Locus of control and attribution as predictors of learned helplessness in children

The present study investigated the predictive value of locus of control and internal-external attribution as they relate to learned helplessness in children. Forty four females and twenty seven males enrolled in the fifth and sixth grades of a private elementary school served as subjects. Subjects were group administered the Nowicki Strickland Locus of Control Scale for Children and the KASTAN Attribution Rating Scale. They were then exposed to a guessing task designed to induce helplessness, and subsequently tested on a persistence task. It was expected that subjects would differ in persistence time based upon their internal-external locus of control orientation, and their internal-external attributional style. It was also hypothesized that locus of control and attribution are orthogonal constructs. Finally, it was expected that locus of control and attribution would be equally valuable predictors of helplessness. Contrary to the experimental hypothesis, the analysis of persistence time revealed no significant differences based upon locus of control orientation or attributional dimension. The research hypothesis of the investigated variables being orthogonal was also not supported, as a correlation procedure revealed a significant relationship. Locus of control was not found to be a predictor of persistence time, however the hypothesis that internal-external attributional style predicts helplessness was confirmed by a regression analysis. Characteristics of the present subjects and task simplicity were offered as possible reasons for the failure to replicate previous research findings; however, the finding of internal-external attribution as a predictor of helplessness lends support to the reformulated model of learned helplessness. Treatment implications for helpless children and future research directions were discussed

Onset of alcohol or substance use disorders following treatment for adolescent depression.

OBJECTIVE: This study tested whether positive response to short-term treatment for adolescent major depressive disorder (MDD) would have the secondary benefit of preventing subsequent alcohol use disorders (AUD) or substance use disorders (SUD). METHOD: For 5 years, we followed 192 adolescents (56.2% female; 20.8% minority) who had participated in the Treatment for Adolescents with Depression Study (TADS; TADS Team, 2004) and who had no prior diagnoses of AUD or SUD. TADS initial treatments were cognitive behavior therapy (CBT), fluoxetine alone (FLX), the combination of CBT and FLX (COMB), or clinical management with pill placebo (PBO). We used both the original TADS treatment response rating and a more restrictive symptom count rating. During follow-up, diagnostic interviews were completed at 6- or 12-month intervals to assess onset of AUD or SUD as well as MDD recovery and recurrence. RESULTS: Achieving a positive response to MDD treatment was unrelated to subsequent AUD but predicted a lower rate of subsequent SUD, regardless of the measure of positive response (11.65% vs. 24.72%, or 10.0% vs. 24.5%, respectively). Type of initial MDD treatment was not related to either outcome. Prior to depression treatment, greater involvement with alcohol or drugs predicted later AUD or SUD, as did older age (for AUD) and more comorbid disorders (for SUD). Among those with recurrent MDD and AUD, AUD preceded MDD recurrence in 24 of 25 cases. CONCLUSION: Effective short-term adolescent depression treatment significantly reduces the rate of subsequent SUD but not AUD. Alcohol or drug use should be assessed prior to adolescent MDD treatment and monitored even after MDD recovery

Do Interventions Designed to Support Shared Decision-Making Reduce Health Inequalities? : A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Copyright: © 2014 Durand et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Background: Increasing patient engagement in healthcare has become a health policy priority. However, there has been concern that promoting supported shared decision-making could increase health inequalities. Objective: To evaluate the impact of SDM interventions on disadvantaged groups and health inequalities. Design: Systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials and observational studies.Peer reviewe

Child/Adolescent Anxiety Multimodal Study (CAMS): rationale, design, and methods

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Objective</p> <p>To present the design, methods, and rationale of the Child/Adolescent Anxiety Multimodal Study (CAMS), a recently completed federally-funded, multi-site, randomized placebo-controlled trial that examined the relative efficacy of cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT), sertraline (SRT), and their combination (COMB) against pill placebo (PBO) for the treatment of separation anxiety disorder (SAD), generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and social phobia (SoP) in children and adolescents.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Following a brief review of the acute outcomes of the CAMS trial, as well as the psychosocial and pharmacologic treatment literature for pediatric anxiety disorders, the design and methods of the CAMS trial are described.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>CAMS was a six-year, six-site, randomized controlled trial. Four hundred eighty-eight (N = 488) children and adolescents (ages 7-17 years) with DSM-IV-TR diagnoses of SAD, GAD, or SoP were randomly assigned to one of four treatment conditions: CBT, SRT, COMB, or PBO. Assessments of anxiety symptoms, safety, and functional outcomes, as well as putative mediators and moderators of treatment response were completed in a multi-measure, multi-informant fashion. Manual-based therapies, trained clinicians and independent evaluators were used to ensure treatment and assessment fidelity. A multi-layered administrative structure with representation from all sites facilitated cross-site coordination of the entire trial, study protocols and quality assurance.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>CAMS offers a model for clinical trials methods applicable to psychosocial and psychopharmacological comparative treatment trials by using state-of-the-art methods and rigorous cross-site quality controls. CAMS also provided a large-scale examination of the relative and combined efficacy and safety of the best evidenced-based psychosocial (CBT) and pharmacologic (SSRI) treatments to date for the most commonly occurring pediatric anxiety disorders. Primary and secondary results of CAMS will hold important implications for informing practice-relevant decisions regarding the initial treatment of youth with anxiety disorders.</p> <p>Trial registration</p> <p>ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00052078.</p

Research Review: Recommendations for reporting on treatment trials for child and adolescent anxiety disorders - an international consensus statement

