What determines which features are more central in concepts? Sloman, Love, and Ahn (1998) examined laypeople’s concepts about everyday objects (e.g., chairs and apples) and found that lay theories of these concepts determined feature centrally as much as category validity judgments (i.e., how prevalent features are in a given category) did. The current study examined determinants of feature cen...

This study was designed to examine selective processing of emotional information in depression. It focuses on possible attentional biases in depression, and whether such biases constitute a cognitive vulnerability factor to suffer from the disorder or, on the contrary, they reflect a feature associated exclusively with the clinical level of depression. 81 participants were included in the study...

Trichotillomania an impulse disorder that causes people to pull out the hair) is a relatively rare psychiatric illness, though the number of patients in need are definitely much higher than that we encounter in psychiatric practice. According to ICD-10 and DSM-IV-TR trichotillomania is an impulse disorder but latest researches in neurobiology and picture taking procedures seem to provide convin...

This study examined the prevalence and correlates of pathological affect in Alzheimer's disease. A consecutive series of 103 patients with Alzheimer's disease were examined with a comprehensive psychiatric assessment that included the pathological laughing and crying scale (PLACS). Forty patients (39%) showed pathological affect: 25% showed crying episodes, and 14% showed laughing or mixed (lau...

The Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety (NESDA, www.nesda.nl) is a longitudinal, multi-site, naturalistic, case-control cohort study set up to examine the etiology, course consequences depressive anxiety disorders. This paper presents profile NESDA. NESDA sample recruited initially 2329 persons with remitted or current DSM-IV based (major disorder, dysthymia) and/or disorder (panic soci...

BACKGROUND Self-stigma is a maladaptive psychosocial phenomenon that can affect many areas of patients' lives and have a negative impact on their quality of life (QoL). This study explored the association between self-stigma, QoL, demographic data, and the severity of symptoms in patients with depressive disorder. PATIENTS AND METHODS Patients who met the International Classification of Disea...

This study examined whether marital functioning variables related uniquely to psychological distress and diagnoses of depressive disorder independent of pain severity and physical disability. Participants were 110 chronic musculoskeletal pain patients. Hierarchical regression results showed that marital variables (i.e. marital satisfaction, negative spouse responses to pain) contributed signifi...

This study contrasted the relative effectiveness of an interviewer-rated instrument, the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale, and 2 self-report scales, the short form of the Beck Depression Inventory and the depression scale from the Brief Symptom Inventory, in identifying cases of depression. Cases of major depression, dysthymia, and depressive disorder not otherwise specified (NOS) were identifi...

Personality objective inventories are commonly used for diagnosis of personality disorders. Personality assessment is effective in diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of psychiatric outpatients and in patients. Comorbid personality disorders and clinical syndromes may be more worth condition of the patients. The present study aimed to examine the diagnosis of personality disorders and clinical s...

The aim of this study was to examine the degree in which measurements of trait experiential avoidance (EA) are affected by current emotional disorder and whether EA is a causal factor in the course of emotional disorders (anxiety and depressive disorders) and the development of comorbidity among emotional disorders. In a sample of 2,316 adults aged 18 to 65, consisting of healthy controls, pers...