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The article reports on a self-directed approach to the treatment of a complex neurosis with implosive therapy (IT). It demonstrates or investigates the effectiveness of IT in the treatment of psychological disorders typically have dealt with relatively simple, identifiable fears. This paper describes the self-directed treatment of a "complex" and debilitating neurosis, in which identification of the conditioned stimuli was based upon dynamic inferences. The results of the study support the use of dynamic formulations to develop a behaviorally oriented treatment program.

With few exceptions, studies of the families of mental patients have been focused on the parental family of the patient in an effort to trace the etiology of the illness. Almost no systematically collected data exist to permit an analysis of what happens within the family group when a member develops a mental illness. It is the aim of this article to study the problems which the family faces when one of its members becomes mentally ill and is hospitalized in a mental hospital. Systematic data were obtained on: (1) the process whereby the illness is defined; (2) the course of the family's functioning during the illness, in terms of its members' attempts to cope with the situation, both psychologically and materially, and; (3) the ways in which family members relate to each other, the patient, the hospital, and the society.

This article presents discussion related to psychoses. The reader should be reminded that the system was developed on inpatients in public mental health facilities and therefore should work most effectively with such patients. The correlates also may be applicable to outpatients from such facilities, especially if they have become outpatients after having been inpatients, which frequently is the case, or readers familiar with computerized printouts of MMPI interpretations or with skillful clinical interpretations, the interpretive summaries given in this paper may be disappointing on several grounds: Prognostic statements are not included, the reports often are brief, the language in which the reports are cast lacks elegance, scales L, F, and K are not interpreted in terms of validity, and dynamic explanations of behavior are not attempted.

This article deals with one counseling approach used at a mental health center located in a small rural university community. Cognitive material used in the structured instructional segments of the group came from many sources. Basic transactional analysis (TA) theory was adapted from the works of scholar Eric Berne. The counselors wanted to acquaint the boys with TA ideas concerning ego states, transactions, scripts, strokes, and games. The bask principle behind the inclusion of each theoretical aspect was that intellectual insight is helpful in the development of emotional insight and behavior change. Concepts of individual "Okay-ness" were adapted from a sociologist and were especially important in view of the poor self-concepts held by the group members. A goal of counseling was to demonstrate to the boys that each of them bad many positive attributes and that it was possible for all of them to mobilize their strengths and overcome their self-identified areas of difficulty. From past experience in groups, one is aware of clients' tendency not to fully translate insights into behavior and not to work at an optimum level in searching for insights outside the group setting. To stimulate more work on behavioral change outside the group, the concept of structured homework was adopted. Sessions were 90 minutes long, each session having the same basic format.

The effects of seeking help for problems of disturbed behavior are examined to determine the extent to which attidudes toward an individual exhibiting symptoms of mental illness are predicated on knowledge of the particular help-source that the individual is consulting. The term "help-source" refers to the clergyman, the physician, the psychiatrist, and the mental hospital. A Graeco-Latin Square design, used with 300 respondents, provided a large amount of information from a relatively small number of observations. The findings indicate that individuals described as exhibiting identical behavior are increasingly rejected as they are described as utilizing no help, utilizing a clergyman, a physician, a psychiatrist, or a mental hospital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among relatives of formerly hospitalized patients, attitudes toward the etiology of mental illness, the mental hospital, the normaley of former patients, and the responsibility of patients for their condition were assessed by means of short, structured scales. These attitudes were found to be associated with education, age, and verbal ability. There was no relationship, however, between these attitudes and social class, independent of education. The analysis suggests that "enlightened" attitudes toward mental illness can be more parsimoniously accounted for on the basis of differential verbal skills than on the basis of differences in "style of life." Attitudes of relatives were also found to be associated with the post hospital behavior of the patients. Difficulty may be anticipated in implementing procedures to modify the attitudes of patients' family members, for their attitudes appear to be "rooted" in a set of diverse elements that includes socialization as well as situational variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a prior study it was found that mental patients were differentially selective in their acquisition of information about the mental hospital and that this selectivity was significantly related to patient attitudes and discharge rates but not to indices of psychopathology or institutional demands. Although the findings of the previous study supported the model and its associated sets of assumptions, the evidence was primarily indirect and inferential. That is, people examined the assumed antecedents and consequences of adaptation rather than directly investigating how patients live in the hospital. Here, the purpose is to more directly determine whether mental patients adapt differentially to the hospital, and if so, whether these styles of adaptation are significantly related to patient. Information acquisition, attitudes, and length of hospitalization, primarily associated with the patients' pathological status and institutional demands, or instead an outcome of the interaction between patients needs, goals, and attitudes and the hospital environment.

