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Biomedical subjects

C G Watson

Publications and source records attributed to C G Watson.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources
PubMed1989

The contributions of self-defeating philosophies, perceived helplessness, and repression to anxiety among psychiatric patients.

Four of the most influential psychological explanations for the development of anxiety attribute it to (1) repressed awareness of undesirable emotions; (2) the emergence of unacceptable feelings from the unconscious; (3) adherence to irrational, self-defeating philosophies; and (4) perceived helplessness/lack of control over one's affairs. To test these theories, the authors administered the Trait Anxiety, Denial, Irrational Beliefs, and Locus of Control scales to 190 psychiatric inpatients. Appropriate zero-order, attenuation-corrected, multiple, and partial correlations were run. Denial was correlated negatively with Trait Anxiety; this is consistent with the view that awareness of unpleasant emotions generates anxiety, but does not support the claim that it is the result of repression. The correlations of Trait Anxiety with the Irrational Beliefs scale were substantial. However, its relationships with Locus of Control were limited and nonsignificant after the effects of the Denial and Irrational Beliefs scales were removed statistically. The findings lend support to the positions that anxiety results from self-defeating philosophies and/or the emergence of unpleasant thoughts about oneself, but give only modest support to the "perceived helplessness" hypothesis and seem to contradict the "excessive repression" explanation.

Adjustment Disorders↗
PubMed1989

Childhood stress disorder behaviors in veterans who do and do not develop posttraumatic stress disorder.

The purpose of this study was to test a variation of the stress-evaporation theory, which maintains that posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms are simply exacerbations of behaviors present before the trauma. Retrospective childhood self-ratings were made by 63 PTSD patients, 53 psychiatric controls, and 28 normals on 13 PTSD-like symptoms. The results did not support the hypothesis, and they give more support to the residual-stress model than to the stress-evaporation theory.

Adult↗
PubMed1988

The comparative recidivism rates of voluntary- and coerced-admission male alcoholics.

The outcomes of inpatient alcoholics who reported that they had been coerced into treatment by commitment or pressure from others were compared in a follow-up study to those of alcoholics who described themselves as voluntary admissions. Ten assessments of control over drinking, number of drinking days in the past week, and intoxication since previous appraisal were made by collaterals between 2 weeks and 18 months after treatment. Even though the data were analyzed in several ways, the number of significant differences did not exceed chance expectations. This suggests that the prognoses of alcoholics who present for treatment under court order or interpersonal pressure were not substantially different from those of men who claim to have entered without coercion. However, the differences between the groups' Control over Drinking ratings, even though not statistically significant, consistently favored the coerced admissions, which raises the possibility that their outcomes may have been slightly better than those of the voluntary admissions.

Adult↗
PubMed1988

The relationships of post-traumatic stress disorder to adolescent illegal activities, drinking, and employment.

The authors compared the self-reported incidences of adolescent legal problems, drinking, employment, and church attendance in psychiatric patients (N = 116) with and without post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and normals (N = 28). The differences did not exceed chance expectations. The data raise doubts about the validity of the theory that PTSD is at least partially a result of pre-traumatic personality maladjustment.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1988

Perceptual distraction in schizophrenia.

The purpose of this project was to determine whether a distractibility deficit at the stimulus-identification level could be identified in schizophrenics after distractor and non-distractor conditions had been matched for difficulty (N = 110). Process schizophrenics, reactive schizophrenics, and psychiatric controls were asked to identify tachistoscopically presented stimuli shown with and without distractors. The distractor and non-distractor tasks were matched for difficulty beforehand by manipulating presentation intervals. The schizophrenics did not show more deficit under the distractor conditions than did the nonschizophrenic patients. Moreover, compared to psychiatric controls, the schizophrenics' performances were no more deficient under distractor conditions than under non-distractor conditions, even before the tasks were matched for difficulty. These findings suggest that perceptual distractibility at the stimulus identification level is no more pronounced in schizophrenics than in nonschizophrenics, especially after difficulty is controlled.

Adult↗
PubMed1988

Differences between posttraumatic stress disorder patients with delayed and undelayed onsets.

In an effort to determine whether they differ from one another in important ways, the authors compared posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) victims who reported delayed onsets with those who claimed undelayed onsets of PTSD symptom self-ratings, MMPI clinical and validity scale scores, stress histories, and repression measures. The number and the sizes of the differences did not exceed chance expectations and did not support the establishment of separate delayed- and undelayed-onset PTSD categories in the diagnostic manual, nor did they support the hypotheses that the delay, when it appears, is attributable to the magnitude of the trauma, the severity of the symptoms, repression, or a limited stress history.

Adult↗
PubMed1988

Radioimmunoimaging of metastatic medullary carcinoma of the thyroid gland using an indium-111-labeled monoclonal antibody to CEA.

