Psychological responses and related factors of college students in Shaan’xi during COVID-19 outbreak / 中国学校卫生

Objective@#To explore the psychological responses and related factors of college students in Shaan’xi during the outbreak of COVID-19, in order to provide reference for the psychological intervention for college students.@*Methods@#A self-designed general data questionnaire and Psychological Questionnaires for Emergent Events of Public Health(PQEEPH) were sent out to students in public university aged 18 to 28 years by Wechat APP from February 7th to 9th, 2020. Univariate and Logistic analysis were used to analyze the influencing factors associated with NCP.@*Results@#The scores of the five factors on the PQEEPH scale were (0.29±0.48) for depression, (0.27±0.46) for neurasthenia, (0.92±0.60) for fear, (0.15±0.34) for obsessive-anxiety, and (0.26±0.44) for hypochondria，The score of fear factors were the highest. And 15.4% had depressive emotional deviation, accounting for the highest proportion of emotional deviation, and the proportion of compulsive anxiety emotional disorder was highest, which accounting for 6.4%. Logistic regression analysis showed that the higher grades were risk factors for depression (OR=1.61, 95%CI=1.05-2.47), obsessive anxiety (OR=1.56, 95%CI=1.05-2.31) and hypochondria (OR=2.01, 95%CI=1.16-3.47) disorders, Non-medical specialties is risk factor for fear disorders (OR=2.16, 95%CI=1.18-3.95)，not believing oneself to be in danger in the face of the epidemic was a protective factor for five types of mood disorders (OR=0.17-0.51), and residence in towns and villages was a protective factor for neurasticity disorders (OR=0.58, 95%CI=0.38-0.87), the gender of female was the protective factor of hypochondria emotional disorder (OR=0.34, 95%CI=0.19-0.62)(P<0.05).@*Conclusion@#During outbreak of COVID-19, psychological intervention counselling and health education of college students should be strengthened. Moreover, psychological problems need be screened in time for intervention, so as to reduce panic and other adverse psychological conditions of students.

A Tradeoff in the Neural Code across Regions and Species.

Many evolutionary years separate humans and macaques, and although the amygdala and cingulate cortex evolved to enable emotion and cognition in both, an evident functional gap exists. Although they were traditionally attributed to differential neuroanatomy, functional differences might also arise from coding mechanisms. Here we find that human neurons better utilize information capacity (efficient coding) than macaque neurons in both regions, and that cingulate neurons are more efficient than amygdala neurons in both species. In contrast, we find more overlap in the neural vocabulary and more synchronized activity (robustness coding) in monkeys in both regions and in the amygdala of both species. Our findings demonstrate a tradeoff between robustness and efficiency across species and regions. We suggest that this tradeoff can contribute to differential cognitive functions between species and underlie the complementary roles of the amygdala and the cingulate cortex. In turn, it can contribute to fragility underlying human psychopathologies.

Taxometric analyses and predictive accuracy of callous-unemotional traits regarding quality of life and behavior problems in non-conduct disorder diagnoses.

Callous-unemotional (CU) traits have mainly been studied in relation to conduct disorder (CD), but can also occur in other disorder groups. However, it is unclear whether there is a clinically relevant cut-off value of levels of CU traits in predicting reduced quality of life (QoL) and clinical symptoms, and whether CU traits better fit a categorical (taxonic) or dimensional model. Parents of 979 youths referred to a child and adolescent psychiatric clinic rated their child's CU traits on the Inventory of Callous-Unemotional traits (ICU), QoL on the Kidscreen-27, and clinical symptoms on the Child Behavior Checklist. Experienced clinicians conferred DSM-IV-TR diagnoses of ADHD, ASD, anxiety/mood disorders and DBD-NOS/ODD. The ICU was also used to score the DSM-5 specifier 'with limited prosocial emotions' (LPE) of Conduct Disorder. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analyses revealed that the predictive accuracy of the ICU and LPE regarding QoL and clinical symptoms was poor to fair, and similar across diagnoses. A clinical cut-off point could not be defined. Taxometric analyses suggested that callous-unemotional traits on the ICU best reflect a dimension rather than taxon. More research is needed on the impact of CU traits on the functional adaptation, course, and response to treatment of non-CD conditions.

Is access to alcohol associated with alcohol/substance abuse among people diagnosed with anxiety/mood disorder?

OBJECTIVES: To investigate the relationship between access to off-license alcohol outlets and areas with dual treatment for alcohol/drug abuse and anxiety/mood disorder compared to areas with anxiety/mood disorder only in an urban setting in New Zealand. STUDY DESIGN: Ecologic study. METHODS: Within small areas (2840 meshblocks, mean size 0.05 km(2)) in the city of Auckland, New Zealand, counts of adults receiving anxiety/mood disorder treatment (2008-9) were identified and the proportions of these individuals also receiving treatment for alcohol/drug abuse were generated. Access to off-license alcohol outlets were defined as: 1) shortest road distance from the population-weighted centroid of each small area to an outlet; 2) count of outlets within a 3 km road network buffer; and 3) relative density of outlets across Auckland (determined through kernel density estimates). To test for the relationship between access to alcohol outlets and dual diagnosis, meshblocks without any cases of anxiety/mood disorder were excluded from analyses. Remaining meshblocks were dichotomized into any or no dual diagnosis. Logistic regression was used to estimate the association between access to alcohol outlets and treatment for the dual conditions. RESULTS: Neighbourhoods with dual diagnosis were generally similar to those with anxiety/mood disorder only, in terms of ethnic and gender/age composition. Regression analyses indicated statistically significant decreased risk of dual diagnosis for those areas with the lowest density (using a buffer) of alcohol outlets (OR = 0.75, P-value = 0.027) compared with areas with the highest density, after adjustment for deprivation and population density. All access measures also indicated significant linear trends where dual diagnosis was more likely in areas with greater access. CONCLUSIONS: Generally, decreased access to alcohol outlets was associated with decreased odds of dual diagnosis of alcohol/drug abuse and anxiety/mood disorder. Measures to control access to alcohol outlets may be an important area for alcohol/substance abuse intervention, particularly for vulnerable sub-populations.