Arch Gen Psychiat
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There has been a great deal of research and speculation on the impact of growing up in a single-parent household; however, it is unclear whether exposure to single parenthood is a direct cause of adverse life outcomes. ⋯ The associations between exposure to single parenthood in childhood and outcomes in young adulthood may be explained by the social and contextual factors that are associated with exposure to single parenthood.
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Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter Study Comparative Study
Heart rate variability in acute coronary syndrome patients with major depression: influence of sertraline and mood improvement.
Major depressive disorder (MDD) associated with acute coronary syndrome (ACS) increases the risk of mortality. Decreased heart rate variability (HRV), also a predictor of mortality, is reduced in patients with MDD after ACS, and has been suggested to be a mediator of MDD mortality after ACS. Although selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors may reduce mortality post-ACS, little is known about their effects on HRV. ⋯ Heart rate variability recovery is impaired in depressed patients after ACS. Previously reported differences in baseline HRV between patients with and without depression after ACS grew larger in the 16 weeks following a coronary event. Both sertraline treatment and symptomatic recovery from depression were associated with increased HRV compared with placebo-treated and nonrecovered post-ACS control groups, respectively, but this results primarily from decreased HRV in the comparison groups.
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There is a critical need for practical measures for screening and documenting decisional capacity in people participating in different types of clinical research. However, there are few reliable and validated brief tools that could be used routinely to evaluate individuals' capacity to consent to a research protocol. ⋯ The UBACC is a potentially useful instrument for screening large numbers of subjects to identify those needing more comprehensive decisional capacity assessment and/or remediation efforts.
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Comparative Study
Functional and biochemical alterations of the medial frontal cortex in obsessive-compulsive disorder.
The medial frontal cortex (MFC), including the dorsal anterior cingulate and the supplementary motor area, is critical for adaptive and inhibitory control of behavior. Abnormally high MFC activity has been a consistent finding in functional neuroimaging studies of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). However, the precise regions and the neural alterations associated with this abnormality remain unclear. ⋯ Hyperactivation of the MFC during high- vs low-conflict conditions in patients with OCD may be a compensatory response to a neuronal abnormality in the region. This relationship may partly explain the nature of inhibitory control deficits that are frequently seen in this group and may serve as a focus of future treatment studies.