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The purpose of this paper is to provide further understanding of the influence of multiple categorization on perceptions of discrimination in people with severe mental illness (SMI), including reasons they feel discriminated against (e.g. race) and in what context (e.g. employment). Multiple categorization is defined as simultaneously belonging to race (i.e. Black, White) and gender (i.e. male, female) groups. This paper addresses four questions: 1. How do four subgroups (i.e. Black males, Black females, White males, and White females) of individuals with SMI differentially perceive discrimination? 2.How do these subgroups differentially perceive discrimination as occurring due to various categorizations (i.e. mental disability/ability, race, and gender)? 3. How do these subgroups differentially perceive being discriminated against in life domains (i.e. employment, education, and housing)? 4. How do these subgroups differentially experience stress related to discrimination in life domains? Six hundred and four individuals with SMI participating in the baseline interview for a study on consumer operated services completed a four-part Discrimination Questionnaire. Analyses indicated multiple categorization (i.e. belonging to different subgroups such as White females) influences feeling discriminated against, attributions of discrimination to various categorizations, and stress related to discrimination in employment. However, findings did not indicate multiple categorization influences discrimination in employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Sante Mentale au Quebec is the property of Revue Sante Mentale au Quebec 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 Sante Mentale au Quebec is the property of Revue Sante Mentale au Quebec 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 Sante Mentale au Quebec is the property of Revue Sante Mentale au Quebec 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.)

Spatial learning abilities in younger adults and in healthy elderly adults were examined in 2 tasks. In the first task, participants were tested for their ability to recall relevant route information as well as to recognize and to order temporally landmark information observed along the route. Older participants had relatively greater difficulty retracing the route and temporospatially ordering landmarks but were equally good at recognition of landmarks occurring on the route. In the second task, participants memorized a 2-dimensional representation of a route and subsequently navigated the route from memory. Older participants had greater difficulty memorizing the route and navigating it. Errors of omission, commission, wrong, and forced choice were analyzed. Group differences in the pattern of errors differed by task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-stigma can undermine self-esteem and self-efficacy of people with serious mental illness. Coming out may be one way of handling self-stigma and it was expected that coming out would mediate the effects of self-stigma on quality of life. This study compares coming out to other approaches of controlling self-stigma. Eighty-five people with serious mental illness completed measures of coming out (called the Coming Out with Mental Illness Scale, COMIS), self-stigma, quality of life, and strategies for managing self-stigma. An exploratory factor analysis of the COMIS uncovered two constructs: benefits of being out (BBO) and reasons for staying in. A mediational analysis showed BBO diminished self-stigma effects on quality of life. A factor analysis of measures of managing self-stigma yielded three factors. Benefits of being out was associated with two of these: affirming strategies and becoming aloof, not with strategies of shame. Implications for how coming out enhances the person's quality of life are discussed.

Stigma may interfere with mental health service use. We measured self-stigma and stigma-related cognitions (group identification and perceived legitimacy of discrimination) at baseline in 85 people with schizophrenia, schizoaffective or affective disorders. After 6 months, 75 (88%) had reported use of mental health services. Controlling for baseline psychopathology, perceived stigma and diagnosis, low perceived legitimacy of discrimination predicted use of counselling/psychotherapy. Strong group identification was associated with participation in mutual-help groups. More self-stigma predicted psychiatric hospitalisation. Cognitive indicators of stigma resilience may predict out-patient service use, whereas self-stigma may increase the risk of psychiatric hospitalisation.

