Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among Filipino boys subjected to non-therapeutic ritual or medical surgical procedures: A retrospective cohort study.

In the Philippines, non-therapeutic genital cutting is viewed as a culturally sanctioned rite of passage from boyhood to manhood. Strong social and peer pressure is exerted on boys aged between 8-16years to submit to destructive genital cutting, despite the fact that many men who have been subjected to genital cutting during infancy or childhood often describe their experiences in the language of violence, torture, mutilation, and sexual assault. Among a group of 505 Filipino boys subjected to ritual genital cutting (Tuli), 69% fulfilled the DSM-IV criteria for a diagnosis of PTSD, while among 1072 boys circumcised by medical operators or their assistants, 51% exhibited PTSD symptoms.

Proving a negative? Methodological, statistical, and psychometric flaws in Ullmann et al. (2017) PTSD study.

Unlabelled: Ullmann et al. recently published a pilot study in Translational Psychiatry in which they report failing to find a statistically significant reduction in either hair cortisol or hair cortisone levels in circumcised men as compared with genitally intact (noncircumcised) men. Based on such null findings, the authors purport to have "refuted the psycho-pathological long-term effects of circumcision" and that the lack of significant results, "add to the growing body of evidence in the literature that male circumcision is not likely psychologically traumatizing across the life-span.

FACTOR ANALYSES OF THE McGILL PAIN QUESTIONNAIRE (MPQ) IN ACUTE AND CHRONIC PAIN PATIENTS.

The McGill Pain Questionnaire (MPQ) aims to measure sensory, affective, and evaluative dimensions of pain. However, the structural dimensionality of the MPQ remains somewhat uncertain. Exploratory (EFA) factor analyses were used to investigate the structure of the MPQ based on the responses of a diverse sample of 448 pain patients (M age = 43.

Descriptors of pain sensation: a dual hierarchical model of latent structure.

Unlabelled: Recently, the lexicon of pain was refined into a parsimonious set of words making up the Pain Descriptor System (PDS). The present study investigated the latent structure of the sensory category of the PDS with its 24 descriptors distributed equally across 8 subcategories. A sample of 629 chronic pain patients rated the degree to which each of these words described their pain.

Sub-Saharan African randomised clinical trials into male circumcision and HIV transmission: methodological, ethical and legal concerns.

In 2007, WHO/UNAIDS recommended male circumcision as an HIV-preventive measure based on three sub-Saharan African randomised clinical trials (RCTs) into female-to-male sexual transmission. A related RCT investigated male-to-female transmission. However, the trials were compromised by inadequate equipoise; selection bias; inadequate blinding; problematic randomisation; trials stopped early with exaggerated treatment effects; and not investigating non-sexual transmission.

Sex differences in verbal and visual-spatial tasks under different hemispheric visual-field presentation conditions.

This paper reports sex differences in cognitive task performance that emerged when 39 Australian university undergraduates (19 men, 20 women) were asked to solve verbal (lexical) and visual-spatial cognitive matching tasks which varied in difficulty and visual field of presentation. Sex significantly interacted with task type, task difficulty, laterality, and changes in performance across trials. The results revealed that the significant individual-differences' variable of sex does not always emerge as a significant main effect, but instead in terms of significant interactions with other variables manipulated experimentally.

Sexually dimorphic effects of acute nicotine administration on arousal and visual-spatial ability in non-smoking human volunteers.

The effect of an acute administration of nicotine on arousal and visual-spatial ability in healthy non-smoking participants was investigated. Healthy adult volunteers with a mean age of 19.98 years received a transdermal nicotine or placebo patch prior to completing a water-level task and two mental rotation tasks while concurrent psychophysiological recordings were taken.

Relationship of humour to health: a psychometric investigation.

The effects of humour on health were investigated using a sample of 504 individuals comprising three groups (community group, university students, and respondents with a medical condition). Hypotheses were: (1). that after controlling for other variables, humour would be significantly associated with health: (2).

Affective and evaluative descriptors of pain in the McGill pain questionnaire: reduction and reorganization.

Recent reports indicate that several descriptors of pain sensations in the McGill Pain Questionnaire (MPQ) are difficult to classify within MPQ sensory subcategories because of incomprehension, underuse, or ambiguity of usage. Adopting the same methodology of recent studies, the rule revealed that only 6 to 18 words met criteria for the affective category and 5 of 11 words met criteria for the evaluative category, thus warranting a reduced list of words in these categories. This classification, the intensity ratings of the retained words correlated very highly with those originally reported for the MPQ.

Severe traumatic brain injury: some effects on family caregivers.

This study assesses the effects of severe traumatic brain injuries on family members and functioning-a topic of interest for those working with survivors and their families. This issue is receiving increased attention as recent findings suggest that family adjustment influences outcome for brain-injured persons. The Family Environment Scale and the Profile of Mood States were completed by 25 individuals who had a family member with a severe traumatic brain injury.

Male circumcision: pain, trauma and psychosexual sequelae.

Infant male circumcision continues despite growing questions about its medical justification. As usually performed without analgesia or anaesthetic, circumcision is observably painful. It is likely that genital cutting has physical, sexual and psychological consequences too.

Enriched behavioral prediction equation and its impact on structured leaning and the dynamic calculus.

This theoretical note describes an expansion of the behavioral prediction equation, in line with the greater complexity encountered in models of structured learning theory (R. B. Cattell, 1996a).