摘要:

Increased public attention and legal action are actively changing the abortion situation. The authors arranged short-term group therapy with single and married women who had obtained therapeutic abortions. Women that had been operated on in the local hospitals were contacted by mail and provided the patients for the group. They were generally women from high socioeconomic backgrounds, and educationally sophisticated, but they showed a wide variety of differences in personality and in their individual psychological disturbances. Their ability to participate in the group was markedly influenced by marital status and age, with older and more socially established women more able to view the experience in perspective and to discuss their own values and reactions to termination of pregnancy. Younger, single girls seemed to have more trouble in separating the event from their current interactions with men and their present social insecurities and emotional lability. They also felt intimidated by the older women even though the married women were scrupulous about neither being judgmental or patronizing. The groups discussed attitudes toward surgery and hospitalization, the search for someone to perform the abortion, and the attitudes of internists, psychiatrists, and surgeons with whom they had dealt. Religion, sexuality, personal guilt, and the rights and meaning of femininity in this and other cultures were all examined, and the idea of killing a living thing received a heavy emphasis. The groups served to reduce guilt, to enhance assimilation of the experience, and helped put the experience into proportion for its members. It adds to the mounting knowledge that properly conducted abortions, outside of the shadow of illegality, and with the support of the medical care system, have a temporary emotional influence upon women and do not lead to psychiatric disorders. The groups indicate a considerable potential for approaching women for information about their experiences in these circumstances and helping in managing short-term responses. Group approaches offer a great opportunity for intervention with pregnant adolescents and women in poverty areas who rarely have adequate information or a chance to discuss these issues. A combination of older and married women in such groups is important to stabilize and sustain the groups.

ISSN:0022-3018    

出版商:OVID    

年代:1971

数据来源: OVID

摘要:

The relationship between current, disturbed behavior patterns and histories of pregnancy and birth complications (PBCs) were studied in 61 children (mean age, 8.6 years) under treatment for behavioral or psychiatric disturbance. The hospital birth and neonatal records of the subjects were blindly evaluated, with independent interobserver agreement consistently at 95 per cent. Behavior ratings by treatment center workers were factor analyzed, yielding three factors called Psychotic Withdrawal, Acting-out-Aggression and Organic Signs. No significant relationships were found between type of current behavior patterns and PBC histories. Premature subjects were highly similar to nonpremature subjects in behavioral characteristics. These results were interpreted primarily as supporting a hypothesis of nonspecific effects or a range of effects of PBCs within psychological disturbance during childhood. Postbirth, familial factors might be implicated for acting-out-aggressive children, since Acting- out-Aggression was the outstanding characteristic of children born to unmarried rather than married mothers.

ISSN:0022-3018    

出版商:OVID    

年代:1971

数据来源: OVID

摘要:

Evidence has accumulated during the past decade linking pregnancy and birth complications to later disorders of function. In 1956 Pasamanick et al. postulated that these complications might produce a “continuum of reproductive casualty…extending from fetal and neonatal death through cerebral palsy, epilepsy, mental deficiency, and behavior disorder.” Prenatal and perinatal complications have also been associated with childhood schizophrenia, although only two of the studies summarized used the patients' siblings as controls. Since siblings represent the best controls of environmental and hereditary variables (short of studying monozygotic twins discordant for childhood schizophrenia), they were used in the present study as controls.Accordingly, 33 childhood schizophrenics and their 83 siblings were analyzed with regard to prenatal and perinatal complications. Information was obtained from the patients' case records and from the hospital birth records and birth certificate records of both patients and their siblings.The childhood schizophrenics had a higher rate of prenatal complications than their siblings, but the difference was not significant. With regard to perinatal complications, however, the patients had a significantly higher rate than their siblings (p< .01). These findings confirm those of Vorster, Taft, and Goldfarb who also employed the siblings of the schizophrenic children as their controls. The schizophrenic children did not differ significantly in birth weight from their siblings.There was also a clear association between the schizophrenic child's ego status on admission to the hospital and his IQ and age of hospital admission. The schizophrenic children with poorer ego development compared to those with better ego development are admitted to the hospital earlier (p< .001) and also have significantly lower IQs (p< .01).While brain damage alone, resulting from birth complications, may not explain the unique symptoms of childhood schizophrenia, it is considered possible that in families already predisposed genetically for the development of this disorder, the addition of reproductive complications, especially perinatal factors (e.g., breech presentation, placenta previa, midforceps, induction of labor for complication, newborn distress, etc.) may be enough to tip the balance between health and disease, and profoundly disrupt the child's later development.

