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Biomedical subjects

C Tennant

Publications and source records attributed to C Tennant.

At least 109 records · Page 6Linked to original sources
PubMed1982

Psychosocial stress and ischaemic heart disease: an evaluation in the light of the diseases' attribution to war service.

This review of the psychosocial aetiology of ischaemic heart disease is prompted by a recent decision of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal to accept that the ischaemic heart disease of a non combatant World War II veteran could be attributed to his war service. In the light of existing clinical and research evidence the Tribunal appears to have erred in its judgement. The precedent this particular decision establishes may prove extremely costly.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1981

Parental loss in childhood: relationship to adult psychiatric impairment and contact with psychiatric services.

Both parental death in childhood and parent-child separations (from causes other than death) were assessed in a community survey of psychiatric disorder and in an equivalent sample of psychiatric outpatients from the same community. Symptomatic disorder (psychiatric caseness) and psychiatric illness behavior (patient status) were examined. Symptomatic disorder was defined by comparing community (unreferred) cases with noncases. Illness behavior was specified by comparing the psychiatric outpatients with the community cases. Parental death in childhood bore no relation to either symptomatic disorder in the community sample (psychiatric caseness) or to psychiatric illness behavior (patient status) in adult life. Parent-child separations similarly had no relation to adult symptomatic disorder but were significantly associated with psychiatric illness behavior.

Humans↗
PubMed1981

Adversity and the nature of psychiatric disorder in the community.

It is argued that in their account of mood disturbances, psychiatrists have traditionally distinguished their concepts of depressive illness from distress on the grounds that social adversity provides a completely adequate explanation for the latter, but not for the former. We have already shown in our comparison of a psychiatric out-patient sample with a community sample from the same area that symptoms in the former were more likely to be multiple, severe and of diagnostic significance (J.K. Wing et al. 1981a). In this paper we test the hypothesis that disorders in the community are more likely to be cases of distress. We predict that the association between such cases and social adversity will be stronger than for psychiatric out-patients and that the difference will be accounted for by the differences in clinical picture between the groups. In general our data confirm these predictions.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1981

The role of life events in depressive illness: is there a substantial causal relation?

Assessment of the relationship of life events to minor and major affective illness is beset by several methodological problems. The reliability and validity of measures is not entirely satisfactory. When the stress concept used is that of 'threat' or 'emotional distress' it becomes of crucial importance to define clearly the criterion variable: in particular, it is necessary to distinguish normal distress responses from depressive illness. In those studies using general practice or hospital patients it is important to determine whether life events provoke depressive illness or some illness behaviour such as service utilization. Because of these problems it is still not certain that life events cause depressive illness.

Depressive Disorder↗
PubMed1981

Epidemiology of mental disorders in Camberwell.

A two-stage psychiatric survey of a random samples of adults aged 18-64 from Camberwell is described. Agency interviewers carried out the first stage (N = 800), using the shorter form of the Present State Examination (PSE). MRC interviewers, using the full PSE, saw a stratified sample of these (N = 310) in the second stage. A second interview was sought with all those of Index of Definition (ID) level 5 and above at the first interview ("cases") and with random sample of those below that level 20.9% refused or were never available for the first interview. Of the 800 subjects successfully interviewed, 10% refused a further interview and 124% of those finally selected for this interview were either unavailable or changed their minds. The MRC data, weighted to represent the whole sample, are used in our analyses. The prevalence of psychiatric disorder as defined in our study was calculated at 6.1% for men and 14.9% for women. Women showed a higher prevalence of disorder in the age-groups 25-34 and 45-54, but in men there was no significant association with age. In contrast to the findings of Brown & Harris (1978), social class did not have a strong association with disorder. Single men had much higher rates than married men, while the reverse was true in women. In both sexes employment was associated with lower rates of disorder. An attempt to explain the high prevalence in women in terms of their role in marriage and child-care was only partly successful.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1981

The Present State Examination used by interviewers from a survey agency: report from the MRC Camberwell Community Survey.

