TEMPERAMENT CHARACTERISTICS OF CHILDREN WITH CONDUCT AND CONVERSION DISORDERS

In a comparative study of temperament profiles of groups of 30 children each diagnosed as conduct disorders, conversion disorder, emotional disorders (according to DSM-III) and normal control, it was found that the children diagnosed as conduct disorders showed high activity and intensity of emotional response as well as negative mood, those diagnosed as conversion disorder exhibited low distractibility. The significance of various temperament variables in differing clinical outcomes is discussed

A PARENTAL HANDLING QUESTIONNAIRE

Parental Care and Control, which are two major parental handling, variables are significantly related to psychological morbidity in children where high care-low control is associated with healthy development and low care-high control is related to psychiatric disorder. Parents by & large do not differ in their patterns of handling with regard to age and sex of the child, rural-urban living and SES except that younger children are given more care and those from high SES exercise less control among normal children. However, low care for younger children, high control for older children; low care and high control for males, rural background and higher SES families was associated with psychiatric morbidity in children

A FOLLOW-UP STUDY OF MENTAL RETARDATION FOCUSSING ON PARENTAL ATTITUDES

The investigation studies the perception and attitudes of patents towards their mentally retarded child. Thirty such children were followed up after one year of initial contact and the parents were interviewed. Parents of higher education had a more scientific perception. Most parents had unrealistic hopes and expectations, feelings of shame, guilt and self blame were predominant. Rejection, hostility neglect of child and other negative attitudes were significantly more often seen in younger parents, urbanites and those with higher education. The negative attitudes were more towards a child with additional psychiatric problems. This information could be of great advmuge in managing families with a retarded child

SENSATION SEEKING SCALE: INDIAN ADAPTATION

Sensation seeking refers to a biologically based personality dimension defined as the need for varied, novel and complex sensations and experiences, and the willingness to take physical and social risks for the sake of such experiences. Although researched worldwide for nearly three decades now, there is to date no published Indian study utilizing the concept of sensation seeking. This paper describes adaptation of the Sensation Seeking Scale for the Indian population. After due modification of the scale, its reliability, internal consistency and discriminant validity were established Norms were developed for a defined segment of general population. This study may be seen as the beginning of research in India on the subject of sensation seeking

THE SENSATION - SEEKER WHO IS ALSO ALIENATED: TOWARDS A NEW HYPOTHESIS FOR GENESIS OF OPIATE ADDICTION

The aim of the study was to assess two psychological parameters, sensation-seeking (SS) and alienation (AL), in a sample of thirty DSM-III diagnosed opiate dependence cases, and to compare them on these two parameters with two non-drug-abusing control groups, one from the patients own peer groups and the other from the general population. The opiate dependent subjects were found to score higher both on SS and AL than those in the control groups. Further, there was a gradient of the degree of correlation between these two psychological variables amongst the three groups studied. The opiate dependent group showed the highest positive correlation. The general population control group showed the lowest degree of correlation, and the self-matched control group was intermediate

LIFE EVENTS IN PSYCHIATRICALLY SICK CHILDREN

There are some studies to suggest that the effects of life stress on children and adolescents may be similar to those found in adults. Boyce et al. (1977) demonstrated a relationship between life stress and respiratory tract illness, Bedell et al. (1977) using chronically ill children as subjects, found life stress to be correlated with day to day changes in health status. Padilla et al. (1976) have found life stress to be related to accident frequency in children; Hudgens (1974) demonstrated a relationship between life stress and depression among adolescents. Similarly high number of stressful life events were found associated with enuresis (Douglas 1973) and psychiatric disorders in children (Heisel et al., 1973). More recent studies have been by Goodyer et al. (1985); and Kashani et al. (1981) reporting an association between emotional diaorders in children and undesirable life events

TEMPERAMENT AS DETERMINANT OF PHENOMENOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD PSYCHIATRIC DISORDERS*

The study was carried out with the main aim of finding the relationship between the temperament 01 children and the phenomenology of the psychiatric disorders exhibited by them. Temperament was taken as the independent variable, phenomenology of the psychiatric disorders in children as the dependent variable and parental handling methods as the intervening variable. Instruments for the measurement of temperament, childhood psychopathology and parental handling were developed and standardized for use in the context of the Indian culture and in Hindi language as the preliminary work for the main study. A group of 100 children suffering from various types of emotional disorders and a control group of 100 normal children were studied with regard to the three variables mentioned earlier. Data on the two groups were separately analysed through univariate and multivariate (factor analysis and hierarchical multiple regression) statistics. The results revealed that the phenomenological categories of Low Intelligence with behaviour Problems, conduct Disorders and Somatization were significantly related to the temperament variables of Emotionality, Energy and Attentitivity respectively. The syndromes of Anxiety, Depression, Psychotic symptoms, Special symptoms and Physical illness with Emotional problems did not have relationship with the temperament or parental handling. Thus, temperament has been found to be specific risk factor leading to specific psychopathologies

CHILDHOOD PSYCHOPATHOLOGY MEAUSREMENT SCHEDULE: DEVELOPMENT AND STANDARDIZATION*

Development and standardization of an instrument Childhood Psychopathology Measurement Schedule (CPMS) to assess psychopathology in children is reported. CPMS is standardized on Indian population and is applicable to children of both sexes in the age range of 4-14 years. It measures overall psychopathology in the form of a total scores and also the type of psychopathology in the form of eight factorially derived syndromes which have satisfactory reliability and validity. CPMS is proposed to be used as a screening instrument in population surveys to identify disturbed children as well as a research tool involving measurement of childhood psychopathology and its classification

SCREENING OF ORGANIC BRIAN DYSFUNCTION*

One hundred eighty adult patients (age 20 to 50 years) referred to Psychology section for differential diagnosis of brain pathology from 1976 to 1980 and where at least two of the three cognitive functions- intelligence, memory, and percepto motor ability, were tested and clinical diagnosis arrived at follow-ups, etc. were included. Nineteen psychological test variables were rescored to minimize the effect of age and education. Frequency distributions, separately for brain damage and non-brain damage patients for each variable were obtained and ogives prepared to find out points of maximum differentiations. Scores were assigned ratings of 0, 2 & 3 for average to low scores, and combined rating could identify about 2/3rd of organics correctly amongst the difficult to diagnose cases

HOSPITAL STAY OF IN-PATIENTS IN A GENERAL HOSPITAL PSYCHIATRY UNIT

This report examines the hospital stay of psychiatric in-patients in a general hospital psychiatric setting