Search

Background: The mental health of child offenders who are detained in secure settings is a matter of great public and professional concern but there has been little systematic longitudinal research on the outcomes of these problems once the young person has returned to the community. The aims of the present study were to describe the psychosocial outcomes of boys in secure care and to establish if these outcomes were correlated with criminal outcomes. Method: Prospective cohort study of 97 boys whose average age was 14 years when they were admitted to secure units in the North West of England. The boys were followed up on average 2 years later, when outcome data were obtained on 81/97 (83%) cases. The main outcome measure was a standardised assessment of mental health, social and educational needs obtained by interview with the young person and corroborated in most cases by information from informants. All data were then reviewed by experienced clinicians who made best-estimate ratings of need "blind" to the findings from the first phase of the study. Results: The average number of needs requiring an intervention at follow-up (mean = 3.4, sd = 3.0) was much lower than before admission to secure care (mean = 8.2, sd = 2.5) (mean difference 4.9 needs, 95% CI 4.0 to 5.7). Educational and occupational needs were particularly well dealt with. However, many mental health problems persisted or worsened. For example, 31% had a need for treatment of substance abuse, a significant increase compared with when they were in secure care (percentage difference 21%, 95% CL 9.0% to 32.7%). No mental disorder predicted subsequent offending. Conclusions: Boys who have been in secure care continue to have a high rate of mental health problems. The mental health needs of this group are not, however, static but change over time and with changing circumstances. Services need to be designed to meet these changing needs.

Reliable estimation of logic single-event upset (SEU) cross section is becoming increasingly important for predicting the overall soft error rate. As technology scales and single-event transient (SET) pulse widths shrink to widths on the order of the setup-and-hold time of flip-flops, the probability of latching an SET as an SEU must be reevaluated. In this paper, previous assumptions about the relationship of SET pulsewidth to the probability of latching an SET are reconsidered and a model for transient latching probability has been developed for advanced technologies. A method using the improved transient latching probability and SET data is used to predict logic SEU cross section. The presented model has been used to estimate combinational logic SEU cross sections in 32-nm partially depleted silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology given experimental heavy-ion SET data. Experimental SEU data show good agreement with the model presented in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Depressive disorder in children and adolescents can be difficult to diagnose and without adequate treatment is often associated with a poor prognosis.

Many authors have commented on an association between writer's cramp and anxiety and some view it as a form of anxiety disorder. This study describes 22 patients with writer's cramp who were recruited from a neurology clinic. Clinical examination found little evidence of generalized anxiety or of anxiety specific to the writing situation. Additionally, the subjects' scores on the Crown-Crisp Experiential Index, which contains several anxiety subscales, did not differ significantly from those of a matched normal control group. Writer's cramp differs from the anxiety disorders in two other respects: it has a later onset (mean in the 30s) and the male preponderance is much greater than in any anxiety disorder, even social phobia.

The occurrence of depressive disorders in childhood is now recognized, however, doubts persist about their comparability with major depressive disorders in adults. This paper reviews recent studies on the concept of depression and results suggest that links between adulthood and childhood depression exist, but their specificity is yet to be determined.