Patrick W. Corrigan

The differential effects of parental alcoholism and mental illness on their adult children

Growing up in a household with alcoholic or mentally ill parents is more likely to produce lower self-esteem, greater dysphoria, and more anxiety in adulthood. To test this hypothesis, 139 undergraduate and graduate students completed measures of anxiety, depression, social avoidance, self-esteem, and social support. Results showed that adult children of alcoholics, adult children of mentally ill, and adult children of substance-abusing mentally ill had lower self-esteem and were more socially anxious than normal controls. Adult children of mentally ill parents were more depressed and showed greater trait anxiety than did adult children of alcoholics and controls. The impact of parental pathology is diminished when the adult child has a large and/or satisfactory social support network.

Drug and Psychosocial Treatment Interactions in Schizophrenia

In a stress-diathesis approach to schizophrenia, stressful environmental events combine with pre-existing biological and psychosocial vulnerability to produce intermediate states of sensory overload, hyperarousal, and impaired processing of social stimuli. If untreated, these intermediate states often lead to the development of psychotic symptoms or relapse. In this approach assumes an interaction between biological and environmental etiologies and between biological and psychosocial forms of treatment. Evidence from studies which have examined the effects of both treatment strategies in tandem indicates that comprehensive treatment programs for schizophrenic patients should combine drug and psychosocial treatments. For outpatients, behaviorally oriented social skills training and family interventions are especially effective when added to neuroleptic drug therapy. A comprehensive approach to the clinical management of schizophrenia can be described in terms of a clinical decision tree, in which patient c...

Strategies that overcome barriers to token economies in community programs for severe mentally ill adults

The token economy has been found to be an effective strategy for treatment of severe mentally ill inpatients. However, several barriers have prevented facile transfer of token economy strategies from inpatient settings to community programs; these barriers include outpatient access to competing reinforcers, supplemental income that help outpatients, to purchase these reinforcers, weakening of the efficacy of response costs, limited hours of the day in which day treatment contingencies apply, and interference of contingency contracts by family or friends. These barriers can be obviated by avoiding response cost contingencies., providing reinforcers cheaply, and including other systems in the development and implementation of token contingencies.

Cardiovascular Responsivity in Schizophrenics to Videotaped Social Vignettes

Heart rates, blood pressures, self-reported emotional level and anxiety of 15 schizophrenic outpatients indicated subjects discriminated among emotional levels in actors shown on videotape but their anxiety ratings did not change after viewing, and arousal after viewing highly emotional content was lower than at baseline.

Rehabilitation research methods for schizophrenia

Given the ever increasing complexity of rehabilitative models of schizophrenia, research methods testing these models must be rigorous and include a wide range of investigative strategies. This paper reviews four elements of rehabilitation research: definition of independent variables, selection of dependent variables, setting up the research design, and the development of conservative inferences from the data analysis. Methodological decisions must be made carefully prior to implementing a research protocol to assure the most valid conclusions when the study is complete.