Trauma-informed care in geriatric inpatient units to improve staff skills and reduce patient distress: a co-designed study protocol.

Background: Geriatric hospital wards are highly medicalised environments with limited opportunities for choice and control, and can be distressing for older survivors of psychological trauma. While trauma-informed models of care (TIC) are effectively applied across mental health and other settings, the utility of these models in aged care settings has not been assessed. The objective of this study was to examine whether TIC can reduce responsive behaviour, chemical restraint, and improve staff skills and patient experiences in inpatient geriatric settings.

Variation in psychosocial influences according to the dimensions and content of children's unusual experiences: potential routes for the development of targeted interventions.

The psychosocial processes implicated in the development and maintenance of psychosis differ according to both the dimensional attributes (conviction, frequency, associated distress, adverse life impact) and the content or type (e.g. grandiosity, hallucinations, paranoia) of the psychotic symptoms experienced.

Exploring the cognitive features in children with autism spectrum disorder, their co-twins, and typically developing children within a population-based sample.

Background: The behavioural symptoms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are thought to reflect underlying cognitive deficits/differences. The findings in the literature are somewhat mixed regarding the cognitive features of ASD. This study attempted to address this issue by investigating a range of cognitive deficits and the prevalence of multiple cognitive atypicalities in a large population-based sample comprising children with ASD, their unaffected co-twins, and typically developing comparison children.

Cognitive bias and unusual experiences in childhood.

Cognitive therapy is recommended for children with psychotic-like, or unusual, experiences associated with distress or impairment (UEDs; UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, 2013 [1]). Accurate models of the psychological underpinnings of childhood UEDs are required to effectively target therapies. Cognitive biases, such as the jumping to conclusions data-gathering bias (JTC), are implicated in the development and maintenance of psychosis in adults.

Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for depression in adolescents.

Background: Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) has been shown to be effective in preventing relapse of depression in adults, but has not previously been applied to adolescents who have residual symptoms of depression following treatment.

Method: An 8-week MBCT group was adapted for adolescents, and evaluated using qualitative and quantitative measures.

Results: Participants report high levels of satisfaction with the group intervention.

Modelling psychosocial influences on the distress and impairment caused by psychotic-like experiences in children and adolescents.

Psychological understanding of psychotic-like experiences (PLEs) occurring in childhood is limited, with no recognised conceptual framework to guide appropriate intervention. We examined the contribution to PLE severity of emotional, cognitive and socio-environmental mechanisms thought to influence the development and maintenance of psychosis. Forty 8-14 year olds referred to a community Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service completed a battery of questionnaires and assessments measuring severity of PLEs, emotional problems, cognitive biases, and negative life events.

Exploring anxiety symptoms in a large-scale twin study of children with autism spectrum disorders, their co-twins and controls.

Background: Although many children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) experience difficulties with anxiety,the manifestation of these difficulties remains unresolved. The current study assessed anxiety in a large population based twin sample, aged 10–15 years. Phenotypic analyses were used to explore anxiety symptoms in children with ASDs, their unaffected co-twins and a control sample.

Psychiatric conditions and behavioural problems in adolescents with intellectual disabilities: correlates with autism.

Objective: To determine whether psychiatric and behavioural disorders occur more frequently in adolescents with autism and intellectual disabilities, compared with those without autism.

Method: A population-based case-control study was undertaken and 36 adolescents with autism were pairwise matched for age and IQ to 36 adolescents without autism. Caregivers were interviewed with structured psychiatric interview and questionnaire measures of psychiatric and behavioural problems.

Are ADHD traits dissociable from the autistic profile? Links between cognition and behaviour.

Reports of co-morbid symptoms of ADHD in children with ASD have increased. This research sought to identify ADHD-related behaviours in a sample of children with ASD, and their relationship with the ASD triad of impairments and related cognitive impairments. Children with ASD (n = 55) completed a comprehensive cognitive assessment whilst a semi-structured parental interview (3Di) provided information on ASD and ADHD symptoms.

Identifying symbolic relationships in autism spectrum disorders: a deficit in the identification of temporal co-occurrence?

Individuals with Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) experience difficulties understanding the non-verbal cues conveyed by others that provide symbolic information about relationships between self, other, and environmental events. This study examined whether these difficulties reflect underlying problems in the identification of temporal co-occurrence, or in memorial, associative, or inference skills. The performance of a group of adolescents with ASD was compared to that of typically developing children and adolescents with learning difficulties on four tasks assessing these processes.

The problem with using eye-gaze to infer desire: a deficit of cue inference in children with autism spectrum disorder?

Children with autism respond atypically to eye-gaze cues, arguably because they fail to understand that eye-gaze conveys mentalistic information. Three experiments investigated whether a difficulty in inferring desire from eye-gaze in autism reflects a failure to understand the mentalistic significance of eye-gaze, an inhibitory deficit or a deficit of cue inference. While there was an inhibitory component to the tasks, children with autism were no more affected by this than controls.