The MacAndrew Alcoholism Scale (MAC) of the Minnesota Mulltiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) identifies individuals who are likely to abuse alcohol with an accuracy percentage ranging from 60 to 82 percent. The percentage of false negatives when using this scale range from 3 to 17 percent. In order to investigate the characteristics of false…

A life-course perspective of the diagnostic histories of 75 autistic individuals (ages 4-25) was obtained through the use of parent surveys and a review of their charts. The study was made to understand better how children who presented with uneven or unusual behavioral development are identified as developmentally multihandicapped. Areas examined…

The 14 conference papers on mental illness focus on the biological, genetic, psychopharmacological, psychopathological, and epidemiological and social factors related to psychoses. Divided into five sections each preceded by a brief introduction, entries include the following titles and authors: "The Biological Substrates of Schizophrenia" (S.…

Research supported in part by the U.S. Department of Labor (OMPER Grant Number 82-06-66-62).

Research supported by National Institute of Mental Health grants MH-08744 and MH-13509, U.S. Public Health Service.

The occurrence of incest in which a female child is molested by an older male family member may be increasing as the number of stepfamilies increases, because previous evidence suggests that girls living with stepfathers are at greater risk for molestation. If psychotherapists will be seeing more incest-history clients as a result of this trend,…

In terms of a dialectical model, the person-situation context is viewed as inseparable and necessarily interdependent. The very diagnostic categories used in the profession are as subject to the zeit geist as are the character structure and behavior of the individual. The evolving diagnostic categories as codified in the "Diagnostic and…

This paper discusses the ineffectiveness of Suicide Prevention Centers in terms of the following: (1) diffusion vs. specific focus; (2) client centered orientation; (3) passive approach; and (4) failure to develop minority programs. Suggestions for improving prevention efforts are presented. (JLL)

To explore the relation between social contact and loneliness in a college student population, 40 male and 41 female undergraduates kept daily calendars of social contacts, recorded their activities for one week, and completed inventories on feelings and social interactions. A replication study involved 64 male undergraduates. The absolute level…

An attempt to operationally define depressive retardation in 72 inpatients aged 4-16 used two percept-genetic tests. In a serial visual afterimage (AI) test retardation was defined as a successive reduction of AI size, and in a serial tachistoscopic presentation using the meta-contrast technique (MCT) it was seen as stereotyped repetitions of…

Informal observation suggested that dark-haired/light eyed females (target group) might have a liability to psychopathology. Questionnaire data obtained from eight large undergraduate classes during a four year period (1974-77) yielded consistently higher percentages of target group individuals reporting hospitalization of first-degree relatives…

School, employer, and self-rating scales were obtained during a 10-13-year followup of 75 hyperactive adolescents and young adults (ages 17-24 years), who were compared with 44 normal matched controls. (Author/DLS)

A technique developed at SUNY at Stony Brook measures changes in second-year medical students' ability to recognize psychopathology following an educational program in psychobiology. It compares ratings of videotaped interviews by the students to the ratings of the interviews made by the faculty preceptors participating in the teaching program.…

Two cognitive models of depression have attracted considerable attention recently: Seligman's (1975) learned helplessness model and Beck's (1967) cognitive schema approach. Describes each model and, in two studies, evaluates the assumption that depression is associated with systematic distortion in cognition regarding causal and controlling…