Determination of antimony and barium in UK air quality samples as indicators of non-exhaust traffic emissions.

The aim of this study was to determine concentrations of antimony and barium in air quality samples and assess the potential suitability of these metals as tracer elements for non-exhaust traffic emissions sources. Air quality filters sampled at monitoring sites around the UK for the purposes of the UK Heavy Metals Monitoring Network were subjected to microwave digestion in hydrogen peroxide and nitric acid, then analysed by ICP-MS for a suite of metals including antimony and barium. The average antimony concentration found across all the network sites was 1.84 ng m-3; the average barium concentration was 6.33 ng m-3. The range of antimony concentrations observed was 0.13-8.02 ng m-3; barium concentrations ranged from levels below the detection limit of 0.18 to 39.9 ng m-3. There are no legislative limits for antimony and barium in ambient air, but the maximum concentrations found are well below the Workplace Exposure Limits specified by the UK Health and Safety Executive. The highest concentrations were found at roadside sites situated to monitor traffic environments, supporting the suitability of antimony and barium to be considered tracer elements for traffic emissions sources. Strong correlations were observed between antimony, barium and copper, indicating they share a common traffic-related source. Based on the strong correlation with copper at urban and traffic locations, indicative annual UK atmospheric emission estimates for antimony and barium in brake and tyre wear were calculated as 6 and 19 tonnes respectively.

Miocene squat lobsters (Decapoda, Anomura, Galatheoidea) of the Central Paratethys - a review, with description of a new species of Munidopsis.

All squat lobsters of the families Galatheidae, Munididae and Munidopsidae from the Miocene of the Central Paratethys are reviewed taxonomically. Based on additional observations emended diagnoses are provided for Agononida cerovensis and Galathea weinfurteri, from the Lower and Middle Miocene, respectively. Munidopsis is represented by two species in the study area; additional data for M. lieskovensis from the Lower Miocene of Slovakia are presented and a new species, M. palmuelleri, from the Middle Miocene of Slovenia is erected. Implications for palaeoenvironmental reconstructions are briefly discussed for each taxon.

Couple functioning in depression: the roles of sociotropy and autonomy.

We evaluated the hypothesis that interpersonal relationships of depressed persons would vary as a function of the personality variables sociotropy and autonomy. Depressed psychiatric patients who reported being in a current intimate relationship for at least six months were administered measures of sociotropy, autonomy, and several aspects of relationship functioning. Results indicated that sociotropy was related significantly to patients' reporting their own behavior as demanding and their partners' behavior as withdrawing, whereas autonomy was related to patients' reporting their partners' behavior as demanding and their own behavior as withdrawing. Autonomy also was related to greater relationship dissatisfaction, and there was a trend for autonomy to be related to greater criticism of the partner. The results are consistent with a model in which sociotropy and autonomy increase vulnerability to depression, in part, through their effects on interpersonal relationships.

Generating revenues: fiscal changes in public mental health care and the emergence of moral conflicts among care-givers.

OBJECTIVE: The author examined how the focus on financial accountability in the public mental health sector has affected direct service providers' experience of their work. METHODS: This was a two-year mixed method study conducted throughout one small, state-run system. Data that were collected include field notes taken in the course of participant-observation research, tape-recorded semi-structured ethnographic interviews, as well as responses to an ethnographically-informed survey instrument that was administered to providers throughout the system. RESULTS: Interview materials suggest that care-givers view their jobs as a "calling," work that they perform in the service of something greater than themselves. As the public mental health sector increases its emphasis on fiscal issues, however, these employees are experiencing heightened moral tensions around their work. Jobs that were once conceptualized as being done "for love" now are being done "for money" - a change that represents a moral contamination of the workplace for many individuals. CONCLUSIONS: The goal of enhanced fiscal accountability in the public mental health system is to increase service effectiveness and cost-efficiency, that is, to do better work and to do it for less money. These study results suggest that this strategy could backfire, as some service providers must focus less on the qualities of the services they deliver, and more on the quantities. The study encourages mental health services researchers to incorporate ethnographic methods into study designs so that participants' experiences can be taken into account when evaluating the impact of system changes.

A cross-cultural comparison of depressive symptom manifestation: China and the United States.

