The American journal of orthopsychiatry
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Am J Orthopsychiatry · Jul 1991
The effects of gestational age and gender on grief after pregnancy loss.
The roles of gestational age and gender in grief reactions following loss of pregnancy were explored. Parents with losses later in pregnancy reported more intense grief than did those whose losses were earlier. Women expressed higher levels of grief than did men six to eight weeks after the loss; however, this difference had decreased by one and two years after the loss.
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A triage model for suicidal youth was evaluated at four community-based agencies over a 30-month period. The program screened youths for suicidal ideation, trained staff in assessment, instituted agency protocols for triage, and established a multilevel mental health service network. The number of suicide attempts decreased after implementation of the program, psychiatrists' evaluations of suicidal tendencies concurred with those of the staff, and additional community-based agencies voluntarily introduced the program.
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The theoretical strategy underlying development of the Perinatal Grief Scale is described. The instrument was completed by 194 subjects as part of a longitudinal study of factors affecting the resolution of grief following spontaneous abortion, fetal or neonatal death, or ectopic pregnancy. Variables found to be significant predictors of grief, as measured by this scale, were: overall physical health of mother, gestational age at time of loss, quality of the marital relationship, and pre-loss mental health symptomatology.
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In a study of 306 children whose parents have a mental illness, the relationship between coping skills and environmental assets and deficits determined the degree of behavior problems among these high-risk children. Two environmental stressors (proportion of mentally ill family members and mother-child discord), two coping skills (activity competence and school competence), and an interaction (between proportion of mentally ill family members and activity competence) were found to explain 40% of the variance in child behavior problems.