Elevated levels of carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) or calcitonin after surgical therapy for medullary carcinoma of the thyroid gland (MCT) indicate the presence of residual or metastatic disease. CEA elevations appear to be prognostically more reliable in patients with metastatic disease and suggest a more virulent tumor. Attempts to stage the disease with use of conventional imaging techniques are usually inadequate, as is the therapy for disseminated or recurrent MCT. An indium-111-labeled anti-CEA monoclonal antibody (ZCE-025) was used to image metastases in a patient with MCT. Potential applications of monoclonal antibody technology in the management of MCT would include (1) preoperative differentiation of unicentric from multicentric thyroid gland involvement, (2) detection of regional or distant metastases or both, (3) measurement of response to systemic therapy, and (4) the facilitation of radionuclide immunoconjugate therapy.

Antibodies, Monoclonal↗
PubMed1987

Performance asymptotes in schizophrenia: a further test of the Broen-Storms theory.

Broen and Storms have developed a theory that attributes schizophrenic cognitive deficit to the combination of high drive levels and low response strength ceiling. The authors tested four hypotheses drawn from the theory in a multiple-choice paired associates learning study (N = 90). The hypotheses were that schizophrenics would demonstrate faster acquisition of reinforced (dominant) responses, lower peak performances, and greater declines in post-peak performance than would two comparison groups. They also hypothesized that all three groups would manifest declines in number of dominant responses after peak performance levels were reached. None of the hypotheses was supported. These results, and the majority of the earlier research on the Broen-Storms hypothesis, cast doubt on the utility of the theory.

Achievement↗
PubMed1987

Recidivism in "controlled drinker" alcoholics: a longitudinal study.

This study tested the conflicting positions which maintain that moderate drinking invariably and rapidly leads alcoholics to uncontrolled inebriacy and that alcoholics are capable of sustaining controlled drinking over long periods without special training. We obtained 3-, 6-, 9-, and 12-month control-over-drinking follow-up ratings on 42 treated alcoholics who had been identified as completely controlled drinkers. Between a fourth and a half were rated as abstinent or controlled drinkers at each follow-up, while 21% to 37% were categorized either as uncontrolled or institutionalized. No subject was completely controlled for more than two consecutive trimesters. However, only 19% reportedly regressed to completely uncontrolled consumption within 3 months of their first evaluations, which casts doubt on the contention that even limited drinking ordinarily is followed by rapid regression. At their final follow-ups, 47% were rated as abstinent or controlled drinkers and only 36% as uncontrolled or institutionalized. The findings did not support well either the abstinence or the controlled drinking position.

Adult↗
PubMed1987

Intellectual deterioration and personality decompensation in schizophrenia.

The Army General Classification Test (AGCT) and the MMPI were administered to schizophrenic inpatients (N = 50) with initially high (mean standard score = 115) and low (77) intelligence at two timepoints separated by an average of 14 years. The Arithmetic scores of the more intelligent group declined significantly with time, but significant changes did not appear on the Vocabulary or Spatial Aptitude scores of that group. No significant mean changes appeared in the low-IQ sample. The high-IQ group's Arithmetic section deterioration resulted from an increased error rate, not a drop in speed. No changes beyond those attributable to chance appeared on the MMPI scales. The results suggest that an intellectual decline limited to certain skills and to a subset of subjects occurs in schizophrenia and that the deterioration is not attributable to personality decompensation as defined by the MMPI. Because these findings appear to contrast with most previous research in this area, they should be considered tentative until confirmed by independent studies.

Adult↗
PubMed1987

The comparative validities of six MMPI repression scales.

The validities of six MMPI repression scales were compared using each of the other five and an independent measure as criteria (N = 190). The data gave little support to the Eichman, Welsh, and Haan Repression scales as operational definitions of this construct. The results for the Little-Fisher Denial, Byrne et al. R-S, and Haan Denial scales showed more promise.

Adult↗
PubMed1987

Endogenous sex hormone levels and breast cancer risk.

Sex-steroid hormones are a major determinant of the risk of breast cancer. We evaluated the relationship between obesity and endogenous estrogen levels in 79 healthy, postmenopausal women. Thirty-nine of the women were siblings of patients with postmenopausal-onset breast cancer; the remaining women were age-matched (+/- 10 yr) controls. Our hypothesis was that the siblings of the breast cancer patients would weigh more and that this excess weight would lead to higher serum estrone levels. The choice of unaffected family members of breast cancer patients reduces the concern that results may have been influenced by the cancer rather than antecedent to its development. Our findings demonstrated a statistically significant excess estrone level in the siblings compared to the controls (58.9 vs 47.8 pg/ml, P = 0.005). The siblings weighed 4.3 kg more than the controls. Matched pairs analysis (sibling-control), adjusting for weight, also showed significant differences in serum estrone levels. These differences were observed despite comparability in dietary intake, medication use, and personal medical history. These findings represent the first time that higher estrogen levels have been measured in siblings of postmenopausal breast cancer patients. This observation may represent an important link in our understanding of the relationship between genetic and environmental risk factors of breast cancer. One approach to subsequent genetic studies of breast cancer may be to focus on the possible biological determinants such as sex-steroid hormone level receptors, oncogenes, and gene products and not on the "familial aggregation" of breast cancer.

