Understanding and Evaluating Stereotypes towards Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Symptom Subtypes

Public stigma has detrimental impacts on those with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). Yet, stereotypes associated with OCD are poorly understood. Given the heterogeneity of OCD symptom presentations, a conceptualization of stereotypes associated with symptom subtypes is warranted to inform stigma reduction efforts. In Study 1 (N = 60), participants read one of five vignettes on OCD subtypes (Symmetry/Just Right, Contamination, Sexual, Harm/Aggression, or Scrupulous) prior to responding to Internet-delivered open-ended questions. Study 1 methods followed the qualitative description framework, such that data were derived from participant responses and findings were presented using participant language. Prior to final coding and theme evaluation, all qualitative codes were validated by a subset (n = 23) of participants (i.e., Study 1 member check). An inductive content analysis was used to allow qualitative themes to emerge from Study 1 data. These methods followed the systematic, empirical approach of the postpositivist conceptual framework. In Study 2, (N = 698) participants completed an Internet-delivered quantitative survey in which they were randomized to read one of seven vignettes (OCD subtypes, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Schizophrenia) prior to completing previously established stigma measures and an OCD stigma measure developed from Study 1 themes. In Study 1, a total of fifteen themes and two subthemes emerged across conditions. Stereotypes associated with anxiety-relevant stigma (e.g., trivial symptoms, social awkwardness) most commonly emerged for Symmetry/Just Right and Contamination, while stereotypes associated with serious mental illness stigma (SMI; e.g., dangerous, disturbed) emerged for Harm/Aggression and Sexual Vignettes. The Scrupulous vignette was associated with both anxiety-relevant and SMI stereotypes. Additionally, unique themes (e.g., odd, nuisance, and withdrawn) that are not typically associated with anxiety or SMI-stigma also emerged. For Study 2, data suggested that the Sexual and Harm/Aggression vignettes appeared to be associated with the greatest stigma across measures compared to all other vignettes. However, the Scrupulous vignette was associated with the greatest stigma on the anxiety-relevant subscale of the OCD stigma measure. Across measures, the Sexual, Harm/Aggression, and Schizophrenia vignettes demonstrated similar stigma endorsements, which were often greater than the Symmetry/Just Right, Contamination, and GAD vignettes. Like Study 1, the Scrupulous vignette was associated with both groupings; that is, of autogenous (i.e., repugnant/unacceptable thoughts; Sexual and Harm/Aggression) and reactive obsessions (i.e., thought content perceived as rational; Contamination and Symmetry/Just Right). Further, and aligned with hypotheses, prior mental health treatment and more frequent contact with symptomatic individuals were associated with lower stigma across assessments. Across studies, results suggested that OCD stigma shares stereotypes with anxiety-relevant and SMI stigma. Though stereotypes emerged for specific OCD subtypes (e.g., withdrawn, nuisance), these do not appear to be unique to OCD (given their shared occurrence for Schizophrenia and GAD on the OCD stigma measure). In general, these studies support groupings of autogenous and reactive obsessions with regards to their SMI and anxiety-relevant stigma endorsement. However, the Scrupulous vignette appears to be strongly associated with both SMI and anxiety-relevant stigma (and thus, both autogenous and reactive groupings). Stigma reduction interventions for OCD should focus on macro-level stereotypes (i.e., stereotypes that exist across symptom groupings, such as perceptions of blame or a social outcast). Moreover, interventions should include psychoeducation about obsessional content and be targeted to address contextual factors (e.g., sociodemographic characteristics, cultural considerations, symptom presentations) relevant to the population of interest to allow for frequent contact, and thus, stigma reduction

Mnemonic Discrimination and Social Anxiety: The Role of State Anxiety

The Mnemonic Similarity Task (MST) measures mnemonic discrimination, or the ability to correctly identify new stimuli from highly similar, old stimuli. Neuroscientific and theoretical suppositions suggest that poor mnemonic discrimination may represent a potential risk or maintenance factor for anxious individuals. However, state affect appears to moderate the relation between mnemonic discrimination abilities and trait anxiety. The current study aimed to elucidate the nascent research on mnemonic discrimination and anxiety by evaluating the MST in a specific subtype of anxiety (i.e., social anxiety) and utilizing a clinically relevant stressor task (i.e., knowledge of a future speech). Participants (N = 131) were recruited based on their high or low-levels of social anxiety and were randomly assigned to a stressor condition (i.e., learning about the delivery of a future speech) or a control condition prior to the MST. Participants’ levels of self-reported state anxiety were measured throughout the study. Results did not indicate any significant effects related to social anxiety group (high vs. low social anxiety) or condition (stressor vs. control) on mnemonic discrimination abilities. However, this may have been due to the instability of the stressor manipulation or generally low levels of state anxiety across timepoints. Implications or results and future directions are discussed

