Impulsivity as a correlate of suicidal behavior in adolescent psychiatric inpatients.

One hundred and eighteen inpatient adolescents in a psychiatric hospital were evaluated to determine the relationship of aggression, self injury, and suicidal behavior to impulsivity. It was hypothesized that all these variables would be significantly and positively correlated with one another. This hypothesis was in part based on the results of psychobiological research that found serotonin dysfunction to be the common denominator of these psychopathological dimensions. As predicted, a significant correlation was found between the measures of suicidal behavior, aggressive behavior, and impulsivity. This correlation between suicidal behavior and impulsivity remained after partialing out the factor of aggression. Furthermore, the correlations between impulsivity and suicidality appeared greater in males than in females. Since male suicide attempters are more likely to eventually commit suicide than female suicide attempters, these findings may have a bearing on suicide prediction.

The child suicide potential scale: inter-rater reliability and validity in Israeli in-patient adolescents.

The objective of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Hebrew version of the Child Suicide Potential Scale for use with psychiatrically hospitalized adolescents. The criterion validity, the parallel validity, the internal consistency, the inter-rater reliability and the test-retest reliability were assessed. One hundred eighty-five adolescent in-patients, consecutive admissions to a locked adolescent unit, were interviewed by a single interviewer. The subjects filled out a series of self report questionnaires and were also rated on an observational measure by the ward staff. In addition, 30 adolescents were interviewed by two raters simultaneously, in order to check the inter-rater reliability of this semi-structured interview. Twenty-three of the interviewees were re-interviewed after 6-12 months in order to assess the test-retest reliability. The majority of the Pearson correlation coefficients between the Child Suicide Potential Scale and parallel self report measures were also statistically significant. The internal consistencies of sections in the scale were high. The scale was found to have good parallel validity, by differentiating between suicidal and non-suicidal patients. The Pearson Correlation Coefficients between the two raters were markedly significant. The test-retest reliability was low. These results indicate that the Child Suicide Potential Scale is a reliable and fairly valid tool for the assessment of suicidal behavior in adolescent in-patients in Israel.

The adolescent parturient: a study of an Israeli population.

The aim of this study was to describe the frequency and characteristics of adolescent deliveries and to identify issues that might require intervention, in Haifa District, which is the third largest in Israel. The specific objectives were to assess the prevalence of 15-19-year-old parturients in the district, to characterize the younger (15-17-year) age group for demographics and educational status as well as for pregnancy and delivery progress, to describe the newborn babies of these mothers, and to compare the Jewish and Arabic subpopulations within the younger group for these parameters.

PIP: The frequency and characteristics of adolescent deliveries in Israel were investigated through a review of the records of 195 young women 15-17 years of age who gave birth during 1984-88 at the 3 main hospitals in Haifa district. The mean number of annual deliveries by teenagers 15-19 years of age in this district was 321, corresponding to a fertility rate of 19 live births/1000 female adolescents. 57.7% of the 15-17 year old mothers were Jewish and 38.6% were Moslem. At delivery, only 11% were attending school and two-thirds were married. All the husbands/partners were older than 19 years. 76% of the pregnancies did not have any accompanying health problems and 87% were full-term births. The birth weight distribution was similar to that recorded for infants of non-adolescent women. There were 3 deaths: 2 stillbirths and 1 death of a premature infant. The relatively favorable pregnancy outcomes in this cohort in part reflect the availability of free prenatal care in Israel and its utilization by 97% of the population, regardless of educational level. The promotion of school attendance for Israeli girls who have dropped out of school is recommended to reduce pregnancy in this age group.

Psychological aspects of developmental endocrinopathies in adolescence.

Ninety-six adolescents referred to a pediatric endocrinology clinic were divided into eight groups according to degree of sexual maturity and height. Each adolescent was assessed by a psychiatric interview, a self-concept questionnaire, a human figure drawing test and a cognitive screening battery. The results showed a definite deleterious effect of growth retardation, but not sexual maturity, on self-concept. Sex of the adolescent did not affect the results. Cognitively there was no difference between groups. The psychological impact of short stature should be taken into consideration in the decision to utilize pharmacological or delay of puberty.

Psychiatric diagnoses in hospitalized adolescent and adult Ethiopian immigrants in Israel.

In 1984-85 Operation Moses brought a mass immigration of Jewish Ethiopians to Israel. Many of these immigrants were children and adolescents who came on their own having left their families behind. Since that time the adolescent department at the Geha Psychiatric Hospital has had the major responsibility of caring for those Ethiopian adolescents who required psychiatric hospitalization. The present study compares the diagnoses and reasons for admission of Ethiopian adolescents in Israel with those of Ethiopian adults and Israeli adolescents. The results of this comparison show that Ethiopian adolescents in hospital had significantly higher rates of dissociative disorders than the other two groups and significantly lower rates of the major functional psychoses than Ethiopian adults and Israeli adolescents. In addition the Ethiopian adolescents had relatively low levels of nonspecific depressive symptoms and anxiety symptoms and were hospitalized for significantly shorter periods of time than the other two groups.