Aged↗
PubMed1987

The relationships of anhedonia and the process-reactive dimension to season of birth and infectious disease incidence in schizophrenia.

This project was designed to test two hypotheses drawn from a new formulation explaining the exaggerated winter birthrate among hospitalized schizophrenics. The first is that the supposed exaggerated winter birthrate among process schizophrenics actually represents a reduction in spring-fall births caused by prenatal exposure to infectious diseases during the preceding winter--i.e., a high prenatal death rate in process preschizophrenic fetuses. The second is that the level of negative symptoms in survivors at risk for schizophrenia who were born after winters with high infectious disease rates is exaggerated. The findings provided some tentative support for this formulation. Compared with counterparts born after low-disease winters, schizophrenics born after winters with high disease incidences tended to show lower (more reactive) scores on a measure of the process-reaction dimension but higher anhedonia scores.

Affective Symptoms↗
PubMed1986

A cross-validation of the Keane and Penk MMPI scales as measures of post-traumatic stress disorder.

The scores of DSM-III-diagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) patients (N = 116), psychiatric patients who did not meet the criteria, and normals (N = 19) on the Keane, Malloy, and Fairbank (1984) PTSD and Penk Combat scales for the MMPI were compared. The Keane scale discriminated PTSD-positive patients from normals at a substantial level of accuracy (omega 2 = .23; mean hit rate = 80.5%) and PTSD-positive from PTSD-negative patients at a more modest level (omega 2 = .09; mean hit rate = 64%). The scores of the PTSD-positive and PTSD-negative patients were considerably lower than those of Keane et al.'s (1984) samples, which suggests that local norms may be needed to facilitate their interpretation. The Penk Combat Intensity scale, which was correlated highly with the Keane scale, differentiated the PTSD-positive patients from both the normals and the PTSD-negative patients, but with less differentiating power (omega 2'S = .07 and .08). The Penk Combat Exposure scale did not separate the groups.

Combat Disorders↗
PubMed1986

Concurrent and predictive validity of components of disordered thinking in schizophrenia.

Although the various manifestations of disordered thought have played a central role in diagnostic and theoretical considerations of schizophrenia, such symptoms have not been found specific to schizophrenia, and at best have shown weak relations to outcome. As part of a 7-year followup study of a sample of young, acute, psychotic inpatients, we explored the hypothesis that despite these poor results there might be particular components of disordered thought that might have prognostic utility and be able to discriminate narrowly defined schizophrenics. Using extant symptom scales as our models, we constructed five internally consistent scales of disordered thought from behavioral ratings made using the Psychotic Inpatient Profile--Poverty of Speech, Attentional Impairment, Incoherence, Delusions, and Hallucinations. We tested the ability of these scales to predict various aspects of outcome adaptation including outcome diagnosis. In general, the Attentional Impairment scale demonstrated the best prognostic utility, predicting poorer outcome in several domains. Paradoxically, patients diagnosed by Research Diagnostic Criteria (RDC) as definite schizophrenic at outcome had been rated as showing less attentional impairment than probable and nonschizophrenics. An examination of the pattern of correlations between Attentional Impairment and performance on cognitive tasks suggested that attentional difficulties may be related to different underlying cognitive processes in those diagnosed schizophrenic and nonschizophrenic at outcome by RDC.

Adult↗
PubMed1986

The definition of posttraumatic stress disorder in alcoholic Vietnam veterans. Are the DSM-III criteria necessary and sufficient?

The authors evaluated the validities of the DSM-III elements defining posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in alcoholic Vietnam veterans by studying the relationships of each to qualification for a PTSD diagnosis under DSM-III standards, the history of a major stressor (3 or more months of combat), and the presence/absence of enough other problems to meet the symptomatic DSM-III requirements for this diagnosis. Elements dealing with the reexperiencing of traumas, diminished pleasure, detachment from others, hyperalertness, sleep disturbance, guilt over behaviors required for survival, and avoidance of stimuli reminiscent of traumas showed substantial correlations with eligibility for a PTSD diagnosis. However, items dealing with emotional expressiveness, response to intimacy, survival guilt, impaired memory, and trouble concentrating either failed to correlate with qualification for a PTSD diagnosis or yielded marginal results. One ("lacking direction") of 10 additional symptoms sometimes termed as "post-Vietnam syndrome" behaviors correlated with eligibility for a PTSD diagnosis as well. The present results and those described in earlier studies suggest that several modifications in the DSM-III definition of PTSD are desirable.

Adult↗
PubMed1985

Factor analysis of the aftereffects of drinking in alcoholics.

Research that deals with the causes of alcoholism has been hampered by the absence of factor analyses that deal specifically with ethanol's aftereffects. We factor analyzed 100 alcoholics' reports of the effects that they experience after alcohol consumption. Five factors emerged--Hangover, Euphoria, Flushing, Seizures, and Sleepiness. They are described and discussed. Future investigators may find them helpful in assessing theories on the etiology of alcoholism and in studies of ethanol's effects on subsets of alcohol abusers.

Adult↗