Encephale
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A positive link between alexithymia and delinquency, as well as a negative link between alexithymia and emotional intelligence, has already been demonstrated. Previous studies have highlighted that emotional intelligence is associated with antisocial behaviour. Even though the frequency of alexithymia has been explored in non-clinical samples of adolescents, the relationship between alexithymia and delinquency has not been studied in community samples of adolescents. Furthermore, the link between alexithymia, emotional intelligence and interpersonal delinquency has never been explored in such a sample. The aim of the current study was to explore the relationship between alexithymia, emotional intelligence and interpersonal delinquency in a sample of high-school students. ⋯ Our findings suggest the importance of taking into account the emotional dimensions in the care of teenagers presenting antisocial behaviours. It appears of prime importance to lead young people presenting antisocial behaviours to identify their feelings.
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The study of children's personality and its development has generated several theoretical models in psychology. In a developmental approach, Buss and Plomin elaborated a genetic model of temperament that involves four dimensions: emotionality (refers to the negative quality of the emotion and the intensity of the emotional reactions), activity (intensity and frequency of a person's energy output in motor movements and speech), sociability (search for social relationships and preference for activities with others) and shyness (behavioural inhibition and feelings of distress when in interaction with strangers). The psychobiological approach postulates a biological model of personality. Thus, in Gray's first model, there are two brain systems that explain behaviours: the Bbehavioural Activation System (BAS) related to impulsivity and the Behavioural Inhibition System (BIS) linked to anxiety. Finally, dispositional theories seek to identify functional units of the normal personality from the factorial approach. Accordingly, Barbaranelli et al. build a questionnaire, the big five questionnaire for children (BFQ-C), which is intended to estimate the emergence of five fundamental dimensions (energy/extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional instability and intellect/openness) in children from 8 to 18 years. The clinical study we will present concerns the personality of children suffering from attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). STUDY 1: ⋯ It is interesting to note that children have a less stable representation of their own temperament as compared to the evaluation of their parents. This study replicates the findings of previous research on adults with ADHD regarding neuroticism (emotional instability), but contrary to findings in adults with ADHD, children obtained elevated scores on the conscientiousness and agreeableness subscales. In accordance with our hypotheses, children with ADHD could be distinguished from control participants on the BAS, particularly for the drive and reward responsiveness subscales. Furthermore, they also obtained higher scores on the extraversion subscale of the BFQ-C and the on the EAS activity subscale.
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Why are some individuals more likely than others to develop a posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the face of similar levels of trauma exposure? Monitoring the traumatic process combining the antecedents, the determinants of the psychic trauma and the acute symptoms can clarify the causes of the final onset of a chronic repetition syndrome. Epidemiologic research has clarified risk factors that increase the likelihood of PTSD after exposure to a potentially traumatic event. PTSD is an interaction between a subject, a traumatogenic factor and a social context. With each epidemiological, psychopathological and more particularly neurogenetic study, we will expand on the impact of these interactions on the therapeutic treatment of psycho-traumatised persons. ⋯ Chronic PTSD can manifest itself in different clinical forms. The repetition syndrome can appear a long time after the traumatic event, following a paucisymptomatic latency period, which can last several years or even decades. The absence of complaints from the patient is common, the latter suffering in silence. Often other comorbid disorders and other complaints arise sooner than the clinical picture. Thus a depressive episode characterised as drug-seeking behaviour is frequently encountered. The therapeutic accompaniment traditionally combines a pharmacological and a psychotherapeutic treatment even if recommendations are rare. A posttraumatic stress disorder is never just a coincidence. The different stages of the evolution and the establishment of a PTSD are the expression of an interaction between the outside and the inner self. Despite a known progression of the posttraumatic stress disorder, this deleterious evolution is far from being a foregone conclusion. On the contrary, several levels of prevention are possible at each stage of its structuration to propose treatments to subjects who are vulnerable and/or present symptoms. No neurobiological study has yet found a biological marker, which would apparently and inevitably destine a subject to structure, a posttraumatic stress disorder in reaction to a stress. Conversely, the psychopathological study finds afterwards that a particular subject has necessarily built a traumatic repetition syndrome according to the concordance of significant data relative to his/her history. The event strikes a repression or an anterior biographical deadlock and of which the thematic questions the fundamentals of human culture in its emancipation with nature, like the question of death and its consequences: bereavement, parentality, transgenerational transmission and organicity often linked to the illness. A therapeutic proposal constitutes an environmental factor par excellence which can be either protective or deleterious. If the traumatic repetition syndrome has been known since Antiquity, the birth of PTSD has followed the chronology of the DSM according to the sociopolitical contexts encountered. A PTSD does not occur by chance: the conditions of possibility of the trauma are established by genetic and psychological determinants interactively integrated at the heart of a social context. After the increase in a psychotraumatic interest in international publications since the 1980s, a fight against over-victimisation seems to be setting in. The advances in genetic and neuroimaging techniques are in the process of superseding psychometric studies in terms of reliability and validity; maybe we should see in this social evolution the changes of tomorrow concerning the clinical of PTSD and its treatment. The healing of the psycho-traumatised subject cannot just be established on the passive status of victim, which would be detrimental to reflection and ultimately reconstruction: the rebirth of the subject will require active commitment, which could distract from the deadly repetition. Whilst the confrontation with death resembled nonsense, the subject will question the psychotraumatic determinants of his/her life history to reinstate this tragic event within a search for meaning. Such restructuring is built on the intersubjectivity of the clinical relationship, which occurs within a social context. PTSD is a pathology which interacts with the societal context: on the one hand the trauma is established on the brutal reconsideration of social values which seem immutable and on the other hand, the clinical and nosographical concept of PTSD is changing with the evolution of society.
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Bowlby (1984) regarded attachment as a model of psychological vulnerability to depression. Since then, a large number of studies have considered vulnerability to depression in light of the idea of attachment style. Attachment styles correspond to two dimensions observed in relationships (anxiety and avoidance) evoking ideally the internal operating models of self and other respectively, as first described by Bowlby (1984). Two types of adult attachment styles are evaluated in our study: romantic attachment (Hazan and Shaver, 1987) and interpersonal attachment (Bartholomew and Horowitz, 1991). The existing literature indicates that depression is associated with the insecure attachment styles, in both romantic an interpersonal relationships. Nevertheless, a question remains concerning the nature of the link between attachment style and depression: are attachment styles stable and independent of the depression or are they modified as the depression evolves? The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationships between attachment and depression in adult women hospitalized for depression; following up the evolution in their romantic and interpersonal attachment styles from the beginning to the end of their hospitalization. ⋯ Our results confirm that romantic and interpersonal styles of attachment constitute factors of vulnerability to depression. But more importantly, these findings open up new perspectives in terms of the nature of the relationships between attachment styles and depression. They provide matter for discussion concerning the stability or the change in romantic and interpersonal attachment styles. Indeed, we have revealed the stable and independent nature of romantic attachment styles in relation to depressive symptomatology. On the contrary, security in the interpersonal attachment style was shown to be a factor of change, associated with the evolution of the depressive symptomatology in progress. In the quest to take combined account of romantic and interpersonal attachment styles and their links with the evolution of depression, the present study results in a new understanding of depression, viewed from the perspective of the model of attachment in adults.