Trajectories of Early Adolescent Loneliness: Implications for Physical Health and Sleep

The current study examines the relationship between prolonged loneliness, physical health, and sleep among young adolescents (10–13 years; N = 1214; 53% girls). Loneliness was measured at 10, 12 and 13 years of age along with parent-reported health and sleep outcomes. Using growth mixture modelling, 6 distinct trajectories were identified: ‘low increasing to high loneliness’ (n = 23, 2%), ‘high reducing loneliness’ (n = 28, 3%), ‘medium stable loneliness’ (n = 60, 5%), ‘medium reducing loneliness’ (n = 185, 15%), ‘low increasing to medium loneliness’ (n = 165, 14%), and ‘low stable loneliness’ (n = 743, 61%). Further analyses found non-significant differences between the loneliness trajectories and parent-report health and sleep outcomes including visits to health professionals, perceived general health, and sleep quality. The current study offers an important contribution to the literature on loneliness and health. Results show that the relationship may not be evident in early adolescence when parent reports of children’s health are used. The current study highlights the importance of informant choice when reporting health. The implications of the findings for future empirical work are discussed

Cytokine Production by Leukocytes of Military Personnel with Depressive Symptoms after Deployment to a Combat-Zone: A Prospective, Longitudinal Study

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is frequently diagnosed in military personnel returning from deployment. Literature suggests that MDD is associated with a pro-inflammatory state. To the best of our knowledge, no prospective, longitudinal studies on the association between development of depressive symptomatology and cytokine production by peripheral blood leukocytes have been published. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the presence of depressive symptomatology six months after military deployment is associated with the capacity to produce cytokines, as assessed before and after deployment. 1023 military personnel were included before deployment. Depressive symptoms and LPS- and T-cell mitogen-induced production of 16 cytokines and chemokines in whole blood cultures were measured before (T0), 1 (T1), and 6 (T2) months after return from deployment. Exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM) was used for data reduction into cytokine patterns. Multiple group latent growth modeling was used to investigate differences in the longitudinal course of cytokine production between individuals with (n = 68) and without (n = 665) depressive symptoms at T2. Individuals with depressive symptoms after deployment showed higher T-cell cytokine production before deployment. Moreover, pre-deployment T-cell cytokine production significantly predicted the presence of depressive symptomatology 6 months after return. There was an increase in T-cell cytokine production over time, but this increase was significantly smaller in individuals developing depressive symptoms. T-cell chemokine and LPS-induced innate cytokine production decreased over time and were not associated with depressive symptoms. These results indicate that increased T-cell mitogen-induced cytokine production before deployment may be a vulnerability factor for development of depressive symptomatology in response to deployment to a combat-zone. In addition, deployment to a combat-zone affects the capacity of T-cells and monocytes to produce cytokines and chemokines until at least 6 months after return

Executive Function in Very Preterm Children at Early School Age

We examined whether very preterm (≤30 weeks gestation) children at early school age have impairments in executive function (EF) independent of IQ and processing speed, and whether demographic and neonatal risk factors were associated with EF impairments. A consecutive sample of 50 children (27 boys and 23 girls) born very preterm (mean age = 5.9 years, SD = 0.4, mean gestational age = 28.0 weeks, SD = 1.4) was compared to a sample of 50 age-matched full-term controls (23 girls and 27 boys, mean age = 6.0 years, SD = 0.6) with respect to performance on a comprehensive EF battery, assessing the domains of inhibition, working memory, switching, verbal fluency, and concept generation. The very preterm group demonstrated poor performance compared to the controls on all EF domains, even after partialing out the effects of IQ. Processing speed was marginally related to EF. Analyses with demographic and neonatal risk factors showed maternal education and gestational age to be related to EF. This study adds to the emerging body of literature showing that very preterm birth is associated with EF impairments

How Distinctive are ADHD and RD? Results of a Double Dissociation Study

The nature of the comorbidity between Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Reading Disability (RD) was examined using a double dissociation design. Children were between 8 and 12 years of age and entered into four groups: ADHD only (n = 24), ADHD+RD (n = 29), RD only (n = 41) and normal controls (n = 26). In total, 120 children participated in the study; 38 girls and 82 boys. Both ADHD and RD were associated with impairments in inhibition and lexical decision, although inhibition and lexical decision were more severely impaired in RD than in ADHD. Visuospatial working memory deficits were specific to children with only ADHD. It is concluded that there was overlap on lexical decision and to a lesser extent on inhibition between ADHD and RD. In ADHD, impairments were dependent on IQ, which suggest that the overlap in lexical decision and inhibition is different in origin for ADHD and RD. The ADHD only group was specifically characterized by deficits in visuospatial working memory. Hence, no double dissociation between ADHD and RD was found on executive functioning and lexical decision

A proposed systems approach to the evaluation of integrated palliative care

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>There is increasing global interest in regional palliative care networks (PCN) to integrate care, creating systems that are more cost-effective and responsive in multi-agency settings. Networks are particularly relevant where different professional skill sets are required to serve the broad spectrum of end-of-life needs. We propose a comprehensive framework for evaluating PCNs, focusing on the nature and extent of inter-professional collaboration, community readiness, and client-centred care.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>In the absence of an overarching structure for examining PCNs, a framework was developed based on previous models of health system evaluation, explicit theory, and the research literature relevant to PCN functioning. This research evidence was used to substantiate the choice of model factors.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The proposed framework takes a systems approach with system structure, process of care, and patient outcomes levels of consideration. Each factor represented makes an independent contribution to the description and assessment of the network.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Realizing palliative patients' needs for complex packages of treatment and social support, in a seamless, cost-effective manner, are major drivers of the impetus for network-integrated care. The framework proposed is a first step to guide evaluation to inform the development of appropriate strategies to further promote collaboration within the PCN and, ultimately, optimal palliative care that meets patients' needs and expectations.</p

In the eye of the beholder: Eye-tracking assessment of social information processing in aggressive behavior

# The Author(s) 2009. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Abstract Acording to social information processing theories, aggressive children are hypersensitive to cues of hostility and threat in other people’s behavior. However, even though there is ample evidence that aggressive children over-interpret others ’ behaviors as hostile, it is unclear whether this hostile attribution tendency does actually result from overattending to hostile and threatening cues. Since encoding is posited to consist of rapid automatic processes, it is hard to assess with the selfreport measures that have been used so far. Therefore, we used a novel approach to investigate visual encoding of social information. The eye movements of thirty 10–13 year old children with lower levels and thirty children with higher levels of aggressive behavior were monitored in real time with an eyetracker, as the children viewed ten different cartoon series of ambiguous provocation situations. In addition, participants answered questions concerning encoding and interpretation. Aggressive children did not attend more to hostile cues, nor attend less to non-hostile cues than non-aggressive children. Contrary, aggressive children looked longer at non-hostile cues, but nonetheless attributed more hostile intent than their non-aggressive peers. These findings contradict the traditional bottom-up processing hypotheses that aggressive behavior would be related with failure to attend to non-hostile cues. The findings seem best explained by topdown information processing, where aggressive children’s pre-existing hostile intent schemata (1) direct attention towards schema inconsistent nonhostile cues, (2) prevent further processing and recall of such schema-inconsistent information, and (3) lead to hostil