The results of a national survey of psychologists, randomly selected from the National Register of Health Service Providers in Psychology, reveal that 22% of psychologists have experienced a patient's suicide. This event has a personal and professional impact. Of the psychologists who experienced a patient's suicide, 49% reported intrusive symptoms of stress in the weeks after the suicide; those symptoms are comparable with those of people for whom the impact of parental loss was severe enough to lead them to seek treatment. Implications for the training and practice of psychologists are discussed. Most psychologists who are involved in patient care are concerned about the possibility that a patient will commit suicide during the course of treatment. Many psychologists CLAUDE M. CHEMTOB received his PhD from the University of Michigan in 1980. He currently serves as Research and Development Coordinator and Chief of the Day Treatment Center at the Veterans Administration in Honolulu. He is Associate Clinical Professor of Psychology, Psychiatry, and Public Health at the University of Hawaii. He has a long-standing interest in researching and treating posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and is the principal investigator of a Veterans Administration-funded research program on cognitive dysfunction in PTSD. ROGER S. HAMADA received his PhD from the University of Hawaii in 1987. He is currently a research associate at the Veterans Administration Research Lab in Honolulu. His research interests are in the areas of PTSD and pediatric health psychology. GORDON BAUER received his PhD from the University of Hawaii in 1986. He is a research scientist at the Veterans Administration in Honolulu and at the Kewalo Basin Marine Mammal Lab and is

Using data from our earlier national surveys, we compared the frequency and impact of patient suicide among psychologists and psychiatrists. We also report data from a new survey designed to examine the influence of patient type, practice setting, and pattern of practice on risk of experiencing patient suicide and on its impact on the therapist. Twenty-two percent of psychologists and 51% of psychiatrists reported having experienced the loss of a patient to suicide. Both groups reported experiencing significant disruptions in their professional and personal lives after the patient's suicide. Work setting, kind of patient treated, and profession were most strongly associated with the occurrence of patient suicide. We argue that patient suicide is an occupational hazard for psychologists and psychiatrists.

We examined the ability of Vietnam veterans with PTSD to focus attention on a primary digit detection task while concurrently viewing neutral or Vietnam-related picture and word distractors. Controlling for combat exposure, military service, and psychopathology, veterans with PTSD took longer to detect the target when Vietnam-related pictures were distractors. There were no reaction time differences when word stimuli were distractors. The latency effect was specific to trials with trauma-related pictures and did not spread to neutral trials interleaved within a mixed block of trauma and neutral pictures. Individuals with PTSD recalled proportionally more Vietnam-related words than other groups, implying differential attention to Vietnam-related words. Attending to trauma-related pictures interferes with performance of a concurrent task by individuals with PTSD.

Each of two bottlenose dolphins, Tursiops truncatus, was trained to mimic a set of behaviors on command. They were tested on transfer of the mimic command to a set of familiar behaviors which they had not previously been commended to mimic. They were similarly tested on two novel behaviors. One dolphin demonstrated complete mimicry of 5 of 11 familiar behaviors; the other dolphin mimicked 1 of 9 behaviors. None of the mimicked behaviors was exhibited to an inappropriate model, suggesting that performance was not due to chance. Neither dolphin imitated the novel behaviors.

SUMMARYThe purpose of this study was to compare underwater behavioral and auditory evoked potential (AEP) audiograms in a single captive adult loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta). The behavioral audiogram was collected using a go/no-go response procedure and a modified staircase method of threshold determination. AEP thresholds were measured using subdermal electrodes placed beneath the frontoparietal scale, dorsal to the midbrain. Both methods showed the loggerhead sea turtle to have low frequency hearing with best sensitivity between 100 and 400Hz. AEP testing yielded thresholds from 100 to 1131Hz with best sensitivity at 200 and 400Hz (110dBre.1Pa). Behavioral testing using 2s tonal stimuli yielded underwater thresholds from 50 to 800Hz with best sensitivity at 100Hz (98dBre.1Pa). Behavioral thresholds averaged 8dB lower than AEP thresholds from 100 to 400Hz and 5dB higher at 800Hz. The results suggest that AEP testing can be a good alternative to measuring a behavioral audiogram with wild or untrained marine turtles and when time is a crucial factor.