This study compared depressive symptomatology among Chinese psychiatric outpatients versus the general Chinese population, and across 3 cultural groups--Chinese, Chinese American, and Caucasian American students--by use of the Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression Scale (CES-D; L. S. Radloff, 1977) and the Chinese Depression Scale (N. Lin, 1989), translated from the CES-D. Results indicate that Chinese patients (n = 112) endorsed a higher proportion of somatic symptoms than nonpatients (n = 112). The intercultural comparison found that Chinese students (n = 98) had the lowest levels of somatic depressive symptom endorsement compared to both U.S. groups (n = 198). These findings seem to suggest that the tendency toward somatic symptom reporting is not any greater among Chinese populations but may be a function of having a mental illness or of help seeking in China.

Survey of the use of thromboprophylaxis for medical patients at Christchurch Hospital.

AIM: To determine the level of utilisation of thromboprophylaxis in relation to risk factors for medical patients at Christchurch Hospital. METHODS: All medical wards were surveyed three times over a 12-week period from January 1998. Patients currently under investigation for venous thromboembolism were excluded, as were those currently receiving anticoagulant treatment for unrelated disorders. Primary prophylaxis was defined as the use of low-dose heparins or elastic stockings in asymptomatic patients. Patients with two or more risk factors were defined as being at high risk. RESULTS: Three hundred and eighty-seven patients were interviewed, of whom 80% were considered to be potentially eligible for primary prophylaxis. One hundred and one patients (33%) were at high risk, of whom 20 (20%) were given primary prophylaxis. Cancer, confinement to bed, recent surgery and heart failure were the most common risk factors. Elastic stockings and low-dose heparin were employed in the same proportion of high risk cases but no patient received both. Patients with cancer were less likely to receive thromboprophylaxis than those with the other risk factors. Overall, only about 7% of high-risk patients received thromboprophylaxis for more than 75% of the duration of their stay in hospital. CONCLUSION: Thromboprophylaxis is underutilised at Christchurch Hospital. Guidelines are required and audits of compliance are indicated.

Correlates of suicidal ideation among an elderly depressed sample.

BACKGROUND: Suicidal ideation has been shown to be strongly associated with suicide completion and elders take their own lives more than any other age group. METHODS: The present study examined clinical and phenomenological correlates of suicidal ideation among an elderly sample (n = 167) derived from subjects enrolled in the Duke Clinical Research Center for the Study of Depression in Late Life. RESULTS: Bivariate results indicated that clinical variables associated with psychomotor retardation, a history of dysthymia, a previous psychiatric in-patient stay, and being a 'younger' elder were related to greater suicidal ideation. Multivariate analyses indicated that feeling guilty, sinful, or worthless was associated with over six times greater odds of having suicidal thoughts. LIMITATIONS: Findings are based on correlational analyses, and thus, the direction of causality cannot be inferred. CONCLUSIONS: This study provides evidence for clinicians of some of the 'red flags' associated with the presence of suicidal ideation among depressed older adults.

New onset and remission of suicidal ideation among a depressed adult sample.

BACKGROUND: Previous research has demonstrated that suicidal ideation often predicts suicide completion. METHODS: The present study examined clinical and phenomenological variables associated with the presence, development and remission of suicidal ideation among depressed adults. The sample (n = 81) was derived from subjects enrolled in the Duke Clinical Research Center for the Study of Depression in Late Life. RESULTS: Greater pessimistic thinking at baseline predicted the development of suicidal ideation one year later and the older a person was when he or she first experienced depression, the more likely he or she was to report remission from suicidal ideation one year following onset. LIMITATIONS: Longitudinal analyses were based on relatively small samples. Variables that were not significant in these analyses might be in a larger sample. CONCLUSIONS: The longitudinal design of this study mitigates limitations associated with cross-sectional or retrospective designs and advances our understanding of a clinical profile associated with the development and remission of suicidal thoughts.

Perceived social support among depressed elderly, middle-aged, and young-adult samples: cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses.

