction. For example, kids whose mothers smoked more than a pack of cigarettes a day were two and a half times more likely to take stimulants for ADHD than kids whose moms didn't smoke during pregnancy.
The risk for all medication use was similar in males and females, and remained after adjusting for risk factors at birth, such as Apgar scores and birth weight.
Since mental illness often runs in families, the researchers also controlled for a possible genetic connection by analyzing records of the mother's psychiatric inpatient care prior to giving birth. "One of the strengths of our study is that we could control for maternal mental health diseases," said Ekblad, who added that the genetic effect is higher in psychiatric problems that require hospitalization.
"This is an interesting study which raises the important possibility that prenatal exposure to smoking may pose additional risks that have not been identified to date, but based on the information available so far, the effect seems to be small," said Neil Grunberg, a professor of medical psychology, clinical psychology and neuroscience at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md.
Grunberg also questioned whether the study adequately controlled for possible genetic and environmental factors. "In the U.S., there is a high correlation between smoking and psychological disorders," said Grunberg. In addition, many people have a family history of psychiatric disorders, even though they themselves have never been diagnosed with one, he said.
The findings were to be presented Tuesday at the Pediatric Academic Societies annual meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
HealthDay Reporter
TUESDAY, May 4 (HealthDay News) -- A woman who smokes while pregnant increases her baby's risk of developing psychiatric problems in childhood and young adulthood, a new Finnish study suggests.
While there's plenty of evidence that smoking during pregnancy puts unborn children at risk for long-term health problems such as asthma, ear infections and respiratory disease, this research is among the first to find a connection between prenatal smoking and an increased risk for mental illnesses, such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and depression, in the mother's offspring.
Researchers at Turku University Hospital in Finland analyzed the birth records of more than 175,000 Finnish children born in the late 1980s, as well as their use of psychotropic medications as children and young adults.
Children exposed to prenatal smoking were 32 percent more likely overall to have taken a psychiatric drug than children whose mothers didn't smoke during pregnancy, the researchers found. The risk was even higher in the offspring of women who smoked more than a pack a day while pregnant. Their kids were 44 percent more likely to use psychiatric drugs than children whose moms didn't smoke.
Study author Mikael Ekblad said animal studies have shown that prenatal nicotine exposure interferes with the development of fetal brain cells. "In our previous study, published in the Journal of Pediatrics in February 2010, we found that prematurely born infants exposed to prenatal smoking had smaller frontal and cerebellar brain volumes than the unexposed infants. These brain regions are important for normal cognitive development," said Ekblad, a medical student and pediatric researcher.
The researchers collected data on all children born in Finland from 1987 through 1989. In addition to information about maternal smoking, they looked at gestational age, birth weight and five-minute Apgar scores. Using records from Finland's Social Insurance Institution, they also examined the children's use of psychotropic medications between 1994 and 2007.
Roughly 12 percent of the young adults had used psychiatric medications, and of this group, about 19 percent had mothers who smoked during their pregnancies.
The researchers found that exposure to prenatal smoking increased the risk for using all psychotropic drugs, but especially ADHD medications, antidepressants and drugs to treat addiction. For example, kids whose mothers smoked more than a pack of cigarettes a day were two and a half times more likely to take stimulants for ADHD than kids whose moms didn't smoke during pregnancy.
The risk for all medication use was similar in males and females, and remained after adjusting for risk factors at birth, such as Apgar scores and birth weight.
Since mental illness often runs in families, the researchers also controlled for a possible genetic connection by analyzing records of the mother's psychiatric inpatient care prior to giving birth. "One of the strengths of our study is that we could control for maternal mental health diseases," said Ekblad, who added that the genetic effect is higher in psychiatric problems that require hospitalization.
"This is an interesting study which raises the important possibility that prenatal exposure to smoking may pose additional risks that have not been identified to date, but based on the information available so far, the effect seems to be small," said Neil Grunberg, a professor of medical psychology, clinical psychology and neuroscience at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md.
