The Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), a measure of concept formation and set-shifting capacity, was administered to two groups of multiple sclerosis (MS) patients defined by clinical course. The chronic progressive patients achieved fewer conceptual categories due to significantly more perseverative responses than control patients, whereas the…

Commissioned scholarly papers and undertook anthropologic observation to examine legal and ethical issues for patients, family, and caregivers during discharge planning. Proposed policy suggestions in which conflicting interests were recognized but in which patients' rights to autonomous decision making in discharge planning were strongly…

Investigated whether family interaction influences the acting-out behavior of hospitalized adolescent psychiatric patients. Found families did contribute to acting out in the hospital but that the majority of acting out was not directly related to family contact. Recommends that the hospital engage the family in treatment and consider family…

Presents an overview of medical and psychosocial aspects of heart transplantation, with a focus on the program at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center. Describes social workers' interventions which help patients and families to achieve optimal psychosocial functioning before and after transplantation. (Author/ABL)

Discusses provision of quality psychiatric treatment and determination of appropriate therapeutic restrictiveness for each recipient. Describes the Anna Mental Health and Development Center's prevention strategy for unauthorized recipient absences and its systematic plan for responding to unauthorized absences. Outlines the function and…

Outlines the historical developments, current perspectives, and clinical applications of neuropsychology in evaluation, remediation, and ongoing counseling of clients and their families. Discusses assessments which allow identification of patients whose cognitive deficits have been underestimated or overestimated by other diagnostic procedures,…

Multidisciplinary team identified hysterical behavior, rather than depression, as one form of pseudodementia in many cases of cognitive impairment observed in geriatric patients. Seven cases required thorough medical and neuropsychological assessment and careful functional analysis of patients' behavior patterns to determine the adaptive utility…

Administered Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) to clinically depressed and nondepressed inpatients, and compared scores from its Depression scale with scores from the Beck Depression Inventory. Demonstrated a positive linear relationship between the two measures and their ability to discriminate between depressed and nondepressed…

Advocates employing former mental patients to staff mental health centers. Reveals evidence that patients can help each other. Reviews the special contributions that former patients can make (e.g., offering a consumer point of view, making appropriate demands, and being a role model). Identifies problems that may be expected. (DMM)

Examined the degree to which depression predicted pain and pain behavior. The Beck Depression Inventory was administered to 207 low back pain patients. Depression and physical findings were the most important predictors of pain and pain behavior. Depression proved significant even after controlling for important demographic and medical status…

Individuals admitted to an inpatient psychiatric unit for an immediately preceding parasuicide, with current suicidal ideation, or for nonsuicidal psychiatric reasons, were compared with each other on the types of problems they reported as being most significant in their current lives. Parasuicidal patients reported problems with significantly…

Psychiatric inpatients (N=59) were interviewd concerning psychological and environmental events that occurred in the 24 hours prior to their hospitalization. Suicide attempters were more likely to have used alcohol or marijuana and less likely to have contacted a health care professional than suicide ideators, even when past history of suicide…

The author describes the development of a pet therapy program at a rehabilitation unit of a hospital. She discusses documentation of the success of pet therapy programs, picking out the right pets, responsibilities of caring for the pet, training the pet, patient response, and program policies. (CT)

The Practice Integrated Learning Sequence (PILS) process was used in an educational program on hypertension management involving 1,013 physicians. Data suggest that PILS can help physicians assess practice needs by evaluating practice behaviors. Results indicate the importance of designing programs that facilitate physicians' development of…

Compared pre- and posttreatment Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory profiles of female inpatients (N=12) with anorexia nervosa. Results showed change after treatment, and found that pretreatment profiles obtained at a different hospital were remarkably similar, which suggests a common constellation of personality characteristics in…