Pretreatment social functioning predicts 1-year outcome in early onset psychosis.

Objective: The aim was to investigate the association of pretreatment social functioning (12 months before initial presentation) with symptom dimensions and social functioning at 1-year follow-up.

Method: Fifty-six adolescents, age 14-18, first admitted for early onset psychosis, were evaluated at baseline and 1-year follow-up assessing psychopathology (PANSS), social functioning (Strauss and Carpenter Prognostic Scale), and duration of untreated psychosis (DUP).

Results: Adolescents with low pretreatment social functioning were at risk of more severe negative symptoms and lower social functioning at follow-up.

Posttraumatic syndromes in children and adolescents after road traffic accidents--a prospective cohort study.

Background: The impact of road traffic accidents (RTAs) on the physical health of children is well recognized, but their psychological consequences have only recently become a topic of research. While other traumatic experiences in childhood are well studied, this kind of trauma has been poorly investigated to date.

Sampling And Methods: A prospective cohort study was conducted of 8- to 18-year-old children and adolescents who were involved in RTAs in a large urban area during a 6-month period.

[How children experience a parent being chronically ill: a qualitative analysis of interviews with children of hemodialysis patients].

Children's subjective experience of growing up with a somatically ill parent was studied by a qualitative analysis of individual interviews with children having a parent on hemodialysis. Transcripts of semi-structured interviews with 8 children and adolescents between 6 and 17 years and with one ill mother, whose father had had the same disease, were evaluated through structuring content analysis and psychoanalytical text interpretation. All individuals showed a strong sense of responsibility for their parents.

[Trichobezoar in a 16-year old girl. Case report and review of literature].

We present the case of a 16-year-old girl with a 12-year history of trichotillomania and trichotillophagia in combination with mental retardation and early childhood deprivation, all contributing to the growth of a stomach ulcer and an oversized, stomach-shaped trichobezoar which had to be removed by gastrotomy. Included are a discussion of psychodynamic aspects, therapeutic strategies, and significant literature, concluding with a short, historic view on the varieties and therapy of bezoars.

[Parental guilt experience in diseases of their children].

Parents of sick or handicapped children often exhibit strong guilt feelings. These can be justified but equally can be irrational, based on magic, prescientific thinking. However, quite often they have an emotionally stabilising function for the parents.

[Psychological aspects of the preparation and performance of endoscopies in children and adolescents].

Individual observations lead to the realisation that during endoscopy children may develop such a degree of seemingly unexplainable anxiety that the performance of the examination is considerably prejudiced. We therefore examined 39 children systematically, evaluating them according to fearsome products of their imagination on the one hand and real or warranted anxiety on the other. Adjusted to age the children were tested using drawings, projectional tests and role-playing in addition to interviewing, sometimes of their parents as well.

[The body image of children of nursery school age].

Both from the view of the pediatrician (16) and the child analyst (3, 6, 9, 21), and recently, too, by behavioral biologists (15) the emotional aspects of illness and hospitalization have been treated with increasing differentiation. On the other hand there are only few studies regarding the cognitive aspects of the problem, i.e.

["Abnormal reaction" or cultural misunderstandings? A contribution to the improvement of medical care to children of migrant labourers in the FRG (author's transl)].

The overproportional rate of medical treatment of foreign children in the private practice of paediatricians and in the paediatric hospitals imposes very often special difficulties on our medical care system. These difficulties do not only result from the language barrier but also from the vast difference between the illness concepts of our medical system which bases in natural science, and the traditional concepts of the prescientific medical layman system of the foreign patients. Because of the doctors ignorance in these different cultural forms of understanding, feeling and expression of illness, as well as in the specific attitudes to the body, shown by members--specially women and girls--of the South European an Asia Minor societies, it leads often to deep misunderstandings in the doctor-patient-relation and therefore to false diagnosis and wrong treatment.

[Psychological aspects of radiotherapy of children and adolescents (author's transl)].

The increasing importance of radiotherapy in tumor of childhood demands the investigation and consideration of the psychological aspects of this afflicting therapy. In this paper the results obtained by questioning and observing 28 children of different ages, their parents, attendants and employees of several radiological departments are discussed. As the children's fantasies and the resulting anxieties and reactions are depending on the respective intellectual and emotional developmental stage detailed proposals concerning the preparation and performance of radiation in toddlers, school children and adolescents are presented.