BACKGROUND: A number of studies have concluded that the perceived quality of support is more strongly associated with mental health than with the actual structure of personal networks. This study examined clinical, historical, and phenomenological variables associated cross-sectionally and longitudinally with perceived social support. METHODS: Participants included elderly, middle-aged, and young-adult depressed samples derived from the Duke Clinical Research Center for the Study of Depression in Late Life. RESULTS: Cross-sectional multivariate analyses revealed that perceived social support was: (1) for the elderly associated with pessimistic thinking, being divorced, having strange ideas, the degree of social interaction, and instrumental support; (2) for middle-age associated with dysthymia, divorce, pessimistic thoughts, social interaction, and instrumental support; and (3) among young adults with instrumental support only. Longitudinal multivariate analyses indicated that only perceived social support at Time 1 predicted perceived social support 1 year later among elderly and middle-aged subjects, whereas only instrumental support predicted perceived social support 1 year later among the young-adult sample. LIMITATIONS: The small number of subjects among the young-adult sample limit conclusions regarding this group. In addition, only patients provided data. Future studies should consider using multiple informants to enhance the accuracy of reported social support. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings indicate that in addition to whatever else they do for depressed patients, clinicians must endeavor to address relationship or social support difficulties, especially in the elderly.

Slice cultures of the imprinting-relevant forebrain area medio-rostral neostriatum/hyperstriatum ventrale of the domestic chick: immunocytochemical characterization of neurons containing Ca(2+)-binding proteins.

The forebrain area medio-rostral neostriatum/hyperstriatum ventrale, a presumed analogue to the mammalian prefrontal cortex, displays a variety of synaptic changes during auditory filial imprinting. In order to study the underlying basic mechanisms of this synaptic plasticity we developed slice cultures of the medio-rostral neostriatum/hyperstriatum ventrale from newly hatched chicks. As a prerequisite for these investigations and in order to test the suitability of this system for future studies, we performed a thorough characterization of the in vitro tissue, of its cellular components and some of their biochemical features in comparison with in situ tissue. Since in situ the medio-rostral neostriatum/hyperstriatum ventrale has been previously shown to contain three distinct neuron populations characterized by the activity-regulated Ca(2+)-binding proteins parvalbumin, calbindin D28K and calretinin, we used these proteins as neuronal markers to study the survival and preservation of the morphological features of medio-rostral neostriatum/hyperstriatum ventrale neurons in vitro. In agreement with in vivo studies the three Ca(2+)-binding proteins are confined to neuronal cells and they are not colocalized, i.e. they appear to characterize three different neuron populations. The immunoreactive neurons in medio-rostral neostriatum/hyperstriatum ventrale cultures to a certain extent appear to form synaptic contacts with each other, shown by the double immuncytochemical experiments. One difference between cells in vivo and in vitro is their soma size, which is much larger in vitro than in vivo. This and our previous study on neuronal morphology demonstrates that morphologically and biochemically intact neurons can be maintained in medio-rostral neostriatum/hyperstriatum ventrale slice cultures, which may thus provide a suitable in vitro system for further studies of neuronal and synaptic plasticity in vitro.

An appraisal of cognitive therapy.

This review describes the development of cognitive therapy (CT) for depression in the 1960s and 1970s and its application to diverse clinical populations. The question of how CT works, in terms of both active therapeutic ingredients and mechanisms of change within the individual, is addressed. The limitations of CT are discussed, as well as recent developments and modifications of the therapy that have evolved in response to these perceived limitations and that bring it closer to other therapy approaches. The review concludes with some directions for future research.

Sociotropy and autonomy: relationship to antidepressant drug treatment response and endogenous-nonendogenous dichotomy.

This study evaluated the relationship of sociotropic and autonomous personality traits with response to pharmacotherapy for 217 depressed outpatients using the Sociotropy-Autonomy Scale. Sociotropy was related to nonendogenous depression, whereas autonomy was related to endogenous depression. Subjects who had high autonomous-low sociotropic traits showed greater response to antidepressants (and greater drug-placebo differences) than those who had high sociotropic-low autonomous traits (who showed no drug-placebo differences). Hierarchical multiple regression analysis showed that the sociotropy-autonomy, but not the endogenous-nonendogenous, distinction was a predictor of drug treatment response. The combination of endogeneity and autonomy predicted response to placebo. If replicated, these findings may enable better matching of patient traits to various treatment modalities for depression.

Changes in human figure drawings during intensive treatment.

This article examines change in the human figure drawings (HFDs) of 32 seriously disturbed young adults during the course of intensive inpatient treatment. HFDs drawn at the time of admission were compared with HFDs obtained more than 1 year after intensive treatment began; both sets were scored on the Goodenough-Harris Scale (GH) and the Robins Balance-Tilt Scale (RBT). The findings indicate that the HFDs significantly improved over the course of treatment, but only for those patients judged introjective, not anaclitic. These findings are consistent with prior research on the same population that were based on analyses of clinical case records and Rorschach protocols (Blatt, Ford, Berman, Cook, & Meyer, 1988). Significant change in the HFDs over the course of treatment suggests that the HFDs provide a unique and independent dimension for assessing therapeutic change.

