SOCIAL SUPPORT, PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTRESS, AND PARENTING STRAINS IN MOTHERS OF VERY LOW BIRTHWEIGHT INFANTS.

This study investigated maternal psychological distress, perceptions of social supports, and parenting strains after the birth of a very low birthweight (VLBW) infant. Compared to mothers of term infants, mothers of VLBW infants had significantly higher incidence of psychological distress during the neonatal period, but did not differ from mothers of term infants in their feelings of role restriction, parenting competence, or social supports. Lower general social support predicted high distress levels, but only for mothers of VLBW infants.

CLINICAL/MEDICAL OUTCOME PREDICTION BY NEURAL NETWORKS WITH STATISTICAL ENHANCEMENT.

Neural networks offer a powerful new approach to information processing through their ability to generalize from a specific training data set. The success of this approach has raised interesting new possibilities of incorporating statistical methodology in order to enhance their predictive ability. This paper reports on two complementary methods of prediction.