Grunberg also questioned whether the study adequately controlled for possible genetic and environmental factors. "In the U.S., there is a high correlation between smoking and psychological disorders," said Grunberg. In addition, many people have a family history of psychiatric disorders, even though they themselves have never been diagnosed with one, he said.
The findings were to be presented Tuesday at the Pediatric Academic Societies annual meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Law enforcers learn about mental illness with crisis intervention training
By Jodi Hausen, Chronicle Staff Writer
A man waved a saber sword wildly in the air as his wife screamed obscenities at him. An agitated couple complained about loud music from a "weird" neighbor's apartment.
Meanwhile, a woman said her neighbors had surreptitiously installed cameras in her home and were involved in a pornography ring.
All these fictitious incidents were happening in the sky boxes at Montana State University's Bobcat Stadium Friday and law enforcement officials were there to respond to them.
Though these practice scenarios were nothing new for the 24 law enforcement officers who were handling these situations, they were doing so with a better understanding of mental illness and a new way to deal with it after participating in a weeklong crisis intervention training.
"You can write them as many citations for noise as you want, but you're really here for a mental health issue," said Gallatin County Deputy Don Peterson and a previously-trained CIT participant after officers dealt with one chaotic scene -- a wheelchair-bound drug-abusing mother and her three mentally-ill teen daughters, their two angry neighbors and a very loud boom box.
"Time (spent) now will save you time later," Peterson added.
Before CIT was instituted in the county last year, officers were less familiar with mental illness and more likely to try to resolve an aberrant situation expediently. However, calming down an agitated person with psychological issues takes time and patience, they were taught. And if the officers succeed in calming a person, it often results in fewer arrests overall and a better outcome for the person they are dealing with.
The training "definitely gives you a better understanding and different tools on how to deal with people with mental illness as opposed to feeling like you have to resolve the situation quickly," Bozeman police officer Scott McCormick said. "It slows you down."
That sentiment was repeated by Deputy Doug Lieurance after the sword-swinging man amped-up on cocaine with the screaming wife tried to barricade himself in one room and then locked himself in another. Eventually he, too, was calmed down.
"Time is on your side," Lieurance said. "He hasn't made any aggressive moves."
And though one participant saw his law enforcement training at odds with CIT philosophy in this hostage-rescue scenario, trainers argued that forcibly pulling the wife over a counter would only escalate the scene and could lead to a deadly force situation.
"Don't compromise yourself for Ms. Belligerent here," Lieurance said. "Don't make her problem your problem."
"But there's no right or wrong," Deputy Jim Andrews, who coordinates the training, said. "It's to make you think."
Put on by the Gallatin County Sheriff's Office for officers mostly from Gallatin County, volunteers (like Friday's actors) and assistants came from a variety of local and statewide agencies including Gallatin County Drug and Alcohol Services, Probation and Parole, Court Services,, Attorney's Office and Gallatin Mental Health Center, the Help Center, Bozeman Deaconess Hospital, Spectrum Medical, National Alliance of Mental Illness and Montana State Hospital in Warm Springs.
This is the third CIT session in Gallatin County and the second in as many months due to demand, Andrews said.
"We've kind of rounded a corner" with this third class, Andrews said. "Before we needed to convince officers this is a good thing. But now people are talking about it and they know."
"This group rounds me out," Gallatin County Sheriff's Lt. Jeff Wade, who has been in charge of the training, said. Now about 45 percent of Gallatin County's law enforcement officers are CIT-trained, including at least one from every agency, save for Montana Highway Patrol who don't deal with these issues often.
MSU police officer Thad Winslow said the training was definitely beneficial.
"The biggest thing is just understanding the (mental health) resources that are available and on top of that just getting a better understanding that there's a lot more to why people are doing what they're doing," he said. "They're not just violating the law."
A man waved a saber sword wildly in the air as his wife screamed obscenities at him. An agitated couple complained about loud music from a "weird" neighbor's apartment.
