Stress and coping in fourth-year medical and dental students.

Unlabelled: Medicine and dentistry are stressful professions. Dental and medical students suffer high levels of stress and may experience adverse psychological symptoms and use dysfunctional coping mechanisms.

Aim: To investigate levels and sources of stress, anger, anxiety and sadness, and associated coping mechanisms, in fourth-year dental and medical students.

A communication skills course for undergraduate dental students.

Sixty-seven third-year dental students in Dunedin, New Zealand, participated in a communication skills course, using simulated patients, case-based scenarios, videotaped interviews, and class roleplays. The course introduced active listening techniques, taking a medical history, and emotion-handling skills. This course was adapted from an existing course for medical students run by the Department of Psychological Medicine, Dunedin School of Medicine.

Independent and social play among profoundly mentally retarded adults: training, maintenance, generalization, and long-term follow-up.

Play skills were taught to eight profoundly mentally retarded adults in two interrelated experiments. In Experiment 1, a multiple baseline across subjects design was used to assess the efficacy of verbal and physical prompts on independent play. In Experiment 2, the same subjects and experimental procedures were used to develop social play.

The effects of intermittent drug therapy on stereotypy and collateral behaviors of mentally retarded persons.

A double-blind, placebo-controlled study was conducted to assess the effects of intermittent drug therapy on stereotyped and collateral behaviors of six profoundly mentally retarded, institutionalized, adult males. The subjects, all of whom had received antipsychotic medication for more than three years, had their maintenance dosages gradually reduced by almost half during the eight-month study. A multiple baseline across subjects design was utilized to assess drug effects on object and body stereotypy and a range of collateral behaviors.

Pharmacological treatment of self-injurious behavior in mentally retarded persons.

Self-injury is a severe behavioral problem commonly observed in institutionalized mentally retarded individuals. While several forms of therapy are available, pharmacological treatment is most often used in institutions to control this behavior. This paper evaluated the clinical and experimental literature on the effects of pharmacotherapy for self-injury.