Personality assessment screener in a primary care sample of low-income urban women.

The diagnostic efficiency of the Personality Assessment Screener (PAS; Morey, 1997) total score was evaluated using selected scales from the Patient Health Questionnaire (Spitzer, Kroenke, & Williams, 1999), the fourth edition of the Personality Diagnostic Questionnaire (Hyler, 1994), and the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (Saunders, Aasland, Babor, DeLaFuente, & Grant, 1993) as reference standards. Complete data were collected from 110 women seeking treatment at an urban family medicine training clinic. Total PAS scores were effective in identifying patients with mood disorders, cluster B personality disorders, and alcohol use disorders, but the optimum cut scores were higher than the cut score of 19 recommended by Morey (1997).

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition Defensive Functioning Scale: a validity study.

Objective: We assess the convergent and predictive validity of the Defensive Functioning Scale (DFS) with measures of life events, including childhood abuse and adult partner victimization; dimensions of psychopathology, including axis I (depressive) and axis II (borderline personality disorder) symptoms; and quality of object relations.

Method: One hundred and ten women from a university-based urban primary care clinic completed a research interview from which defense mechanisms were assessed. The quality of object relations was also assessed from interview data.

Anhedonia associated with stimulant use and dependence in a population-based sample of American adults.

Prior research suggests an association between anhedonia--diminished interest or pleasure in rewarding activities--and stimulant use in selected samples. However, it is unclear whether this association generalizes to the overall population and is consistent across stimulant drug types (amphetamine vs. cocaine) and outcome characteristics (any lifetime use vs.

Associations between depressive symptom dimensions and smoking dependence motives.

Depressive symptoms are heterogeneous and can be parsed into four subdimensions (i.e., positive affect [PA], negative affect [NA], somatic features [SF], and interpersonal problems [IP]) that may have unique associations with the motivation to smoke.

Tobacco use moderates the association between major depression and obesity.

Objective: Based on a maladaptive coping explanation, the relationship between major depression (MD) and obesity could be strong among nonsmokers, who may engage in unhealthy eating and sedentary behavior to cope with depression. By contrast, the MD-obesity association could be weak among smokers, who can use tobacco (instead of food or sedentary behavior) to cope with mood symptoms. This study examined smoking status and tobacco dependence as moderators of the MD-obesity link.

Epidemiology, determinants, and consequences of cigarette smoking in African American women: an integrative review.

Tobacco smoking is a national public health problem that has been associated with numerous adverse health effects, including increased disease and cancer rates. Previous review articles on smoking in specific demographic populations have focused on smoking in women and on smoking in African Americans, but have not considered the dual roles of ethnicity and gender in smoking behavior. African American women (AAW) are an important subgroup to study because they are distinct from non-AAW and their male African American counterparts on biopsychosocial factors that are relevant to smoking behavior.

Acculturation and body image perception among Latino youth.

Objectives: Examine the prevalence and predictors of body image dissatisfaction and disordered eating among Latino youth.

Design: One hundred and sixty-seven Latino youth were surveyed as part of a tailored nutrition communication intervention. The youth's mean age was 12.