BACKGROUND Functional symptoms and disorders are common in primary care. Bodily distress syndrome (BDS) is a newly proposed clinical diagnosis for functional disorders. The BDS diagnosis is based on empirical research, and the symptoms stated in the BDS criteria have been translated into a self-report questionnaire called the BDS checklist. The aim of the present study was to investigate the ps...

OBJECTIVE To assess the psychometric properties of the Child Stress Disorders Checklist (CSDC), a 36-item observer-report instrument that measures acute stress and posttraumatic symptoms in children. METHOD The CSDC was administered to parents of 43 children with acute burns and 41 children who had experienced a traffic crash. This instrument was also administered to the burned children's pri...

BACKGROUND There is no information on the socio-demographic variations and determinants of Trauma and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in Kenyan adolescents. OBJECTIVES To describe the traumatic experiences of Kenyan high school students and to determine the levels of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) among them, and in relation to sociodemographic variables. DESIGN A cross-section...

CONTEXT More than 2 decades of conflict have led to widespread human suffering and population displacement in Afghanistan. In 2002, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other collaborating partners performed a national population-based mental health survey in Afghanistan. OBJECTIVE To provide national estimates of mental health status of the disabled (any restriction or lack of ...

Major depression disorder (MDD) is a complex neuropsychiatric disorder and an increasing number of genetic risk variants are being identified. Investigation of their influence in the general population requires accurate and efficient assessment of depressive symptoms. Here, clinical interviews conducted by clinicians are the gold standard. We investigated whether valid and reliable clinical phe...

BACKGROUND Dissociation likely plays a key role in schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder (BPD), although empirical studies that compare specific manifestations of these symptoms in schizophrenia and BPD are rare. In this context, the purpose of this study was to compare the occurrence of dissociative and other psychopathological symptoms in these disorders, and to assess the possibl...

The present study tested whether borderline personality disorder (BPD) is characterized by specific worldviews as hypothesized by cognitive models, using Janoff-Bulman's [(1989) Social Cognition, 7, 113-136] world assumptive model of negative effects of trauma. A second aim of this study was to investigate the role of trauma in the content of worldviews of BPD patients. Fifteen BPD patients, 14...

BACKGROUND The link between early traumatic experiences of abuse/neglect and criminal behaviour has been widely demonstrated. Less is known, however, about the relationship between these experiences and the development of psychopathic personality. OBJECTIVE This study investigated childhood relational trauma in a group of violent offenders from Italy. We hypothesised a higher level of early r...