Secondary prevention of childhood firesetting.

OBJECTIVE: The Juvenile Fire Awareness and Intervention Program was established to develop and evaluate an intervention to be offered by fire fighters for children who set fires. METHOD: One hundred thirty-eight children, aged 5 to 16 years, with a history of firesetting participated in a randomized, controlled trial. The intervention involved education about fire safety and a behavior modification program designed to extinguish the desire to set fires through satiation. The frequency and severity of firesetting were recorded for 12 months after the intervention to measure outcome. RESULTS: There was a significant decrease in the frequency and severity of firesetting across all groups, with no additional improvement resulting from participation in the fire fighters' intervention. CONCLUSIONS: There is no evidence to suggest that the multicomponent program offered by trained fire fighters is effective in reducing firesetting. The marked reduction in firesetting across all groups suggests that fire safety education by the fire fighters is the most appropriate approach to this serious community problem.

A 6-year follow-up of the type A behaviour pattern in medical students.

A sample of 104 medical students was tested for the Type A behaviour pattern, using the Jenkins Activity Survey (Form N fully weighted and Form C Glass Student scores) at four points over a 6-year period during the medical course. Fully weighted Type A scores showed a significant increase over the first 3 years of the course, followed by a drop--to approximately second-year levels--by the end of the 6-year period. A similar but non-significant pattern was observed for the Glass scores. It was suggested that the decrease in the scores was related to lesser usefulness of the Type A pattern during the clinical years of the medical course. A significant difference was found for the final written examination, with those who scored above the median on the Glass Student Type A scale doing better than low scorers. This result was not replicated for the fully weighted Type A scores. It may be that there is some specific usefulness of Type A responding for performance on written examinations, although no equivalent performance difference was found for the final clinical examination.