Childhood maltreatment is highly prevalent and serves as a risk factor for mental and physical disorders. Self-reported childhood maltreatment appears heritable, but the specific genetic influences on this phenotype are largely unknown. The aims of this study were to (1) identify genetic variation associated with self-reported childhood maltreatment, (2) estimate SNP-based heritability (h), (3) assess predictive value of polygenic risk scores (PRS) for childhood maltreatment, and (4) quantify genetic overlap of childhood maltreatment with mental and physical health-related phenotypes, and condition the top hits from our analyses when such overlap is present.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe risk of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following trauma is heritable, but robust common variants have yet to be identified. In a multi-ethnic cohort including over 30,000 PTSD cases and 170,000 controls we conduct a genome-wide association study of PTSD. We demonstrate SNP-based heritability estimates of 5-20%, varying by sex.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Interprofessional education is a challenge given the current constraints of clinical education, which is bound by space, location, off-campus clinical rotations, and conflicting academic schedules. New approaches need to be developed if academic settings are to provide high-impact interprofessional education.
Method: Virtual Interprofessional (VIP) Learning was developed as an innovative, online, asynchronous learning platform utilizing avatars that engages learners in interprofessional clinical learning opportunities across disciplines and settings.
Natural disasters are common and devastating, and can affect the mental health of adolescents. It is also common for adolescents to have histories of interpersonal violence (IPV). The current study was a secondary data analysis of a larger randomized clinical trial and examined the moderating effect of IPV history and concern for loved ones during a disaster on treatment condition effects on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms over time among disaster-exposed adolescents.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAccess to care for pediatric burns remsains a major public health problem in the United States. Telemedicine has an opportunity to improve access to care, but current models are expensive and inefficient. They have developed and pilot-tested the TeleBurn App, a novel smartphone application, to treat partial thickness burns while outpatient.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFContext: The increasing shortage of deceased donor kidneys suitable for African Americans highlights the critical need to increase living donations among African Americans. Little research has addressed African American transplant recipients' perspectives on challenges and barriers related to the living donation process.
Objective: To understand the perspectives of African American recipients of deceased and living donor kidney transplants on challenges, barriers, and educational needs related to pursuing such transplants.
Disclosure of rape to informal support sources is relatively common, but not well understood. This study expands our limited knowledge of disclosure recipients' experience by examining associations between their socio-demographic and life experiences with receipt of a rape disclosure and encouragement of the victim to formally report her assault. Over 35% of the 3,001 community-residing women in this national sample reported receiving a rape disclosure.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry
April 2011
Objective: To identify latent classes of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms in a national sample of adolescents, and to test their associations with PTSD and functional impairment 1 year later.
Method: A total of 1,119 trauma-exposed youth aged 12 through 17 years (mean = 14.99 years, 51% female and 49% male) participating in the National Survey of Adolescents-Replication were included in this study.
The mental health effects of disaster and terrorism have moved to the forefront in the recent past following the events of 11 September 2001 in the United States. Although there has been a protracted history by mental health researchers and practitioners to study, understand, prevent, and treat mental health problems arising as a result of disasters and terrorism, there still is much to learn about the effects and treatment of trauma. Continued communication among disaster workers, first-response medical personnel, and mental health professionals is part of this process.
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