Objective: This study provides preliminary evidence for the effectiveness of a residential program with comprehensive wrap-around services for pregnant and parenting foster care youth with severe mental illness or severe emotional disturbance who are preparing to transition to independent living., Methods: Twenty-five females ages 18 to 21 participated. Program effectiveness was determined by tracking monthly status changes, such as education, employment, and hospitalizations, as well as by comparing scores on four bi-annually administered standardized assessments of parenting competency and stress, child maltreatment risk, and mental health symptoms., Results: Assessment findings indicate that program participation is associated with positive changes in participants' familial relationships, family responsibility and care, proper parenting behavior and feelings, and parental distress and competency, but no change in mental health symptoms. Positive behavior changes associated with program participation were observed in education, employment, and low numbers of suspected and substantiated child maltreatment reports. Negative behavior changes associated with the program were frequency of AWOL incidents and subsequent pregnancies., Conclusions: This is the first study to evaluate a program designed for this very unique population and has implications for program design and policy. Future research with more rigorous experimental design is necessary in order to understand the critical ingredients of programs serving this vulnerable population.

Stigma can be a major stressor for individuals with schizophrenia and other mental illnesses. It is unclear, however, why some stigmatized individuals appraise stigma as more stressful, while others feel they can cope with the potential harm posed by public prejudice. We tested the hypothesis that the level of perceived public stigma and personal factors such as rejection sensitivity, perceived legitimacy of discrimination and ingroup perceptions (group value; group identification; entitativity, or the perception of the ingroup of people with mental illness as a coherent unit) predict the cognitive appraisal of stigma as a stressor. Stigma stress appraisal refers to perceived stigma-related harm exceeding perceived coping resources. Stress appraisal, stress predictors and social cue recognition were assessed in 85 people with schizophrenia, schizoaffective or affective disorders. Stress appraisal did not differ between diagnostic subgroups, but was positively correlated with rejection sensitivity. Higher levels of perceived societal stigma and holding the group of people with mental illness in low regard (low group value) independently predicted high stigma stress appraisal. These predictors remained significant after controlling for social cognitive deficits, depressive symptoms and diagnosis. Our findings support the model that public and personal factors predict stigma stress appraisal among people with mental illness, independent of diagnosis and clinical symptoms. Interventions that aim to reduce the impact of stigma on people with mental illness could focus on variables such as rejection sensitivity, a personal vulnerability factor, low group value and the cognitive appraisal of stigma as a stressor.

Stigma can be a major stressor for people with schizophrenia and other mental illnesses, leading to emotional stress reactions and cognitive coping responses. Stigma is appraised as a stressor if perceived stigma-related harm exceeds an individual's perceived coping resources. It is unclear, however, how people with mental illness react to stigma stress and how that affects outcomes such as self-esteem, hopelessness and social performance. The cognitive appraisal of stigma stress as well as emotional stress reactions (social anxiety, shame) and cognitive coping responses were assessed by self-report among 85 people with schizophrenia, schizoaffective or affective disorders. In addition to self-directed outcomes (self-esteem, hopelessness), social interaction with majority outgroup members was assessed by a standardized role-play test and a seating distance measure. High stigma stress was associated with increased social anxiety and shame, but not with cognitive coping responses. Social anxiety and shame predicted lower self-esteem and more hopelessness, but not social performance or seating distance. Hopelessness was associated with the coping mechanisms of devaluing work/education and of blaming discrimination for failures. The coping mechanism of ingroup comparisons predicted poorer social performance and increased seating distance. The cognitive appraisal of stigma-related stress, emotional stress reactions and coping responses may add to our understanding of how stigma affects people with mental illness. Trade-offs between different stress reactions can explain why stress reactions predicted largely negative outcomes. Emotional stress reactions and dysfunctional coping could be useful targets for interventions aiming to reduce the negative impact of stigma on people with mental illness.

Introduction: Chronic schizophrenia patients have previously demonstrated performance deficits in contour integration tasks. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether schizophrenia patients, spanning a range of illness severity, would demonstrate responsiveness to manipulations that recruit top-down processing strategies involving learning and sequencing effects in a contour integration task., Methods: We administered a contour integration test over four consecutive days and in two different presentation conditions each day. In one condition, the stimuli were administered in order of increasing difficulty, and in the other they were presented in random order. The order in which these two conditions were presented was counterbalanced across days and participants. In addition, a nonschizophrenia psychotic disorders control group was included to determine if past findings of a contour integration deficit in schizophrenia could be replicated in the presence of a symptomatically similar control group., Results: All groups demonstrated similar learning curves across the four days and generally similar overall levels of performance, with the exception of the group of the most chronic schizophrenia patients. In addition, the order in which the stimuli were presented to subjects affected their performance, with higher scores achieved for all groups in the condition where the stimuli were presented in increasing order of difficulty. Interaction effects revealed that the effects of order presentation were greater for nonpatient than for psychotic patients., Conclusions: These data are further evidence that perceptual organization impairments in schizophrenia are illness severity-related, and that schizophrenia patients as a whole are less sensitive to top-down manipulations in this type of task.

