Background: There is a need to understand and mitigate the psychological impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic for children known to be vulnerable. Data from prior to the pandemic are required to provide robust assessments of the socio-emotional impacts of COVID-19 and identify those who are more vulnerable.
Method: This study capitalises on an ongoing UK study of primary school children (4-8 years) identified prior to the pandemic as "at risk" for mental health problems by teachers.
Primary Objective: To describe the clinical characteristics, self-reported outcomes in domains relating to activities of daily living and patterns of service engagement in the survivors of a moderate-to-severe acquired brain injury over seven years.
Research Design: A longitudinal research design was used.
Methods And Procedures: Thirty-two individuals who sustained a moderate-to-severe acquired brain injury completed a Sociodemographic and Support Questionnaire at one (t1) and seven years (t2) after completing a publicly funded inpatient neurorehabilitation program.
Background: Recognising the signs of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can be a challenge for frontline professionals. The use of brief parent-completed questionnaires for recording the signs of ASD in school-aged children may be an important and efficient contributor to professional insight. However, to date, such questionnaires have not been designed to be used in coordination with current standardised Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) diagnostic tools.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUreaplasma species (spp.) are common colonizers of the urogenital tract but may cause systemic infection in immunocompromised patients. They release significant amounts of ammonia via urea hydrolysis and have been recently implicated in the pathogenesis of hyperammonemia syndrome after organ transplantation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Motivational improvement of movement speed in Parkinson's disease (PD) is observed in life-threatening situations and has been empirically demonstrated in experimental studies using reaction time paradigms.
Objectives: To address two clinically relevant questions: first, if in PD, motivational modulation through provision of monetary incentive on a sorting task that approximates performance on everyday life tasks affects movement speed. Second, how this effect is compared between PD patients treated with medication or subthalamic deep brain stimulation.
Fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASDs) are lifelong disabilities caused by prenatal alcohol exposure. Prenatal alcohol use is common in the UK, but FASD prevalence was unknown. Prevalence estimates are essential for informing FASD prevention, identification and support.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: The subthalamic nucleus (STN) is part of the motor, associative, and limbic cortico-striatal circuits through which it can influence a range of behaviours, with preclinical and clinical evidence suggesting that the STN is involved in motivational modulation of behaviour. In the present study, we investigated if in Parkinson's disease (PD) motivational modulation of movement speed is altered by deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the STN (STN-DBS).
Methods: We studied the effect of monetary incentive on speed of movement initiation and execution in a computer-based simple reaction time task in 10 operated patients with Parkinson's disease using a STN DBS ON/OFF design and also in 11 healthy participants.
Objective: To test the efficacy of implementation intentions in reducing smoking uptake in a sample of adolescents.
Design: Classes of adolescents (aged 11-12 years) were randomly allocated to one of four conditions: implementation intention, self-efficacy, two control conditions. An implementation intention or a self-efficacy manipulation (both formed in relation to how to refuse offers of cigarettes) was completed by intervention condition participants at 0, 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, and 24 months.
Role of 'Big Five' personality traits as predictors of smoking and moderators of the intention-smoking relationship was tested. Five hundred and fifty-three adolescents (aged 11-12) completed measures of self-reported past smoking, gender, intentions to smoke, perceived behavioural control, family smoking, friends smoking at times 1 and 2 (6 months apart). At time 3, 2 years later, the same adolescents completed measures of the Big Five and self-reported smoking (a subset of 300 also provided an objective smoking measure).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis longitudinal study investigated differences in beliefs and perceived behavioural control between smokers and non-smokers in a large sample of adolescents. Positive and negative instrumental beliefs, normative beliefs, perceived behavioural control (PBC) and smoking status were assessed in the same participants at 11, 13 and 15 years of age. Prospective analyses among non-smokers revealed that for boys, negative instrumental beliefs in non-smokers at age 11 predicted smoking at age 15 years.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInt J Geriatr Psychiatry
July 2008
Objective: To assess the safety and feasibility of prescribing long term lithium to elderly people with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease (AD).
Methods: An open label treatment group with low dose lithium for up to 1 year with the Lithium Side Effects Rating Scale as the primary outcome measure. A comparison group matched for cognition and age not receiving lithium therapy.
Objectives: To examine the impact of anticipated regret within the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) on intentions of adolescents to initiate smoking. To examine the moderating role of anticipated regret and intention stability on the relationship between intentions and smoking initiation in adolescents.
Methods: We conducted two studies measuring anticipated regret within the TPB applied to adolescent smoking initiation.
An optimized single-shot proton double-quantum (DQ) filter for the quantification of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) levels in human brain is reported. It is demonstrated that creation of DQ coherences following dual-resonance-selective refocusing gives a theoretical editing efficiency of 50% for the detection of the GABA resonance at 3.01 ppm.
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