Among the most pressing considerations in psychological injury litigation is potential overreporting of symptoms or impairments by the plaintiff. It is thus imperative for psychological injury ...evaluators to possess a working understanding of the conceptual and empirical foundations of symptom validity tests (SVTs). This literature review first covers foundational knowledge to guide evaluators in the careful interpretation of SVTs. It then focuses on two of the most well-established SVTs, i.e., the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2-Restructured Form (MMPI-2-RF) and the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI). Each instrument is reviewed for its overreporting scales, including scale development strategies, standard cutoff values, and research support, with particular attention afforded to psychological injury litigation considerations. Findings from this narrative review suggest that both the MMPI-2-RF and the PAI are sound SVTs with growing bodies of empirical support. However, they must be interpreted with special caution in the unique context of psychological injury evaluations, where there runs a greater risk of false-positive identification of overreporting. The strengths of each measure are contrasted, revealing general themes. Notably, the MMPI-2-RF excels in its accumulation of research support and civil litigant-specific norms, whereas the PAI leads SVT research in innovation and advanced detection techniques. Both measures are better equipped to detect feigned psychopathology than cognitive or medical impairments. Recommendations for forensic evaluators and areas for future research are presented accordingly.
Women with alcohol use disorder (AUD) experience more barriers to AUD treatment and are less likely to access treatment than men with AUD. A literature review identified several barriers to women ...seeking help: low perception of a need for treatment; guilt and shame; co-occurring disorders; employment, economic, and health insurance disparities; childcare responsibilities; and fear of child protective services. Women entering treatment present with more severe AUD and more complex psychological, social, and service needs than men. Treatment program elements that may reduce barriers to AUD treatment include provision of childcare, prenatal care, treatment for co-occurring psychological problems, and supplemental social services. Research has suggested that outcomes for women are best when treatment is provided in women-only programs that include female-specific content. To date, research on treatments tailored to the individual needs of women is limited, but research on mechanisms of change has suggested the importance of targeting anxiety and depression, affiliative statements in treatment, abstinence self-efficacy, coping skills, autonomy, and social support for abstinence. Future research should focus on early interventions, linkages between primary care or mental health clinics and AUD treatment settings, and integrated treatments for co-occurring AUD and other disorders. Further research should also explore novel treatment delivery approaches such as digital platforms and peer support groups.
Introducing Psychological Injury and Law Young, Gerald; Foote, William E.; Kerig, Patricia K. ...
Psychological injury and law,
12/2020, Letnik:
13, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Psychology injury and law is a specialized forensic psychology field that concerns reaching legal thresholds for actionable negligent or related injuries having a psychological component, such as for ...posttraumatic stress disorder, chronic pain, and mild traumatic brain injury. The presenting psychological injuries have to be related causally to the event at issue, and if pre-existing injuries, vulnerabilities, or psychopathologies are involved at baseline, they have to be exacerbated by the event at issue, or added to in unique ways such that the psychological effects of the event at issue go beyond the
de minimis
range. The articles in this special issue deal with the legal aspects of cases of psychological injury, including in legal steps and procedures to follow and the causal question of whether an index event is responsible for claimed injuries. They deal with the major psychological injuries, and others such as somatic symptom disorder and factitious disorder. They address best practices in assessment such that testimony and reports proffered to court are probative, i.e., helping the trier of fact to arrive at judicious decisions. The articles in the special issue review the reliable and valid tests in the field, including those that examine negative response bias, negative impression management, symptom exaggeration, feigning, and possible malingering. The latter should be ruled in only through the most compelling evidence in the whole file of an examinee, including test results and inconsistencies. The court will engage in admissibility challenges when testimony, reports, opinions, conclusions, and recommendations do not meet the expected standards of being scientific, comprehensive, impartial, and having considered all the reliable data at hand. The critical topics in the field that cut across the articles in the special issue relate to (a) conceptual and definitional issues, (b) confounds and confusions, (c) assessment and testing, (d) feigning/malingering, and (e) medicolegal/legal/court implications. The articles in the special issue are reviewed in terms of these five themes.
