Background: There has been no longitudinal study in Taiwan to identify the nature and the scale of medical care utilization of people with intellectual disabilities (IDs) up to the present. The aim of this study is to describe inpatient utilization among people under ID care in institutions in order to identify the pattern of medical care needs…

The relative effectiveness of two types of health education materials developed for children in grades 4 through 6 was evaluated. Materials tested were a comic book and a slide tape presentation, both of which emphasized a participatory role as health consumer. A total of 278 students, in 8 fifth-grade classes, participated. Students were randomly…

In recent years there has been increased focus on evaluating the efficacy of psychosocial interventions for cancer patients. Among the several limitations inherent to these programs of research, few studies have targeted patients with well-diagnosed clinical depression and little is known about factors that best predict treatment outcome and…

In this article, the authors present a data collection system to provide information about assault-related injuries within Newark, New Jersey. In 2001, Emergency Department (ED) staff at the six hospitals providing emergency medical care within the city collected data on all assault-related ED visits. Individual-level (n = 1,204) and…

Background: Boys with early onset of conduct disorder (CD), most of whom also meet diagnostic criteria of a comorbid attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), tend to exhibit high levels of aggression throughout development. While a number of functional neuroimaging studies on emotional processing have been performed in antisocial adults,…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the content-specificity of communication skills. It investigates the reliability and dimensionality of standardized patient (SP) ratings of communication skills in an Objective Structured Clinical Examination(OSCE) for final year medical students. An OSCE consisting of seven standardized patient(SP)…

Objective: Data on the current costs of medical services for children with autism spectrum disorders are lacking. Our purpose for this study was to compare health care utilization and costs of children with and without autism spectrum disorders in the same health plan. Patients and Methods: Participants included all 2- to 18-year-old children with…

As part of a multidisciplinary study, the rate of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), learning disability (LD), and brain abnormalities was examined in 20 participants (12 males, 8 females; age range 8mo-17y, mean age 8y 1mo) diagnosed as falling within the oculoauriculovertebral spectrum (OAV). A neuropsychiatric examination was performed, including…

This article outlines an 8-week curriculum that was created to help outpatients develop cognitive and behavioral skills for coping with delusions and hallucinations as well as to reduce patients' comorbid subjective levels of distress (e.g., depression, anxiety). The manualized protocol consisted of psychoeducation and training in a variety of CBT…

Purpose: The paper comprises an evaluation of the inclusion of art-related education within a health promotion course for student nurses, which ran for four cohorts from 2001 to 2005, and a description of a project to introduce art into a clinical skills laboratory as part of the course. Design/methodology/approach: The art-related aspects of the…

Objective: The authors describe a pilot program allowing psychiatric residents to participate in neurobiological evaluations of patients with Axis I disorders. The program aimed to familiarize residents with available tools for assessing cognitive and neuroanatomical abnormalities in psychiatric patients and to foster greater interest among…

Background: The aims were to identify referral characteristics and outcomes for people with intellectual disabilities referred to a psychodynamic psychotherapy service. Materials and Methods: A retrospective case notes review of anonymized data relating to 100 sequential patient episodes. Results: A total of 81 people out of 100 with a range of…

This study sought to examine quality of life (QoL) in clinic-referred children and adolescents (n = 59, M age = 11.4[plus or minus]2.6 years) with a chronic tic disorder. The QoL scores for tic patients were lower than for healthy controls but higher than for the psychiatric sample on the majority of domains. Children's self-reported QoL scores…

Despite findings that depression is a risk factor for heart disease and for death following cardiac events and that depressed cardiac patients experience significantly reduced quality of life and are less likely to follow treatment regimens, depression is neither adequately identified nor treated in cardiac patients. Recent calls in the literature…

Context: Mid-level providers comprise an increasing proportion of the health care workforce and play a key role in providing health services in rural and underserved areas. Although women comprise the majority of mid-level providers, they are less likely to work in a rural area than men. Maldistribution of health providers between urban and rural…