Emotional distress, coping and adjustment in family members of neuroscience intensive care unit patients.

Objective: We evaluated emotional distress, coping strategy use, caregiver adjustment, and the relationship among these variables in family members (FMs) of patients hospitalized in a neuroscience intensive care unit (NSICU).

Methods: Fifty-one primary relatives of NSICU patients were administered the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI) and an abbreviated version of the COPE within 2 days of admission to the NSICU, just prior to patient discharge from the unit, and approximately 30 days after patient discharge (follow-up). FMs' adjustment to the role of caregiver was also evaluated at follow-up with the Caregiver Appraisal Scale (CAS).

Optimism, satisfaction with needs met, interpersonal perceptions of the healthcare team, and emotional distress in patients' family members during critical care hospitalization.

Background: Families of critical care patients experience high levels of emotional distress. Access to information about patients' medical conditions and quality relationships with healthcare staff are high-priority needs for these families.

Objectives: To assess satisfaction with needs met, signs and symptoms of acute stress disorder, interpersonal perception of healthcare staff, level of optimism, and the relationships among these variables in patients' family members.

Single or multiple reproductive experiences attenuate neurobehavioral stress and fear responses in the female rat.

The female brain is a dynamic structure, which expresses its plasticity most readily following reproductive experience (RE). In Experiment 1, we generated nulliparous (NP), primiparous (PP), and multiparous (MP) females (none, one, and two litters, respectively). Two weeks following the weaning of the first/second six-pup litters, the age-matched MP and PP and the non-pup-exposed NP animals were subjected to a 60-min restraint stress paradigm (enclosure in a Plexiglas restraint tube).