Sudden bilateral loss of vision in a 19-year-old man

Introduction: Posterior Reversible Leukoencephalopathy Syndrome (PRES) is caused by ischaemia commonly affecting the posterior cerebral vasculature. It presents with sudden decreased vision, headaches, nausea, vomiting, seizures, and altered mental status. Case presentation: A 19-year-old male presented to the ophthalmic emergency complaining of sudden bilateral loss of vision, which was down to light perception He reported headaches, nausea, and drowsiness since the previous day. He was a known case of hypertension secondary to IgA nephropathy. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with STIR and FLAIR sequences showed foci of hyperintensity within the occipital lobes bilaterally. This confirmed the suspected diagnosis of PRES. Discussion: Aetiological factors of PRES include sudden increase in blood pressure, eclampsia, porphyria, renal disease, and Cushing syndrome. These lead to blood-brain barrier injury either by hyper- or hypoperfusion, endothelial dysfunction, changes in blood vessel morphology, hypocapnea, or immune system activation. Histopathological changes in PRES include activated astrocytes, scattered macrophages and lymphocytes, often in the absence of inflammation or neuronal damage. Conclusion: PRES is usually a reversible neuroophthalmological condition, however prompt recognition and appropriate management is important to prevent permanent brain injury or even death.peer-reviewe

Fundamental Limits of Low-Density Spreading NOMA with Fading

Spectral efficiency of low-density spreading non-orthogonal multiple access channels in the presence of fading is derived for linear detection with independent decoding as well as optimum decoding. The large system limit, where both the number of users and number of signal dimensions grow with fixed ratio, called load, is considered. In the case of optimum decoding, it is found that low-density spreading underperforms dense spreading for all loads. Conversely, linear detection is characterized by different behaviors in the underloaded vs. overloaded regimes. In particular, it is shown that spectral efficiency changes smoothly as load increases. However, in the overloaded regime, the spectral efficiency of low- density spreading is higher than that of dense spreading

The Impact of American Economic Aid on Post-World War II Germany

This paper examines the state of Germany immediately after World War II, describing how the American government intervened in West German reconstruction. It analyzes three specific German companies that overcame hardship in the 1940s and 50s and have become powerhouses today. Additionally, an overview of the current German economy shows how the country is positioned as a world leader. Research was conducted using literary print sources, scholarly internet databases, and a formal interview with Klaus Becker, Honorary Consul to Germany. He is a German-American businessman who has held roles in several non-political associations, including President of the Charlotte World Trade Association, President of the North Carolina German-American Chamber of Commerce, and Founder of the Zeitgeist Foundation. The interview offered a personal account of life in postwar Germany and an important take on German-American relations. Several influential factors contributed to Germany’s Wirtschaftswunder, although one stands out: American aid. American forces implemented necessary economic and political reforms and cultivated a working business environment in West Germany. Decades later, Germany is known for its superior quality of manufactured goods and dominates the market in several industries such as chemicals and automotive vehicles. American economic aid in West Germany in the 1940s and 50s was a key factor in Germany’s return to the economic superpower and world leader it is today

16x125 Gb/s Quasi-Nyquist DAC-Generated PM-16QAM Transmission Over 3590 km of PSCF

We report on a transmission experiment over high-performance pure silica core fiber (PSCF) of 16 Nyquist wavelength-division-multiplexed (Nyquist-WDM) channels at a symbol rate of 15.625 GBaud, using polarization-multiplexed (PM) 16 symbols quadrature amplitude modulation (16QAM), resulting in a per-channel raw bit rate of 125 Gb/s. The channel spacing is 16 GHz, corresponding to 1.024 times the symbol rate. The interchannel crosstalk penalty is drastically reduced through the confinement of the signal spectrum within a near-Nyquist bandwidth, achieved with digital filtering and digital-to-analog converters (DACs) operating at 1.5 samples/symbol. The optical line is a recirculating loop composed of two spans of high-performance PSCF with erbium-doped fiber amplifiers only. The transmission distance of 3590 km at a target line bit-error rate (BER) of 1.5 10^-2 is achieved at a raw spectral efficiency (SE) of 7.81 b/s/Hz. Assuming a commercial hard forward error correction with 20.5% redundancy, capable of handling the target BER, the net SE is 6.48 b/s/Hz, the highest so far reported for multithousand kilometer transmission of PM-16QAM at ≥ 100 Gb/s per channel. These results demonstrate the feasibility of very high SE DAC-enabled ultra-long-haul quasi-Nyquist-WDM transmission using PM-16QAM with current technologies and manageable digital signal processing complexit