A random sample of 800 men and women between the ages of 18 and 64 living in Camberwell, south-east London, were interviewed using a short form of the Present State Examination (PSE). The interviewers were from a professional Agency and had received a shortened version of the usual PSE training course. A further interview was sought one month later with all subjects who were above the threshold on the Index of Definition, and a sample of those below the threshold. At this interview the full PSE was administered by members of the MRC Social Psychiatry Unit. Forty-nine audiotapes of Agency interviews were available for the members of the MRC team to rate. This paper reports the reliability between interviewers. Techniques of comparison were chosen which enabled interviewer reliability to be assessed, without making the assumption that individual subjects would display the same symptom levels over a period of one month. There is strong evidence that at least 2 of the 8 Agency interviewers had thresholds that were lower than those of the MRC team for rating many of the common minor symptoms such as irritability, also the key symptom of depressed mood. At least 4 of the Agency interviewers, however, were rating in a similar manner to the MRC team. There was no marked tendency for thresholds to change over the 6-month period of interviewing.

England↗
PubMed1981

The short-term outcome of neurotic disorders in the community: the relation of remission to clinical factors and to "neutralizing' life events.

A longitudinal study of neurotic disorder in the community showed that half the cases identified at first interview had remitted one month later. Remission was significantly related to four variables: recency of onset and of peak of the disorders, the occurrence of recent threatening life events and the occurrence of subsequent "neutralizing' life events. A neutralizing event was defined a priori as one which neutralized the impact of an earlier threatening life event or difficulty. One third of all remissions were caused by such an event. Remission of disorder was not significantly related to demographic variables, symptom severity, syndrome type, medical consultation or psychotropic drug prescription. The implications for neurotic disorder in the community are discussed, in particular its relation to life events and the favourable outcome in the absence of treatment.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1981

The short-term outcome of neurotic disorders in the community - demographic and clinical predictors of remission.

A one month longitudinal study of neurotic disorders in a London community was carried out, using the Present State Examination, a structured psychiatric interview. Remission of disorder at the one month follow-up was not significantly associated with demographic variables, although remission was somewhat more common in young single males of higher social class. Remission was significantly related to recent onset of disorder and there was a tendency toward lower rates of both medical consultation and prescription of psychotropic medication in the follow-up period. Surprisingly, perhaps, initial severity of the disorder and syndrome type did not predict remission. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1980

Parental death in childhood and risk of adult depressive disorders: a review.

The authors review the evidence that parental death in childhood predisposes to depressive disorders in later life. The findings in general are quite inconsistent; this is due in part to the methodological limitations of most studies, principally that of inadequate control of potentially confounding variables. Where experimental and control samples were most rigorously matched, no association was found between childhood parental bereavement and depression in later life. Parental death in childhood appears to have little effect on adult depressive morbidity.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1978

The social causation of depression: a critique of the work of Brown and his colleagues.

Brown and his colleagues have presented evidence for the social origins of depression from results of 2 community surveys in Camberwell. This paper examines critically their methodology, conceptualization of variables, mode of argument and statistical techniques. Log-linear analysis of their published data fails to substantiate their differentiation of risk variables into vulnerability factors and provoking agents.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1978

Life event stress, social support, coping style, and risk of psychological impairment.

The effects of life event stress, coping style, and social support on psychological impairment were examined in a survey of a representative Australian suburban sample (N = 863). Psychological impairment was defined as a score of 4 or more on the 20-item General Health Questionnaire. Life event stress, coping style, and one of the social support variates, crisis support, were related to impairment, significantly decreasing or increasing the risk of being identified as impaired from the total sample frequency of 24 per cent. There was no evidence that coping style or social support became associated by moderating the relationship between life event stress and impairment, but rather because of their independent relationship with psychological impairment.

Adaptation, Psychological↗