Meanwhile, a woman said her neighbors had surreptitiously installed cameras in her home and were involved in a pornography ring.
All these fictitious incidents were happening in the sky boxes at Montana State University's Bobcat Stadium Friday and law enforcement officials were there to respond to them.
Though these practice scenarios were nothing new for the 24 law enforcement officers who were handling these situations, they were doing so with a better understanding of mental illness and a new way to deal with it after participating in a weeklong crisis intervention training.
"You can write them as many citations for noise as you want, but you're really here for a mental health issue," said Gallatin County Deputy Don Peterson and a previously-trained CIT participant after officers dealt with one chaotic scene -- a wheelchair-bound drug-abusing mother and her three mentally-ill teen daughters, their two angry neighbors and a very loud boom box.
"Time (spent) now will save you time later," Peterson added.
Before CIT was instituted in the county last year, officers were less familiar with mental illness and more likely to try to resolve an aberrant situation expediently. However, calming down an agitated person with psychological issues takes time and patience, they were taught. And if the officers succeed in calming a person, it often results in fewer arrests overall and a better outcome for the person they are dealing with.
The training "definitely gives you a better understanding and different tools on how to deal with people with mental illness as opposed to feeling like you have to resolve the situation quickly," Bozeman police officer Scott McCormick said. "It slows you down."
That sentiment was repeated by Deputy Doug Lieurance after the sword-swinging man amped-up on cocaine with the screaming wife tried to barricade himself in one room and then locked himself in another. Eventually he, too, was calmed down.
"Time is on your side," Lieurance said. "He hasn't made any aggressive moves."
And though one participant saw his law enforcement training at odds with CIT philosophy in this hostage-rescue scenario, trainers argued that forcibly pulling the wife over a counter would only escalate the scene and could lead to a deadly force situation.
"Don't compromise yourself for Ms. Belligerent here," Lieurance said. "Don't make her problem your problem."
"But there's no right or wrong," Deputy Jim Andrews, who coordinates the training, said. "It's to make you think."
Put on by the Gallatin County Sheriff's Office for officers mostly from Gallatin County, volunteers (like Friday's actors) and assistants came from a variety of local and statewide agencies including Gallatin County Drug and Alcohol Services, Probation and Parole, Court Services,, Attorney's Office and Gallatin Mental Health Center, the Help Center, Bozeman Deaconess Hospital, Spectrum Medical, National Alliance of Mental Illness and Montana State Hospital in Warm Springs.
This is the third CIT session in Gallatin County and the second in as many months due to demand, Andrews said.
"We've kind of rounded a corner" with this third class, Andrews said. "Before we needed to convince officers this is a good thing. But now people are talking about it and they know."
"This group rounds me out," Gallatin County Sheriff's Lt. Jeff Wade, who has been in charge of the training, said. Now about 45 percent of Gallatin County's law enforcement officers are CIT-trained, including at least one from every agency, save for Montana Highway Patrol who don't deal with these issues often.
MSU police officer Thad Winslow said the training was definitely beneficial.
"The biggest thing is just understanding the (mental health) resources that are available and on top of that just getting a better understanding that there's a lot more to why people are doing what they're doing," he said. "They're not just violating the law."
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
People with mental illness have new Bozeman facility
By JODI HAUSEN, Chronicle Staff Writer
The services at Gallatin Mental Health Center haven't changed but the space in which they are delivered has.
In February, the center opened Hope House and Eck House -- a mental health crisis center and a four-unit subsidized housing facility for people with mental illness, respectively.
Now, two more facilities - Gallatin County Outpatient Services and the Open Arms Drop-In Center -- have opened for business.
"We're kind of in the fogginess of moving in," Scott Malloy, director of the center, said sitting in his office during a brief break Monday.
With vaulted ceilings, wood floors and walls and furnishings in muted earth tones, all the facilities at the campus have a more homey feeling than a typical institution for patients with mental illness. Instead of fluorescent lights, numerous large windows and warm-toned lighting fixtures brighten the rooms.