Copyright of British Journal of Addiction (to Alcohol & Other Drugs) is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of British Journal of Addiction (to Alcohol & Other Drugs) is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article studies replicated correlates of Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) two-point code types. MMPIs were obtained from in-patients in all but one of the public mental health facilities (exclusive of training schools for mental retardates) in the state of Missouri. These included the five state hospitals and two of the three regional mental health centers. Although the two-point code method of clustering MMPIs was used to obtain relatively homogeneous groupings, intra-group homogeneity was tested further by dichotomizing each group (where sample size permitted) on the basis of sex, of scale score elevation of the highest clinical scale and of the third highest clinical scale (three-point code type).

The article discusses consistency and change in judgment of criteria for mental health improvement. Patients may learn many of the attitudes expressed in the hospital about what kinds of behavior suggest improvement. Although their progress in and out of the wards can depend on how well they are able to adopt these behaviors, search of the literature reveals little information about what patients consider as signs of improvement. Different staff groups tend to stress behavior relating to their own specialized functions in patient care, and often to minimize the importance of other behaviors considered important by other staff groups. Patients, exposed to varied messages produced by persons to whom they look for care and supervision, must form their own attitudes systematically in the face of somewhat non-coherent communications, or flounder in confusion.

This article discusses relationships between staff and patients in judging criteria for improvement in mental health. A preliminary study suggested that different Levels of staff, and patients with different amounts of experience, mention different kinds of behaviors when asked what a patient does that implies he is getting better. The spontaneous replies of staff were related to their specialized roles in patient care; those of patients depended on amount of hospital experience. These people, however, may have omitted certain behaviors which are very common to this kind of judgment, because they took them for granted or they didn't occur to them. Furthermore, they did not weight their responses by importance.

This article focuses on the exceptional memory for dates and weather in a schizoid psychopath. It has been suggested that this patient's preoccupation with memory achievement has been a factor in preventing the development of his illness to outspoken schizophrenia. There is no evidence of this. It seems rather that he is one of a heterogeneous class of eccentrics who up to approximately 20 years ago were not usually admitted to mental hospitals. Since that time they have been admitted in large numbers and treated with insulin or otherwise. They have swollen admission and discharge rates and given the impression of a greater effectiveness of treatment than is in fact the case.

The article presents information about a comparison of random and judgmental methods of determining mode of outpatient mental hygiene treatment. Much has been written about ways of deciding how to treat patients with emotional problems. The best way of arriving at a clinical judgment for treatment is presumably provided by the "team", consisting of psychiatrist, psychologist and social worker, each contributing his specialized knowledge to the decision. In a recent study, it was found that each of the three disciplines on the team--psychiatry, psychology and social work--was about equally accurate in predicting what the therapist would, at the conclusion of treatment, describe as the preferred method of therapy. No group was very good, however, nor did meeting together as a team improve the predictions significantly.

The article presents a note on an experimental scoring system for the inside test. The author several years ago, wherein the subject's productions were scored as to interpretation, approach, solution and effect, presented an experimental scoring system for Sargent's Insight Test. Reliabilities as high as being shown, the present study was done in order to investigate validity. Two groups of 30 subjects each were given the test in the usual written form. The experimental group consisted of hospitalized mental patients, with diagnoses in neurotic or psychotic categories; the comparison group, applicants for attendant positions in a different mental hospital. All such applicants were being routinely screened by the hospital with interviews and some projective testing. The obtained results show no differences significant at the 5% level or better.