ISSN:0022-3018    

出版商:OVID    

年代:1971

数据来源: OVID

摘要:

A consecutive series of 110 adult open heart surgical patients were evaluated to assess postoperative psychiatric complications. This evaluation included psychological, social, and medical factors in the preoperative and postoperative periods. Psychological factors were assessed with the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI).Many of the predisposing and precipitating factors studied were found to be differentially contributory among subgroups of male and female patients. This suggested certain hypotheses concerning the inter-relationships between psychological factors and the other factors which appear to play an important role in postoperative psychiatric complications.Male open heart surgery patients revealed a high rate of postoperative psychiatric complications. These were found to be related to age, type of surgical procedures, and a clinical picture characterized by depression, anxiety and physical complaints.Female open heart surgery patients revealed a lower incidence of postoperative psychiatric complications than male patients. Their complications were found to be significantly associated with a history of family or marital problems, or problems requiring psychiatric care, and with a significant incidence of brain damage following surgery. Correlated psychological data indicated symptoms and complaints of depression, anger, interpersonal discord, and unusual or bizarre feelings and experiences.It was hypothesized that good psychological adjustment prior to surgery may preclude a postoperative reaction and/or make it easier for a person to accept and effectively adjust to disturbing emotional experiences following surgery whatever their etiology. Some degree of psychological maladjustment would raise the probability for a postoperative reaction, but its ultimate occurrence would be dependent on other factors, such as age and/or type of operation, whose effects seem different in male and female patients.Some of the difficulties involved in the delineation of the role of psychological factors in open heart surgery were discussed, with specific attention called to the lack of clarity and consensus among the various definitions of postoperative psychiatric problems, and the lack of comparable methods used in quantifying psychological or behavioral factors.The importance of the assessment of preoperative psychiatric symptomatology was stressed in relation to both expectations of complications and to a basis for possible ameliorative preoperative procedures.

ISSN:0022-3018    

出版商:OVID    

年代:1971

数据来源: OVID

摘要:

Eleven hospitalized male schizophrenics and 10 male normal controls were tested in reaction time (RT) in eyes-closed and eyes-open conditions. Electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings of alpha activity were made simultaneously. While the alpha wave state was found to have no systematic relationship with the presence of attentional sets as measured by RT, a number of potentially significant findings were obtained. 1) Unlike the great majority of reported findings which indicate that the performance of schizophrenics is inferior, there was no overall group difference on the RT task. 2) Schizophrenics performed better in the eyes-closed condition, while normals performed better in the eyes-open condition. 3) Eye condition was found to be a greater determinant of alpha state for schizophrenics than for normals. 4) Schizophrenics were found to perform best with the preparatory interval (PI) of intermediate value, while normals performed best with the longest PI. 5) The effect of the previous preparatory interval (PPI), so often noted in RT studies, was eliminated when PI effects were controlled.

ISSN:0022-3018    

出版商:OVID    

年代:1971

数据来源: OVID

摘要:

The view that damage to part of the central nervous system leads to a delay in information processing by the injured portion was tested by requiring left hemiplegic patients and normal controls to judge the temporal order of two successively presented auditory stimuli when one ear and then the other was stimulated first. The inertia hypothesis was confirmed by the finding that while normal individuals were accurate in their judgments of order of stimulation, the hemiplegic patients tended to report that the ear related to the affected hemisphere was stimulated last, independent of the objective order of stimulation.

ISSN:0022-3018    

出版商:OVID    

年代:1971

数据来源: OVID

摘要:

An aversive contingency, electric shock, was imposed on the spastic behaviors of a 20-year-old cerebral palsied male. After eight sessions of aversive conditioning, the spasticity rate decreased from a base rate of 54 to 82 responses/30-minute session to 3 responses/30-minute session. The advisability of considering spastic behavior as learned as well as physiologically produced was discussed.

ISSN:0022-3018    

出版商:OVID    

年代:1971

数据来源: OVID

摘要:

Various disturbances of sexual activity can occur in men undergoing phenothiazine therapy, including diminished libido, erectile impotence, and ejaculatory inhibition. The latter side effect has been encountered during treatment with thioridazine (Mellaril) and much more rarely with chlorprothixene (Taractan). In this report, ejaculatory inhibition caused by chlorpromazine (Thorazine) is described for the first time. The patient developed varying degrees of erectile impotence, decrease in libido, and ejaculatory inhibition. At doses of 1200 mg/day he was totally impotent. At 400 mg/day, libido and erectile potency returned, orgasm occurred, but ejaculatory inhibition persisted. The symptom became a source of considerable intrapsychic distress, along with the other Thorazine-induced sexual problems, which also caused disruption in the patient's marriage. All sexual difficulties abated upon switching to another phenothiazine.The etiology of ejaculatory inhibition with phenothiazine therapy is unclear. It is fortunately rare, but since it is a source of anxiety to fragile borderline or psychotic patients, the therapist should exercise extreme vigilance for its appearance with any phenothiazine.

ISSN:0022-3018    

出版商:OVID    

年代:1971

数据来源: OVID

ISSN:0022-3018    

出版商:OVID    

年代:1971

数据来源: OVID

ISSN:0022-3018    

出版商:OVID    

年代:1971

数据来源: OVID