Healthy people generally underestimate the self-reported well-being of people with disabilities and serious illnesses. The cause of this discrepancy is in dispute, and the present study provides evidence for 2 causes. First, healthy people fail to anticipate hedonic adaptation to poor health. Using an ecological momentary assessment measure of…

The practice of child and adolescent psychiatry is more complex now. More is known about the neurobiology of common psychiatric disorders. Sophisticated diagnostic systems can be downloaded for nonprofit use from the Internet (e.g., Kaufman et al., 1997). Treatment alternatives for a single disorder have proliferated (e.g., Clarke et al., 1999;…

In this paper, I describe the first 2 years of intensive psychotherapy of a multiply traumatized 5-year-old girl. I explore some of the ways in which violent and traumatic experiences were re-lived in the therapy and how they impacted on both patient and therapist. Within the discussion and illustrated by clinical vignettes, I consider the…

The purpose of this study was to examine the various ways in which independent-feeding patients with dysphagia justified their noncompliance with swallowing recommendations suggested by a speech-language pathologist (SLP). Sixty-three independent-feeding dysphagia patients between the ages of 65 and 100 years who had been identified by the SLP or…

The assessment of language laterality by the dichotic fused-words test may be impaired by interference effects revealed by the dominant report of one member of the stimuli-pair. Stimulus-dominance and ear asymmetry were evaluated in normal population (48 subjects of both sex and handedness) and in 2 patients with a single functional hemisphere.…

Event-related potential (ERP) studies have demonstrated impaired auditory sensory processing in patients with schizophrenia, as reflected in abnormal mismatch negativity (MMN). We sought to extend this finding by evaluating MMN in 13 treatment-refractory patients with schizophrenia, and 14 age- and gender-matched healthy controls. Subjects…

Highly variable bisection performance in neglect patients has been attributed to an increased "zone of indifference" (Marshall & Halligan, 1989). The indifference zone indicates the discrepancy between two line lengths which are judged as equal in length. Following this argumentation, the central area of a line should be expanded in neglect…

In Parkinson's disease, functional imaging studies during limb motor tasks reveal cerebral activation abnormalities that can be reversed by subthalamic nucleus (STN) stimulation. The effect of STN stimulation on parkinsonian dysarthria has not, however, been investigated using PET. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the effect of STN…

At the present time there are a large number of adults who have "suspected" Asperger syndrome (AS). In this paper we describe a new instrument, the Adult Asperger Assessment (AAA), developed in our clinic for adults with AS. The need for a new instrument relevant to the diagnosis of AS in adulthood arises because existing instruments are designed…

A hotly debated topic in oropharyngeal dysphagia is the Clinical Swallowing Examination's (CSE) importance in clinical practice. That debate can profit from the application of evidence-based medicine's (EBM) principles and procedures. These can guide both appropriate data collection and interpretation as will be demonstrated in the present report.…

Previous studies have shown that an aphasic patient (AB) with a semantic short-term memory deficit (STM) had difficulties comprehending and producing sentences with structures that demanded the simultaneous retention of several individual word meanings (Martin & Freedman, 2001a, 2001b; Martin & Romani, 1994; Martin, Shelton, & Yaffee, 1994). The…

Contingency management (CM) interventions usually use vouchers as reinforcers, but a new technique awards chances of winning prizes. This study compares these approaches. In community treatment centers, 142 cocaine- or heroin-dependent outpatients were randomly assigned to standard treatment (ST), ST with vouchers, or ST with prizes for 12 weeks.…

This essay describes a special topics creative writing course designed for nursing students, and argues that creative writing strategies work to improve nurses' compositional skills. Also discussed are other potential benefits from creatively writing patients' lives, notably, the blending of arts and sciences, and the ways in which medical schools…

Purpose: Assisted living is an increasingly important residential setting for the frail elderly person. How often and why residents leave such facilities are important issues for consumers, for clinicians advising frail patients on their options for living arrangements, and for policymakers. This research investigated the impact of facility and…

Work in progress is reported for a research project aiming to improve multiprofessional teamworking in operating theatres through iterative educational intervention. Experimental design is combined with collaborative inquiry. The hypothesis is: will planned, complex educational intervention focused upon improving communication in teamwork lead to…