Psychosocial experiences and needs of Australian caregivers of people with stroke: prognosis messages, caregiver resilience, and relationships.

Background And Objective: Despite stroke being the most common form of cerebrovascular disease, there has been relatively little attention paid to the psychosocial experiences and needs of Australian caregivers of people who have had a stroke.

Methods: Twenty Australian informal caregivers and 10 stroke survivors participated in individual semi-structured qualitative interviews covering all aspects of caregiving, including stroke survivors' views on their caregiver's experiences.

Results: The 5 interrelated topics most discussed were changes in relationships and support services, including being told to expect a poor outcome; caregiver attributes and coping strategies; stroke survivor limitations; external employment and financial stressors; and unexpected positive changes in relationships and priorities.

Reduced eye gaze explains "fear blindness" in childhood psychopathic traits.

Objective: Damage to the amygdala produces deficits in the ability to recognize fear due to attentional neglect of other people's eyes. Interestingly, children with high psychopathic traits also show problems recognizing fear; however, the reasons for this are not known. This study tested whether psychopathic traits are associated with reduced attention to the eye region of other people's faces.

A measure of cognitive and affective empathy in children using parent ratings.

The construct of "empathy" embodies a number of characteristics necessary for psychological health in children. Surprisingly, most research has been based solely on children and adolescent report and observational measures despite evidence that multi-informant assessment is fundamental to the accurate measurement of such constructs. We present research documenting the development and validation of a brief parent-report measure of child empathy targeted at the formative years for the development of empathic skills, through to adolescence.