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duminică, 5 august 2012

Empathetic Children More Likely To Effectively Manage Stress, Behave Prosocially

Infants innately relieve stress by crying, turning their heads or maintaining eye contact. Adults manage emotional tension using problem-solving or by seeking support. A new study by a University of Missouri human development expert describes how adolescents' developing personalities and coping habits affect their behaviors toward others.

"We're each born with some personality tendencies; for example, we see that babies are fussy or calm," said Gustavo Carlo, the Millsap Professor of Diversity in the MU Department of Human Development and Family Studies. "Those characteristics can change over time as people experience certain events or as a result of their parents, peers or communities. At the same time, as we get older, our personalities become more stable."

Carlo and his colleagues surveyed 1,557 students ages 12-15 years old in Valencia, Spain, to measure the adolescents' feelings toward others, their past prosocial and physically aggressive behaviors, their emotional stability, and how they manage stress.

Carlo found that empathetic adolescents were more likely to use problem-focused coping, which aims to reduce or eliminate the source of the stress. These adolescents also were more likely to perform prosocial behaviors that benefit others, such as volunteering, donating money or helping friends with problems. Conversely, emotionally unstable, impulsive adolescents relied more on emotion-focused coping tactics such as venting, avoidance or distraction, and they showed more frequent signs of aggression.

"Empathetic kids are generally very good at regulating their emotions and tend not to lose their tempers," Carlo said. "When you're good at regulating your emotions, you're less concerned about yourself and more considerate of other people. On the other hand, impulsive children are more self-focused and have difficulty engaging in problem-focused coping."

Teaching adolescents multiple ways to handle stress will help them decide which coping techniques to use based on the unique situations, Carlo said. In some cases, people may use both emotion-focused and problem-focused coping, while in others, one might be more beneficial. For example, emotion-focused coping might be more constructive when children witness their parents' divorces because the kids cannot change those situations. On the other hand, planning ahead to study for tests or complete homework is a problem-focused coping technique that can help adolescents effectively ease academic stress.

"Sometimes we get stuck dealing with stress in one way because it was successful in the past; that coping style may not be effective with other stressors and in other situations," Carlo said. "There is more than one way to cope in situations, and people need to know when to apply which coping mechanisms."

Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release. Click 'references' tab above for source.
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When Domestic Abusers Most Likely To Attack Revealed By Jailhouse Phone Calls

An analysis of jailhouse phone calls between men charged with felony domestic violence and their victims allowed researchers for the first time to see exactly what triggered episodes of violent abuse.

The findings showed that violence often immediately followed accusations of sexual infidelity made by one or both of the partners. Drug or alcohol use was often involved.

Researchers have long known that sexual jealousy played a general role in abuse, but this is the first time it was shown that it was a specific form of jealousy - infidelity concerns - that tended to initiate the violence, said Julianna Nemeth, lead author of the study and a doctoral student in public health at Ohio State University.

"What we were looking for was the immediate precursor - what was the one thing that happened right before the violence that was the catalyst," Nemeth said.

"I have worked in domestic violence intervention for many years, but still the findings shocked me. We never knew that it was the accusation of infidelity that tended to trigger the violence."

The findings are powerful because they come directly from conversations of the couples involved in domestic violence, said Amy Bonomi, co-author of the study and associate professor of human development and family science at Ohio State.

"What we had before was what the abuser and victim said to police, to courts, to advocates, to health care providers," said Bonomi, who is also an affiliate with the Group Health Research Institute in Seattle.

"But we never before had the couple together discussing just among themselves what happened during the violent episode."

The study appears online in the Journal of Women's Health and will appear in a future print edition.

The study involved 17 heterosexual couples in which the male was in detention in a facility in the state of Washington for felony-level intimate partner violence. The victims had sustained serious injuries during the attacks, including severe head trauma requiring hospitalization, bite wounds, strangulation and lost pregnancy.

The researchers used up to four hours of recorded phone conversations between each couple.

The detention facility in the study routinely records conversations of detainees to increase jail safety. The couples were aware they were being recorded through an automated message at the beginning of each call. Such recordings have been approved by the state Supreme Court, and the researchers gained approval from the county prosecutor's office and detention facility to use the recordings. All the recordings involved cases that had already been resolved.

The researchers listened to the audiotaped recordings and wrote narrative summaries of couples describing acute triggers and chronic stressors for violence. Nemeth then created a table to summarize the themes found in the recordings.

The research team met weekly for two months to discuss the themes and develop a conceptual model to explain what they had found.

