ABSTRACT
Background: The main objective of this study was to identify and describe core life circumstances of children with mentally ill parents (COPMI) and their parents. Knowledge about COPMI aged 0-17 years is necessary, as assessment of the risk and protective factors in their lives provide solid background for preventive interventions. Methods: Participants (N = 422) were parents of minor children (N = 589) receiving treatment in the clinic for psychiatric illness and substance abuse at the University Hospital of Northern Norway. Data was drawn from electronic patient journals. Results: A total of 286 mothers and 136 fathers participated in the study, and 46.3% were single parents. Parents had 1-7 children (M = 2.24; SD = 1.02). Most parents had one diagnosis (n = 311, 73.7%), and mood disorders was the most frequent type of diagnosis. The largest proportion of parents had serious mental disorders (n = 185; 46.0%), and a large proportion of the sample was affected by disorders of moderate severity (n = 156; 38.8%). The mean age of the children was 8.6 years (SD = 4.97), and 432 children (74.6%) had one or more siblings. The large majority of children had access to adult resource persons other than the mentally ill parent (n = 424; 94%), but 6% of the children (n = 27) did not. About three quarters of the children (76.2%, n = 526) were living with the mentally ill parent (n = 401), and 170 children (32.5%) lived with a single parent with a mental health disorder and siblings, full time or part of the time. The odds that parents had informed their children about the treatment/hospitalization and condition was higher the older the child was (p < 0.001), and the youngest children rarely got necessary information about this. Discussion: Risk and protective factors associated with the children's ages, access to resource persons, information about the parent's health problems and treatment are discussed in relation to different preventive steps for COPMI.
ABSTRACT
Previous studies suggest that transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) can facilitate motor performance and learning. In this double-blind experiment, 60 healthy human subjects (29 females) were randomized into three groups (active tDCS, sham tDCS, and no-treatment control group) in order to investigate the effect of a 20 min session of 2 mA tDCS over the motor cortex contralateral to the dominant hand on practice effect and performance on the Grooved Pegboard Test (GPT) and Trail Making Test (TMT). Performance was operationalized as the time to complete the tests before, during, and after stimulation. The practice effect was termed as the difference in time to complete the tests from pretest to post-test. Data on body mass index (BMI), head circumference, sleep status, interelectrode impedance, and caffeine and nicotine use were sampled to control for the influence of individual differences on the effect of tDCS. Adverse effects were registered using a standardized form. The results indicated no effect of tDCS on performance and practice effects on the GPT and TMT. For all groups, BMI was a predictor for a practice effect on the TMT. In the active tDCS group, high caffeine intake and low impedance predicted a practice effect on the GPT for the dominant hand. The present results suggest that impedance levels in tDCS studies should be routinely reported in future studies, as it might not only provide valuable information on the efficacy of the blinding conditions and participant discomfort, but also correlate with individual differences that are relevant to the outcome of the stimulation.
