Help For Emotional Problems Research Articles

Psychiatric disorders in a U.S. community. The application of research diagnostic criteria to a resurveyed community sample.

Point prevalence rates of psychiatric disorders, risk factors, and treatment sought for the disorders are presented, based on a 1975--1976 follow-up of a community probability sample originally surveyed in 1967. These data, while preliminary because of the limitations of a follow-up study, demonstrate the first application to a community sample of new psychiatric diagnostic techniques (SADS-RDC), which are being used with increasing frequency in the United States. The forthcoming DSM-III will be based on these diagnostic techniques. These results, consistent with other reports, show that depression is the most common psychiatric disorder in the community; that schizophrenia and bipolar disorders both have low frequency; and that psychiatric disorders are heterogeneous by age, sex, race, social class, marital status. While persons with a psychiatric disorder tend to use the health care system in the United States, they do not specifically seek help for emotional problems. Since the majority of psychiatric disorders are untreated in the mental health system, prevalence rates of psychiatric disorders based on cases receiving treatment in psychiatric facilities are a gross underestimate.

Choosing a Psychotherapist

THE PRACTICE of psychotherapy begs one and all to become practitioners of the art. The person (the consumer) who feels the need for help for emotional problems, where does he go and go with confidence? Selecting a competent physician involves many uncertainties; choosing a psychotherapist is a near impossibility. A surgeon may be judged by the neatness of the scar or the frequency of complications; the psychotherapist has no such measure. Anyone can play, and does. The question of how one chooses a therapist has plagued both helper and patient since the widespread acceptance of psychotherapy. The recent proliferation of modes of therapy and the folk culture surrounding approaches to emotional illness have compounded the difficulty. The proper approach to this problem is vital to the success of the ensuing endeavor, ie, the treatment itself. What follows is an attempt at a resolution or at least an understanding of the

Attitudes toward women and orientation to seeking professional psychological help

Studied the relationship between attitudes toward the rights and proper roles of women in society and attitudes toward seeking professional help for emotional problems in a sample of 80 college students. Liberal attitudes toward women were associated with positive help-seeking attitudes in men and women, contrary to predictions based on prior research and on feminist criticisms of the mental health profession. No sex difference in attitudes toward help-seeking was found; however, the attitudes toward women variable appears to be at least as good a predictor of actual help-seeking as a person's attitude toward help-seeking, within the sample studied.

Replicating Psychiatric Ratings Through Multiple Regression Analysis: The Midtown Manhattan Restudy

This paper examines three related questions: First, can psychiatrists' judgments be successfully predicted by multiple regression techniques? Second, assuming that they can, are such ratings a valid measure of mental health for the same sample at a later point in time? Third, what is the relation between mental health ratings made in 1954 and such subsequently reported behavioral outcomes as nervous breakdown, mental hospitalization, or seeking professional help for emotional problems? The evidence presented warrants two conclusion. (1) The computer-derived mental health ratings are an adequate substitute for the original ratings. The regression equation accounts for 69 percent of the variance in those ratings; and the computer-derived ratings behave in the same way as the psychiatrists' ratings in relation to other variables. (2) However, neither the psychiatrists' ratings nor the computer-derived ratings are very accurate in predicting subsequent self-reported behavior indicative of mental impairment.

Further observation on study difficulty in university students including 'syllabus-boundess'.

The UCLS questionnaire, in a form modified to include a measure of syllabus-boundness, and a questionnaire to measure psychiatric symptomatology (the MHQ) were administered to two groups of students, one seeking help for emotional problems, the other a control group. Groups were compared on tests, test findings were inter-correlated, and scores were related to academic success. The UCLSQ is confirmed as a reliable research instrument. Principal component analysis again indicates a separation of psychoneurotic and motivational components of study difficulty. Syllabus-boundness ('Sylbism') emerges as a relatively independent trait, with a significant negative relationship to work satisfaction in both groups. MHQ scores again show a positive correlation between phobic anxiety and academic attainment for patients.

Further Validation of a Psychiatric Symptom Index in a Normal Population

A shortened version of the Hopkins Symptom Distress Checklist was constructed for use in a Chicago survey of stress and coping and administered to a cross-section of 2,299 non-patient adults. Labeled the Psychiatric Symptom Index, it measures intensity of 29 different symptoms and allows retrospective self-report of their duration for those respondents reporting high symptoms. This paper reports on the rationale of its construction and on its concurrent validity. For the general adult population the responses to the Index, when factor analyzed, break very clearly into four syndromes: depression, anxiety, anger, cognitive disturbance. Concurrent validity is tested by three criteria: having sought out professional help for emotional problems, having recently used psychoactive drugs, and interviewers' rating respondents' degree of tension. These criteria are significantly related to the Psychiatric Symptom Index and to each of its four syndrome factors.

Characteristics of university students with emotional problems.

In an attempt to further clarify back-ground characteristics associated with emotional problems among university students, forty-nine social and medical variables were selected for study and applied in questionnaire form to three groups of University of Western Ontario students: 1) seventy-three students consulting psychiatric services; 2) one hundred and fifty-three students consulting the Counsellor of the Student Health Service on the campus; 3) a control group of 243 students drawn from the Student Directory, not in 1) or 2) above, representing 243 of 250 questionnaires sent out. On comparing the three groups, each with the other two, (and repeated for males, females and both sexes combined) 25 of the 49 variables demonstrated significant (p<0.05) differences. The counselled and psychiatric groups (as compared with controls) demonstrated trends toward ‘single' marital status, the arts courses, lower grades, less time studying, more frequent course changes, less extracurricular participation, being in a course not fulfilling father's expectations, fewer ‘definite' religious affiliations, more frequent medical consultations and previous help for emotional problems and several somatic symptoms. Some of these significant relationships were contributed largely by either the males or the females in the samples, i.e. there is a differentiation of some of the findings by sex. On 10 of the 25 variables showing significant differences between groups, the response distribution for the counselled group was intermediate between that for the control and psychiatric groups. The findings were in agreement with previous investigations for most of the variables, and in disagreement for a few. There is evidence to suggest that groups of variables may cluster into syndrome-like patterns.