The alcohol treatment literature has established in-session client speech as a mechanism of change that therapist behavior can influence and that can predict drinking outcomes. This study aimed to ...explore temporal patterns of in-session speech in Alcohol Behavioral Couple Therapy (ABCT), including the unique interplay between client and partner speech and the role of speech trajectories in predicting client drinking outcomes. Participants were 165 heterosexual couples receiving ABCT in one of four clinical trials. We coded client speech on an utterance-by-utterance basis using the System for Coding Couples' Interactions in Therapy–Alcohol. We focused on individual-level speech codes of change talk and sustain talk and couple-level variables of positive and negative interactions. We segmented the initial and midtreatment sessions into quartiles to conduct path analyses and latent growth curve models. Path analyses suggested that clients and partners may not have been aligned in terms of treatment goals at the start of the therapy. This misalignment within couples was pronounced during the initial session and decreased by the midtreatment session, reflecting progression toward treatment goals. Of the latent growth curve models, only client sustain talk during the midtreatment session predicted greater client drinking at the end of treatment. Results provide insight into the inner workings of ABCT and suggest recommendations for ABCT therapists. This study also supports a growing consensus that sustain talk may be a stronger mechanism of change than change talk in various alcohol treatment interventions.
•In Session 1, client CT11CT = change talk predicted partner ST,22ST = sustain talk which then elicited client CT.•By mid-treatment, partner CT predicted higher client CT and lower client ST.•Couples' language became more aligned over the course of treatment.•Higher client ST during mid-treatment predicted higher follow-up drinking.
Despite exceptionally high rates of trauma and substance use among incarcerated offenders, treatments remain limited in scope and availability within the criminal justice system. Identifying shared ...underlying mechanisms and potential gender differences could facilitate the development of interventions to target the vicious cycle of trauma, substance use, and crime. This study aimed to test a novel conceptualization of trauma, substance use, and criminal history as a composite risk factor for recidivism, including posttraumatic world assumptions as a hypothesized mediator and gender as a potential moderator. Participants were adult offenders from a community corrections program. Due to many institutional barriers and recruitment delays, the resulting sample size (n = 14, 71.4% men, 50.0% Hispanic/Latino, M age = 36.9 years old) precluded inferential analyses. Regardless, descriptive findings revealed highly elevated histories of substance use, trauma, and posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms in the sample. Participants endorsed fairly negative world assumptions, which corresponded with higher levels of trauma. Over one-third of participants recidivated by the 3-month follow-up, primarily due to substance-related violations. Supplementary analyses of a local jail population (n = 135) found that a history of interpersonal trauma unexpectedly predicted lower rates of 12-month re-arrest, but this finding was not statistically significant when controlling for gender. In both samples, women reported higher trauma and lower criminality at baseline than men. Findings and future directions are discussed within the context of study limitations, lessons learned about barriers to research in criminal justice settings, and broader perspectives gained from the events of the year 2020.
Abstract Physical activity has been identified as a protective factor with regard to tobacco use, such that physically active adolescents are less likely to initiate smoking, and smokers are less ...physically active than non-smokers. These findings, along with the well-documented benefits of exercise on mood and well-being in adults, have stimulated interest in exercise-based smoking cessation interventions. However, little research has explored the relationship between physical activity and smoking characteristics within adolescent smokers. Also, gender differences in adolescents' motives for smoking and exercise may have implications for intervention development, especially in clinical populations. The current study explored the relationship between physical activity and smoking in a sample of adolescent smokers ( N = 191) and non-smokers ( N = 48) receiving inpatient psychiatric treatment (61% female, mean age 15.3 years). Results indicated that smokers were less likely to be physically active than non-smokers. Additionally, there was a consistent pattern of gender differences in the relationship between smoking and physical activity within smokers. Specifically, physically active male smokers were less nicotine dependent and less prone to withdrawal symptoms, and had a trend toward greater motivation to quit, than their non-active counterparts. In contrast, physically active female smokers did not differ in dependence or withdrawal and were less motivated to quit than non-active female smokers. Taken together, these results suggest that within clinical populations of adolescent females, smoking and exercise may be used jointly as weight control strategies. Exercise-based interventions for smoking cessation for adolescent females, especially clinical populations, should address weight and body image concerns.
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