The performance of a target group of 20 people with intellectual disability (ID) and a comparison group of 20 people who did not have ID was investigated on a series of tasks involving the judgement of the location of pain (on a bodymap) and the intensity of pain (on an analogue colour scale) in response to a series of photographs of simulated painful experiences. The results of the study indicated that: (1) there were no differences between the target and comparison groups in judging pain location for 93% of test items; (2) the performance of the target group in judging pain location was stable over time; (3) people with ID rated the pain images as more intense than the comparison group on all the 'mild' pain stimuli and 36% of the 'severe' pain stimuli; (4) the performance of the target group in judging pain intensity was logically consistent for 65% of comparisons (clear trends towards significance being apparent for a further 10% of items); (5) the performance of the target group in judging pain intensity was stable over time; and (6) the performance of the target group was unrelated to indicators of cognitive ability.
The School Social Behavior Scales (SSBS) is a relatively new teacher-report instrument for assessing social competence and antisocial behavior. The present study investigated the convergent validity of SSBS data with a sample of nonreferred school children. Teachers of participating children (N = 210) completed the SSBS and the Child Behavior Checklist-Teacher's Report Form, and parents completed the Child Behavior Checklist. Internal consistency reliability of SSBS subscale and total scale data were all high. Correlations between subscale and total scores of the SSBS, CBCL, and TRF were moderate and in the expected direction. Results of the present study provide additional support for the reliability and validity of SSBS data. Additionally, results suggest that the SSBS can be used with confidence for accurate, time-efficient assessment of social behavior in a school setting.
Students attending rural academic institutions often have no immediate access to psychiatrists to supplement on-site Counseling Center (CC) services. Because the Medical College of Georgia (MCG) could not cost-effectively provide on-site psychiatry services to Georgia Southern University (GSU) students, the two institutions explored telehealth services delivered by supervised Psychiatry residents using Web-based videoconferencing on MCGs virtual private network. GSU counselors completed client severity rating forms. CC clients in ongoing therapy who were judged to be in need of psychiatric services were referred to the Tele-clinic (TC). CC counselors referred the most challenged students to TC according to total distress score on intake, clinician intake assessment of client difficulty, and client need for medications. After seeing the clients in TC, MCG residents also completed GSU CC client severity rating forms. Post-intake and satisfaction surveys already in use at the GSU CC were completed both by CC clients not in TC and by CC clients jointly enrolled in TC. TC and CC populations were compared by gender, race, past mental health treatment, past psychiatric hospitalization, and past and current use of psychotropic drugs. Telepsychiatry conducted using low bandwidth videoconferencing successfully supplemented GSU CC mental healthcare, especially for clients with the most serious problems, and did so without travel from campus and within the milieu of daily student life. Cost-effective telepsychiatry services can successfully supplement management of students with mental health issues who attend rural, smaller, and/or resource-challenged academic institutions.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.