Assessing Sexual Arousal with Adolescent Males Who Have Offended Sexually: Self-Report and Unobtrusively Measured Viewing Time

Sexual arousal was assessed using three approaches: the Affinity (Version. 1.0) computerized assessment of unobtrusively measured viewing time (VT), Affinity self-report ratings of sexual attractiveness, and a self-report sexual arousal graphing procedure. Data were collected from 78 males, aged 12–18 (M=15.09; SD=1.62), who acknowledged their sexual assaults. The pattern of responses to all three assessment techniques was remarkably similar, with maximal sexual interest demonstrated and reported for adolescent and adult females. Both self-report procedures could significantly distinguish those adolescents who assaulted a child from those who assaulted peers or adults. The self-report procedures could also significantly discriminate those adolescents with male child victims. The Affinity VT approach significantly differentiated those adolescents who assaulted male children from those who assaulted other individuals. No assessment technique could accurately identify those adolescents with exclusively female child victims. Overall, the results suggest that structured, self-report data regarding sexual interests can be useful in the assessment of adolescents who have offended sexually

Dealing With Depression: Antidepressant Skills for Teens

  Dealing with Depression is a workbook for teens that explains depression and teaches three main antidepressant skills you can use to help overcome or prevent it. The skills are presented in a step-by-step way so that you may learn them easily and apply them to your life. Sometimes these antidepressant skills can be used on their own, when the mood problem isn\u27t too severe, and sometimes they have to be used along with treatments prescribed by professionals. Either way, practicing these antidepressant skills will help you deal more effectively with low mood and depression

Are juveniles who have committed sexual offenses the same everywhere? psychometric properties of the juvenile sex offender assessment protocol–II in a portuguese youth sample

Over the last decade, we have witnessed consistent advances in risk assessment procedures, namely the validation of those used with juveniles who have committed sexual offenses. The adaptation of these instruments into other languages requires research examining the conceptual and metric equivalence of the instruments, not just translation equivalence. Informed by data from 141 boys, aged 13 to 18, the psychometric properties of the Portuguese version of the Juvenile Sex Offender Assessment Protocol–II (J-SOAP-II), regarding reliability and construct validation, are presented and discussed. Factor structure, internal consistency, and interrater reliability were examined, and a reliable factorial structure that was consistent with the original validation of the J-SOAP was found. Scales 2 and 3 had good internal consistency, and Scale 1 had acceptable internal consistency. Results regarding concurrent validity revealed mostly statistically significant correlations. The implications of this research for juvenile sex offender risk assessments are discussed.The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article

Sexual Abuse-Current Medico-legal, Forensic and Psychiatric Aspects

Abstract Violence against women and minors is a worldwide problem that has not yet been sufficiently acknowledged. There are many obstacles especially when sexual abuses have to be evaluated. These problems are present both when victims of sexual abuse are evaluated and when sex offenders are dealt with, especially when the offenders are juvenile sex offenders (JSO). These issues give cause for great concern about prognosis, and the resulting psychosocial implications, and call for a special effort from the scientific community in identifying appropriate prevention and treatment methods. This chapter is divided into two parts. The first part deals with the forensic and psychiatric features, such as diagnostic and therapeutic/rehabilitative strategies for JSO, while the second part analyzes the legal–medicine aspects related to rape/sexual assault in a European context

Predictive Validity and Inter-Rater Reliability of the FACE CARAS Toolkit in a CAMHS Setting

Background: The FACE-CARAS (Functional Analysis in Care Environments-Child and Adolescent Risk-Assessment Suite) toolkit has been developed to support practitioners in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) in performing a structured risk assessment. It covers a number of risk domains including violence, suicide, self-harm, experienced abuse, and exploitation. Interrater and internal reliability has already been established but not predictive validity. Aims/Hypothesis: Our aim was to establish the predictive validity of the FACE-CARAS in a CAMHS population. Methods: Records from 123 young people with FACE-CARAS ratings completed by clinicians were examined in a retrospective file review to extract data on a relevant list of adverse outcomes at three and at 6 months following the assessment. Although this was not a prospective longitudinal study, researchers were blind to the clinicians' ratings, allowing valid testing of predictive power. Cases were drawn from across generic and specialist CAMHS teams in approximately equal proportions. Data were analysed using receiver operator characteristic statistics. Results: Areas under the curve values in five of the seven risk areas approached or were greater than 0.8 indicated that the FACE-CARAS profile score was a good potential predictor of risks of self-harm, suicidal behaviours, serious self-neglect, abuse or exploitation by others, and violence to others at both 3 and 6 months. It was weakly "predictive" of accidental self-harm and no better than chance at signalling physical ill health. Conclusions: Findings support the use of the "profile summary" section of the tool as likely to generate clinically useful risk predictions. We were concerned that clinical use of the scale did not conform to research standards and often left subscales incompletely rated; however, the fact that the tool nonetheless proved a good predictor of most key adversities under scrutiny may add weight to its value in clinical practice. Further work with the FACE-CARAS subscales is recommended

Neptuna

Salvaging the Neptuna by Fujita Company.Worling, Barr

Nonverbal learning disabilities, an understanding of inferential competencies

grantor: University of TorontoAlthough subtle linguistic deficits have been postulated for children identified with Nonverbal Learning Disabilities (NLD) (e.g., Rourke & Tsatanis, 1996), there is little empirical evidence to support this contention. Two experimental language inferencing measures that have been demonstrated to be problematic for individuals with right hemisphere brain damage (RHBD) and one norm-referenced inferencing task (Test of Language Competency: Making Inferences subtest), were examined with three groups of children between the ages of 9-13: (1) children with NLD $(n=14),$ (2) children with verbal-impairments (VI) $(n=14),$ and (3) children without learning disabilities who served as controls (C) $(n=19).$ The NLD and VI groups did not differ from one another on any of the three measures, indicating a generalized language inferencing deficit in the NLD group. Relative to the C group, however, the NLD group experienced a unique pattern of difficulties with spatial and emotional inferencing capabilities. The implications of right hemisphere involvement in the NLD profile are examined in relation to the effects of working memory on inferential abilities.Ph.D