The 8,700-square-foot outpatient facility boasts a dividable conference room with video-conferencing capabilities, offices and "a really awesome lobby," Malloy said, explaining that their former entryway in the Medical Arts Building on North Willson Avenue was about the size of his current office.
Next door, a fish swam around a small plastic container on an end table, waiting to be plunked back into its bowl at the new drop-in center Monday.
Clients sitting on recently-installed upholstered furniture there were pleased with their new space that houses two offices, a small meeting room, laundry, deck with barbecue and kitchen and pantry lined with red Folgers coffee containers.
"I love it," said John Watson, the drop-in center's director. "We've gone from two rooms at North Willson (to this) in two years."
The 50 mental health center employees did a majority of the moving over the weekend, along with the help of offenders sentenced to the Gallatin County work release program, Malloy said.
If there is a missing piece from the new campus, it is public transportation directly to it, both directors said. Although it us less than a half-mile walk from Bozeman Deaconess Hospital where the Streamline bus already stops, Malloy said he is hoping Streamline will add a stop off Haggerty Lane in front of the campus when the free bus service revamps its maps in the fall.
To celebrate the campus and Mental Health Month, the center, which assists up to 1,000 clients at any given time, will be hosting an open house next week and a series of talks throughout the month of May.
For more information, call 522-7357.
The services at Gallatin Mental Health Center haven't changed but the space in which they are delivered has.
In February, the center opened Hope House and Eck House -- a mental health crisis center and a four-unit subsidized housing facility for people with mental illness, respectively.
Now, two more facilities - Gallatin County Outpatient Services and the Open Arms Drop-In Center -- have opened for business.
"We're kind of in the fogginess of moving in," Scott Malloy, director of the center, said sitting in his office during a brief break Monday.
With vaulted ceilings, wood floors and walls and furnishings in muted earth tones, all the facilities at the campus have a more homey feeling than a typical institution for patients with mental illness. Instead of fluorescent lights, numerous large windows and warm-toned lighting fixtures brighten the rooms.
The 8,700-square-foot outpatient facility boasts a dividable conference room with video-conferencing capabilities, offices and "a really awesome lobby," Malloy said, explaining that their former entryway in the Medical Arts Building on North Willson Avenue was about the size of his current office.
Next door, a fish swam around a small plastic container on an end table, waiting to be plunked back into its bowl at the new drop-in center Monday.
Clients sitting on recently-installed upholstered furniture there were pleased with their new space that houses two offices, a small meeting room, laundry, deck with barbecue and kitchen and pantry lined with red Folgers coffee containers.
"I love it," said John Watson, the drop-in center's director. "We've gone from two rooms at North Willson (to this) in two years."
The 50 mental health center employees did a majority of the moving over the weekend, along with the help of offenders sentenced to the Gallatin County work release program, Malloy said.
If there is a missing piece from the new campus, it is public transportation directly to it, both directors said. Although it us less than a half-mile walk from Bozeman Deaconess Hospital where the Streamline bus already stops, Malloy said he is hoping Streamline will add a stop off Haggerty Lane in front of the campus when the free bus service revamps its maps in the fall.
To celebrate the campus and Mental Health Month, the center, which assists up to 1,000 clients at any given time, will be hosting an open house next week and a series of talks throughout the month of May.
For more information, call 522-7357.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
New Research on Suicidal Behavior
Determining who is at risk for suicide is an arduous and inexact endeavor. Even trained clinicians can miss warning signs.
Researchers have now developed an instrument they believe will help predict those at risk.
Matthew Nock of Harvard University, along with colleagues from Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital, modified a well-known word-association test to measure associations between life and death/ suicide and examined if it could be effective in predicting suicide risk.
The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is a widely used test that measures automatic associations people hold about various topics. Participants are shown pairs of words; the speed of their response indicates if they unconsciously associate those words.
In the IAT version used in this study, participants classified words related to “life” (e.g., breathing) and “death” (e.g., dead) and “me” (e.g., mine) and “not me” (e.g., them).
