The Journal of nervous and mental disease
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J. Nerv. Ment. Dis. · Apr 2001
Comparative StudyGilles de la Tourette's syndrome with and without obsessive-compulsive disorder compared with obsessive-compulsive disorder without tics: which symptoms discriminate?
Stereotyped repetitive behaviors occur in Gilles de la Tourette's Syndrome (GTS) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The present study was undertaken to compare the distribution of obsessive-compulsive and Tourette-related impulsive behaviors in GTS with (+) OCD, GTS without (-) OCD, tic-free OCD, and control subjects. Fourteen GTS + OCD, 18 GTS-OCD, 21 OCD-tic, and 29 control subjects were evaluated using a semistructured interview designed to assess GTS and OCD-related repetitive behaviors. ⋯ These differences suggest that GTS with OCD constitutes a form of GTS, not of OCD, although the possibility that GTS + OCD patients constitute a subgroup distinct from GTS and from OCD can not be excluded by this phenomenological study. Specific non-anxiety-related impulsions seem to discriminate between GTS and OCD-tic individuals. These impulsions possibly reflect differences in underlying mechanisms between GTS and OCD-tics.
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J. Nerv. Ment. Dis. · Mar 2001
Comparative StudyAnger, impulsivity, social support, and suicide risk in patients with posttraumatic stress disorder.
An emerging literature suggests that posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) patients are at an increased risk for suicide. The objective of this study was: a) to reexamine the relationship between PTSD and suicide by comparing suicide risks of persons with PTSD, to persons with anxiety disorder and to matched controls; and b) to examine the relationship between anger, impulsivity, social support and suicidality in PTSD and other anxiety disorders. Forty-six patients suffering from PTSD were compared with 42 non-PTSD anxiety disorder patients and with 50 healthy controls on measures of anger, impulsivity, social support, and suicide risk. ⋯ For the PTSD and anxiety disorder groups, the greater the social support, the lower the risk of suicide. For the controls, social support and impulsivity were not related to suicide risk, whereas anger was. These findings suggest that persons with PTSD are at higher risk for suicide and that in assessing suicide risk among persons with PTSD, careful attention should be paid to levels of impulsivity, which may increase suicide risk, and to social support, which may reduce the risk.
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J. Nerv. Ment. Dis. · Feb 2001
Posttraumatic stress disorder and psychosocial functioning after severe traumatic brain injury.
The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) on rehabilitation after severe traumatic brain injury (TBI). Ninety-six patients with severe TBI patients were assessed 6 months after hospital discharge with the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Interview, the Functional Assessment Measure (FAM), the Community Integration Questionnaire (CIQ), the Overt Aggression Scale (OAS), the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ), the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), and the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWL). ⋯ Patients with PTSD reported higher scores on the GHQ and BDI, and lower scores on the FAM, CIQ, OAS, and SWLS than those without PTSD. Effective rehabilitation after severe TBI may be enhanced by management of PTSD.
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College students screened for hallucination-proneness using the Launay-Slade Hallucination Scale (LSHS) were compared on measures of self-report vividness of imagery and on behavioral measures of imagery and perception (visual and auditory). Specifically, we tested the hypothesis whether hallucination-prone individuals would show smaller differences between imagery and perception performance, which may be indicative of increased sensory characteristics of mental images. We replicated earlier findings of higher self-report imagery ratings in the high hallucination-prone group. ⋯ On one visual task, hallucination-proneness was associated with larger imagery-perception differences. Our results reveal a dissociation between the level of subjective experience and the information processing level. Although vividness of mental images may be subjectively associated with mild hallucinatory experiences, we suggest that cognitive processes associated with reality discrimination rather than increased perceptual characteristics of mental images may play a role at the information processing level.
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J. Nerv. Ment. Dis. · Aug 2000
Personality predictors of injury-related posttraumatic stress disorder.
This longitudinal, cohort study examined the effect of personality traits on the emergence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in a recently traumatized, civilian, mixed-gender sample with significant injuries. Burn survivors (N = 70) were administered the NEO-Personality Inventory (NEO-PI) and the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM III-R (SCID) at hospital discharge and readministered the SCID 4 and 12 months later. ⋯ Furthermore, multivariate analysis of variance revealed that PTSD symptom severity groups (i.e., single symptom, multiple symptoms, subthreshold PTSD, PTSD) were differentially related to neuroticism and extraversion. Planned comparisons indicated that neuroticism was higher and extraversion was lower in those who developed PTSD compared with those who did not develop PTSD.