Background: Anxiety disorders in children and young people are common and bring significant personal and societal costs. Over the last two decades, there has been a substantial increase in research evaluating psychological and pharmacological treatments for anxiety disorders in children and young people and exciting and novel research has continued as the field strives to improve efficacy and effectiveness, and accessibility of interventions. This increase in research brings potential to draw together data across studies to compare treatment approaches and advance understanding of what works, how, and for whom. There are challenges to these efforts due largely to variation in studies' outcome measures and variation in the way study characteristics are reported, making it difficult to compare and/or combine studies, and this is likely to lead to faulty conclusions. Studies particularly vary in their reliance on child, parent, and/or assessor-based ratings across a range of outcomes, including remission of anxiety diagnosis, symptom reduction, and other domains of functioning (e.g., family relationships, peer relationships). Methods: To address these challenges, we convened a series of international activities that brought together the views of key stakeholders (i.e., researchers, mental health professionals, young people, parents/caregivers) to develop recommendations for outcome measurement to be used in treatment trials for anxiety disorders in children and young people. Results and conclusions: This article reports the results of these activities and offers recommendations for selection and reporting of outcome measures to (a) guide future research and (b) improve communication of what has been measured and reported. We offer these recommendations to promote international consistency in trial reporting and to enable the field to take full advantage of the great opportunities that come from data sharing going forward

The Youth Anxiety Measure for DSM-5 (YAM-5):Development and First Psychometric Evidence of a New Scale for Assessing Anxiety Disorders Symptoms of Children and Adolescents

The Youth Anxiety Measure for DSM-5 (YAM-5) is a new self- and parent-report questionnaire to assess anxiety disorder symptoms in children and adolescents in terms of the contemporary classification system. International panels of childhood anxiety researchers and clinicians were used to construct a scale consisting of two parts: part one consists of 28 items and measures the major anxiety disorders including separation anxiety disorder, selective mutism, social anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder, whereas part two contains 22 items that focus on specific phobias and (given its overlap with situational phobias) agoraphobia. In general, the face validity of the new scale was good; most of its items were successfully linked to the intended anxiety disorders. Notable exceptions were the selective mutism items, which were frequently considered as symptoms of social anxiety disorder, and some specific phobia items especially of the natural environment, situational and other type, that were regularly assigned to an incorrect category. A preliminary investigation of the YAM-5 in non-clinical (N = 132) and clinically referred (N = 64) children and adolescents indicated that the measure was easy to complete by youngsters. In addition, support was found for the psychometric qualities of the measure: that is, the internal consistency was good for both parts, as well as for most of the subscales, the parent-child agreement appeared satisfactory, and there was also evidence for the validity of the scale. The YAM-5 holds promise as a tool for assessing anxiety disorder symptoms in children and adolescents

Impact of COVID-19 on cardiovascular testing in the United States versus the rest of the world

Objectives: This study sought to quantify and compare the decline in volumes of cardiovascular procedures between the United States and non-US institutions during the early phase of the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the care of many non-COVID-19 illnesses. Reductions in diagnostic cardiovascular testing around the world have led to concerns over the implications of reduced testing for cardiovascular disease (CVD) morbidity and mortality. Methods: Data were submitted to the INCAPS-COVID (International Atomic Energy Agency Non-Invasive Cardiology Protocols Study of COVID-19), a multinational registry comprising 909 institutions in 108 countries (including 155 facilities in 40 U.S. states), assessing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on volumes of diagnostic cardiovascular procedures. Data were obtained for April 2020 and compared with volumes of baseline procedures from March 2019. We compared laboratory characteristics, practices, and procedure volumes between U.S. and non-U.S. facilities and between U.S. geographic regions and identified factors associated with volume reduction in the United States. Results: Reductions in the volumes of procedures in the United States were similar to those in non-U.S. facilities (68% vs. 63%, respectively; p = 0.237), although U.S. facilities reported greater reductions in invasive coronary angiography (69% vs. 53%, respectively; p < 0.001). Significantly more U.S. facilities reported increased use of telehealth and patient screening measures than non-U.S. facilities, such as temperature checks, symptom screenings, and COVID-19 testing. Reductions in volumes of procedures differed between U.S. regions, with larger declines observed in the Northeast (76%) and Midwest (74%) than in the South (62%) and West (44%). Prevalence of COVID-19, staff redeployments, outpatient centers, and urban centers were associated with greater reductions in volume in U.S. facilities in a multivariable analysis. Conclusions: We observed marked reductions in U.S. cardiovascular testing in the early phase of the pandemic and significant variability between U.S. regions. The association between reductions of volumes and COVID-19 prevalence in the United States highlighted the need for proactive efforts to maintain access to cardiovascular testing in areas most affected by outbreaks of COVID-19 infection

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Social Phobia in Adolescents : Stand Up, Speak Out

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Beyond behavioral inhibition : etiological factors in childhood anxiety

Theoretical models of childhood anxiety have emphasized temperamental vulnerability, principally behavioral inhibition, and its interaction with various environmental factors promoting anxiety (for example, overprotective parenting, insecure attachment, life stress). Although clearly establishing the importance of both nature and nurture in anxious psychopathology, these models have not adequately explained the diversity of anxiety disorders presenting in childhood, the fact that some children's diagnoses change over time, and the progression (in some children) from highly comorbid presentations in middle childhood to one predominant disorder in adolescence. This article presents additional factors that may be helpful to consider when trying to understand these findings and describes applications to promote healthy adjustment in anxious youngsters. Such factors include specific risks for certain disorders, developmental changes and cultural factors affecting the intensity and expression of anxiety, and the emergence of various more or less adaptive coping styles.10 page(s