Introduction: In a previous study (Silverstein, Bakshi, Chapman, & Nowlis, 1998a, Cognitive Neuropsychiatry) we demonstrated that while schizophrenia patients showed similar learning curves as nonpatient controls when determining whether a configural pattern of elements has been seen before or not, they did not demonstrate any learning curve with nonconfigural stimuli (in contrast to controls). Methodological limitations of that study, however, precluded generalisability of those effects., Methods: In the present study, therefore, different groups of schizophrenia patients (n = 18) and controls (n = 22) were administered a modified version of the familiarity judgement task used in Silverstein et al. (1998a). In the new version of the task: (1) the patterns that repeated were different for each participant; and (2) half of the nonrepeating patterns were configural and half were nonconfigural., Results: These indicated stronger perceptual learning effects for the configural compared to the nonconfigural patterns, and overall better performance and more pronounced learning effects for the control group., Conclusions: The data provide further evidence for a schizophrenia-related impairment in perceptual organisation and in the ability to develop memory representations for novel stimuli.

As observed with intraseptal injections of opioid receptor agonists, direct infusions of GABAergic receptor agonists into the medial septum impair performance on several tasks that involve spatial or working memory processes in rats. Because the effects of opioid-induced impairments can be reliably reversed by concomitant intraseptal infusions of glucose, the experiments reported here determined whether impairments produced by GABAergic agonists would similarly be reversed by glucose. The findings of Experiment 1 showed, in male Sprague-Dawley rats, that intraseptal infusions of the GABA agonist muscimol (1 or 3 nmol/0.5 microliter) impaired spontaneous alternation performance. The results of Experiment 2 indicated that intraseptal infusions of glucose (8, 17, or 33 nmol) or glutamate (15 or 30 nmol) did not attenuate the muscimol-induced deficit on spontaneous alternation performance, whereas infusions of the GABAergic antagonist bicuculline methiodide (0.1 nmol) did. However, the findings of Experiment 3 indicated that glucose injections (50 nmol/0.5 microliter) into the hippocampus did reverse the impairing effect of the intraseptal muscimol infusions. Combined, these findings suggest that the neurochemical regulation of learning and memory may involve hierarchical interactions between particular neurotransmitter and neuroanatomical systems. Specifically, medial septal GABAergic effects on spontaneous alternation prevail over those of glucose or glutamate in the medial septum, but are overridden by the effects of glucose in the hippocampus.

Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded from a group of 13 men with severe developmental dyslexia and 15 matched normal controls. Auditory and visual stimuli, presented in separate reaction time tasks of graded difficulty, were used to elicit ERPs. No group differences in P300 were seen under relatively undemanding task conditions. However, as task demands increased, visual P300 was reduced in the dyslexic men as compared with the normal readers. An Abbreviated Conners Parent Rating Scale was used to assess retrospectively childhood symptoms of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Additional analyses revealed that the dyslexics with a history of many symptoms of ADHD in childhood (high ADHD) accounted for the group differences in P300; the dyslexics with a history of few or no such symptoms (low ADHD) were indistinguishable from the controls at all electrode sites. Furthermore, whereas the low-ADHD dyslexics showed the same hemispheric asymmetry in auditory P300 as did the controls (right > left), auditory P300 was more symmetrically distributed in the high-ADHD dyslexics. The results are interpreted as suggesting that a distinct brain organization may characterize dyslexic men with a history of concomitant deficits in attention.