Gerald R. Patterson
The American Psychological Association (APA) Division 7 (Developmental Psychology), which is holding its annual meeting this weekend in Boston (MA, US), will recognize Gerald R. Patterson with the Urie Bronfenbrenner Award for Lifetime Contribution to Developmental Psychology in the Service of Science and Society. The award will, no doubt, be based on Jerry’s extensive and sound research on the nature, causes, and treatment of anti-social behavior in families.
According to Web site for Developmental Psychology Division of APA,
The award is for an individual whose work has, over a lifetime career, contributed not only to the science of developmental psychology, and who has also worked to the benefit of the application of developmental psychology to society. The individual’s contributions may have been made through advocacy, direct service, influencing public policy or education, or through any other routes that enable scientific developmental psychology to better the condition of children and families.
This is a wonderfully well-deserved honor for Jerry. I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to work with Jerry and his colleagues for a couple of years during my graduate studies; I learned as much about research from hanging around that operation as I did from many of my formal classes combined. His work has influenced many other researchers and clinicians as well as having a direct, beneficial effect on children and youths and their families. Learn more about Jerry and his collaborators’ research at the Oregon Social Learning Center Web site. Also, see Division 7’s Web page about the Bronfenbrenner Award.
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I guess one can read geneses as a typographical variant on genes or, as I intended, as the plural of genesis. Using it the latter way: Emerging evidence makes it appear even more unlikely than ever that researchers will be able to identify a relative few genes—let alone the or one gene—for schizophrenia. Writing under the headline “Gene-Hunters Find Hope and Hurdles in Schizophrenia Studies,” the noted science journalist Nicholas Wade published an article summarizing research that points to the conclusion that there may be many different genetic bases for schizophrenia.
Two groups of researchers hunting for schizophrenia genes on a larger scale than ever before have found new genetic variants that point toward a different understanding of the disease.
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The variants discovered by the two groups, one led by Dr. Kari Stefansson of Decode Genetics in Iceland and the other by Dr. Pamela Sklar of the Massachusetts General Hospital, are all rare. They substantially increase the risk of schizophrenia in those affected but account for a tiny fraction of the total number of cases.
This finding, coupled with the general lack of success so far in finding common variants for schizophrenia, raises the possibility that the genetic component of the disease is due to a very large number of variants, each of which is very rare, rather than to a handful of common variants.
This is an article well worth reading. Link to Mr. Wade’s arctile.
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For those who are interested in the placements many students with EBD experience, I have published a resource that might be of value. About 15 years ago, a group of us (Jim Kauffman, Kerri Martin, Betty Hallenbeck, and I) were interested in why students with EBD were unusually likely to be placed in more restrictive settings. To aid in that understanding we systematically gathered and assembled a data base of literature on placements of students with EBD.
I’ve put a copy of PDFs of that database in the documents section. This is the first time it has been published. It’s actually pretty dull stuff, but it might help start someone down the path of re-examining that literature in a more thorough and up-to-date review. To find the document, please follow the link to “documents” in the menu under the banner.
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Over on Nature News Alison Abbott has a story about some of the difficulties researchers encounter in pursuing genetic causes of Emotional and Behavioral Disorders. It’s worth a read.
Psychiatric genetics: The brains of the family
Does the difficulty in finding the genes responsible for mental illness reflect the complexity of the genetics or the poor definitions of psychiatric disorders? Alison Abbott reports.
Continue reading ‘Genetic research and psychiatric classification’
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Guillermo Montes and Jill S. Halterman examined the relationships among multiple measures of family financial health and having a child with Autism. Based on earlier documentation that childhood autism is correlated with increases in expenses and decreases in income, they found that “Childhood autism is associated with increased enrollment into school-based settings for preschool-aged children. Parents are 7 times more likely to report that child care problems substantially affected employment decisions if they have a child with ASD.”
BACKGROUND. The impact of childhood autism on parental employment is largely unknown.
OBJECTIVE. The purpose of this work was to describe the child care arrangements of children with autism and to determine whether families of preschool-aged children with autism are more likely to report that child care arrangements affected employment compared with typically developing children and children at high risk for developmental problems.
Continue reading ‘Autism associated with family financial health’
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