Along with the acute trigger for the violence, the researchers found a variety of other chronic stressors in the relationships of these couples that may have contributed to the abuse. One chronic stressor was the same issue that often triggered the violence.

"We found that long-term disputes regarding infidelity pervaded nearly every relationship," Nemeth said. "Even if it didn't trigger the violent event, it was an ongoing stressor in nearly all of the 17 couples we studied."

Drug and alcohol use was also a key both as a trigger to violence and a chronic problem. Alcohol or drugs helped escalate what started out as just a conversation into severe violence, she said.

Many of the couples discussed unmet mental health needs, and ongoing problems with depression and preoccupation with suicide.

Another key to understanding these violent relationships was the extent to which the couples had accepted traditional heterosexual gender roles, which were often justified through religion, Bonomi explained.

"We commonly heard the couples discuss how women are supposed to marry and have children, and how men are supposed to be strong and in control," Bonomi said. "Men tended to use these traditional gender role prescriptions to justify their use of violence."

The violence at times centered on "reproductive coercion" - men who wanted to control when and if their partner became pregnant. For example, one man told his partner he was justified in raping her because she wanted to be a mother anyway.

Five of the 17 couples talked about severe violence during pregnancy and two women discussed a lost pregnancy as a result of violence.

In about half of the couples in which they had clearly internalized traditional gender roles, religion was used as a justification. In one case, the male abuser told his victim that his attack was about "cleansing your soul."

"It was very disturbing the way religion was used to justify the violence and to justify why the relationship should continue," Nemeth said.

These results should prompt several changes in procedures for victim advocates and other mental health providers, Nemeth said.

Advocates for domestic abuse victims often prepare safety plans to determine how much danger a woman may be in and what she can do to protect herself.

"A lot of safety plan tools don't ask specifically about sexual jealousy and infidelity, but it is a question we should be asking," Nemeth said. "If it is an issue that couples are discussing, it is a red flag that the relationship may be volatile."

The results also suggest there should be more coordination between health care providers helping those with drug and alcohol use, mental health issues, and domestic abuse, since all of these issues can be related.

"We need more coordination to help people on all different levels," Nemeth said.

Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release. Click 'references' tab above for source.
Visit our women's health / gynecology section for the latest news on this subject. Other authors of the study were Meghan Lee and Jennifer Ludwin, both graduate students at Ohio State.
The study was funded by the Criminal Justice Research Center at Ohio State and the Group Health Foundation of Seattle.
Written by Jeff Grabmeier
Ohio State University Please use one of the following formats to cite this article in your essay, paper or report:

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'When Domestic Abusers Most Likely To Attack Revealed By Jailhouse Phone Calls'

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joi, 8 decembrie 2011

Likely Cause Of Essential Tremor Discovered

Main Category: Neurology / Neuroscience
Article Date: 08 Dec 2011 - 1:00 PST

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Researchers from the CHUQ research center and Universite Laval have discovered the likely cause of essential tremor (ET), a neurological disorder that affects more than 10 million North Americans. The team's promising findings were published in a recent edition of the scientific journal Brain.

Frequently confused with Parkinson's disease, ET is the most common involuntary movement disorder. An estimated 4% of the population over 40 is affected by this neurological condition which manifests as muscle tremors, normally in the face, neck, and vocal chords.

The research team noticed a decrease in the concentration of GABA receptors in the cerebellum of patients suffering from ET. GABA receptors relay "chemical messages" which transmit inhibitory information to the different parts of the brain and play an essential role in the human body. A loss of GABA receptors in the cerebellum could affect the function of the cerebellum, an organ beneath the brain that manages communication between the brain and muscles and coordinating movements.

"This is one of the first demonstrations of biochemical changes in the cerebellum in patients with ET. It's a real step forward that opens the doors to new avenues of research, and perhaps to new treatments down the road. It's possible that stimulating GABA receptors could help patients control, or even reduce, essential tremor," said Dr. Frédéric Calon, researcher at the CHUQ research center and professor at Université Laval's Faculty of Pharmacy. "This is one of the first times such large sample groups have been used to study ET," he continued.

Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release. Click 'references' tab above for source.
Visit our neurology / neuroscience section for the latest news on this subject. In addition to Dr. Calon, study authors were Sarah Paris-Robidas, Élodie Brochu, Marion Sintes, Vincent Emond, Mélanie Bousquet, Milène Vandal, Mireille Pilote, Cyntia Tremblay, and Thérèse Di Paolo from the CHUQ research center and Université Laval's Faculty of Pharmacy, as well as Ali H. Rajput and Alex Rajput from the University of Saskatchewan.
The research was made possible by a grant from the International Essential Tremor Foundation.
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