Faster responses to “death”/”me” stimuli than “life”/”me” stimuli would suggest a stronger association between death and self.
People seeking treatment at a psychiatric emergency room participated in this study. They completed the IAT and various mental health assessments. In addition, their medical records were examined six months later to see if they had attempted suicide within that time.
The results, reported in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, revealed that participants presenting to the emergency room after a suicide attempt had a stronger implicit association between death/ suicide and self than did participants presenting with other psychiatric emergencies.
In addition, participants with strong associations between death/ suicide and self were significantly more likely to make a suicide attempt within the next six months than were those who had stronger associations between life and self.
These results suggest that an implicit association between death/ suicide and self may be a behavioral marker for suicide attempts. These findings also indicate that measures of implicit cognition may be useful for identifying and predicting clinical behaviors that tend not be reported.
As Nock explains, “these results are really exciting because they address a long-standing scientific and clinical dilemma by identifying a method of measuring how people are thinking about death and suicide that does not rely on their self-report.”
He adds, “we are hopeful that this line of research ultimately will provide scientists and clinicians with new tools for measuring how people think about sensitive clinical behaviors that they may be unwilling or unable to report on verbally.”
Mahzarin Banaji, also of Harvard University and a co-author of this study, adds that this work presents a strong argument for the importance of funding basic behavioral research.
“These results are an example of basic research helping to solving a troubling and devastating problem in every society. The method we used was designed to understand the mind, but it turned into a technique that can predict disorders of a variety of sorts. One wonders why funding agencies that should know better about the value of basic research seem so naive when it comes to decisions about what is in the public’s interest.”
By Rick Nauert PhD Senior News Editor
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on April 13, 2010
Researchers have now developed an instrument they believe will help predict those at risk.
Matthew Nock of Harvard University, along with colleagues from Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital, modified a well-known word-association test to measure associations between life and death/ suicide and examined if it could be effective in predicting suicide risk.
The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is a widely used test that measures automatic associations people hold about various topics. Participants are shown pairs of words; the speed of their response indicates if they unconsciously associate those words.
In the IAT version used in this study, participants classified words related to “life” (e.g., breathing) and “death” (e.g., dead) and “me” (e.g., mine) and “not me” (e.g., them).
Faster responses to “death”/”me” stimuli than “life”/”me” stimuli would suggest a stronger association between death and self.
People seeking treatment at a psychiatric emergency room participated in this study. They completed the IAT and various mental health assessments. In addition, their medical records were examined six months later to see if they had attempted suicide within that time.
The results, reported in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, revealed that participants presenting to the emergency room after a suicide attempt had a stronger implicit association between death/ suicide and self than did participants presenting with other psychiatric emergencies.
In addition, participants with strong associations between death/ suicide and self were significantly more likely to make a suicide attempt within the next six months than were those who had stronger associations between life and self.
These results suggest that an implicit association between death/ suicide and self may be a behavioral marker for suicide attempts. These findings also indicate that measures of implicit cognition may be useful for identifying and predicting clinical behaviors that tend not be reported.
As Nock explains, “these results are really exciting because they address a long-standing scientific and clinical dilemma by identifying a method of measuring how people are thinking about death and suicide that does not rely on their self-report.”
He adds, “we are hopeful that this line of research ultimately will provide scientists and clinicians with new tools for measuring how people think about sensitive clinical behaviors that they may be unwilling or unable to report on verbally.”
Mahzarin Banaji, also of Harvard University and a co-author of this study, adds that this work presents a strong argument for the importance of funding basic behavioral research.
“These results are an example of basic research helping to solving a troubling and devastating problem in every society. The method we used was designed to understand the mind, but it turned into a technique that can predict disorders of a variety of sorts. One wonders why funding agencies that should know better about the value of basic research seem so naive when it comes to decisions about what is in the public’s interest.”
By Rick Nauert PhD Senior News Editor
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on April 13, 2010
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