Sociotropy and autonomy: differential patterns of clinical presentation in unipolar depression.

We examined the relations between sociotropy and autonomy and clinical features of depression. Beck (1983) proposed that sociotropy is related to a sense of deprivation and clinical features associated with reactive depression and that autonomy is related to a sense of defeat and clinical features associated with endogenous depression. Robins, Block, & Peselow (1989) found support for the hypothesis for sociotropy but not for autonomy, and they suggested that the autonomy scale may be problematic. We administered new measures of sociotropy and autonomy and a more comprehensive assessment of clinical features to 50 unipolar depressed inpatients. The results support the selective relations of both sociotropy and autonomy to the predicted sets of clinical features. This study adds to the growing evidence that these personality dimensions are important to the understanding of depression.

Congruence of personality and life events in depression.

Consistent with the personality-event congruence hypothesis, highly sociotropic depressed patients (n = 19) reported more recent negative interpersonal events than negative autonomy events and more negative interpersonal events than did highly autonomous depressed patients (n = 22), for whom the hypothesis was not supported. There was no evidence of such congruence among nondepressed schizophrenic patients (n = 44). In a second study, there was significant personality-event congruence in dysphoric students (n = 26) but not in nondysphoric students (n = 56). Both the high-sociotropy and high-autonomy dysphoric groups separately yielded nonsignificant trends consistent with congruence. These findings add to the growing support for the importance of the sociotropy construct in depression and weaker support for the autonomy construct or its measurement, and they suggest that the congruence effect does not generalize to all psychopathologies.

Endogenous and non-endogenous depressions: relations to life events, dysfunctional attitudes and event perceptions.

A comparison was made between endogenous and non-endogenous depressed patients on several characteristics on which they traditionally have been asserted to differ, and which play important roles in cognitive approaches to depression. The non-endogenous patients reported more dysfunctional attitudes and a greater number of recent life events than did endogenous patients. These results support the distinction between endogenous and non-endogenous depressions, and suggest that cognitive theories of aetiology may be more relevant for the latter group. However, both groups perceived their recent upsetting events in relatively maladaptive ways, consistent with the idea that biased perceptions are more related to the depressive state, whereas dysfunctional attitudes may represent a trait vulnerability.

Dysfunctional attitudes in depressed patients before and after clinical treatment and in normal control subjects.

To evaluate the role of maladaptive thinking patterns in depression, the authors administered the Dysfunctional Attitude Scale to 112 depressed patients before and after 3-6 weeks of treatment with antidepressants or placebo. Twenty-two normal subjects were also assessed twice. Depressed patients had a significantly higher initial mean score than control subjects, but during treatment their score significantly decreased, and the posttreatment score of those with complete recoveries was nearly as low as the control subjects' final score. The higher the initial dysfunctional attitude score the poorer the response to treatment. Patients with endogenous depression had significantly lower scores than nonendogenously depressed patients.

Toward greater understanding of depression in deaf individuals.

We compared the prevalence of depressive symptoms among deaf and hearing college students and examined the relationships among depressive symptoms, personality characteristics, and perceived parental attitudes and behaviors in these two groups. Measures were revised to meet the language needs of the deaf subjects. Mild levels of depressive symptoms were more prevalent in the deaf than in the hearing students, but more severe depression was not. In both groups, depressive symptoms were associated with perceptions of lower maternal care and higher maternal over-protection. Deaf and hearing subjects did not differ on these perceived maternal characteristics. Depressive symptoms were associated with socially dependent personality characteristics in the hearing sample only. We discuss the implications of the findings for the role of personality development in depression in deaf individuals.

Specificity of symptoms in RDC endogenous depression.

The Research Diagnostic Criteria (RDC) define endogenous depression by the presence of a particular subset of depressive symptoms. This typological approach to classification implicitly assumes that endogenous and non-endogenous patients differ only or primarily in this subset of symptoms, rather than simply in severity of all depressive symptoms. We tested this assumption in a sample of 80 patients with a current episode of major depressive disorder. Whereas RDC endogenous patients (n = 53) had significantly higher levels of most criterial symptoms than did non-endogenous patients (n = 27), they differed on almost no non-endogenous symptoms. These findings support the concept of a specific endogenous symptom cluster.