Maternal mental disorders over pregnancy show a clear influence on child development. This review is focused on the possible mechanisms by which maternal mental disorders influence fetal development via programming effects. This field is complex since mental health symptoms during pregnancy vary in type, timing and severity and maternal psychological distress is often accompanied by higher rate...

Mass media depictions of persons with mental illness are generally negative and stigmatizing. From the earliest published studies (1, 2) to more recent work (3–5) media portrayals of mental illness have been characterized by crime and violence (6, 7), unpredictability (8–10), and social incompetence (11, 12). These portrayals are of great concern to mental health professionals because they subv...

The potential for violence among hospitalized psychiatric patients is not a new phenomenon. Risk prediction in hospitalized psychiatric patients requires, in addition to actuarial tools, a firsthand understanding of the patient's psychiatric disorder, symptoms, personality structure, coping skills, and defense mechanisms. The current state of psychiatric hospital care and treatment of mental il...

This study examined longitudinal changes in coping and defense mechanisms in an age- and gender-stratified sample of 392 European American adults. Nonlinear age-related changes were found for the coping mechanisms of sublimation and suppression and the defense mechanisms of intellectualization, doubt, displacement, and regression. The change trajectories for sublimation and suppression showed t...

The objective was to explore obese adolescents perceptions about obesity among students in the seventh to ninth grade of a public school in Tamaulipas, Mexico. This is a qualitative study. Participants were 24 adolescents with a body mass index equal to or greater than the 95th percentile. Semistructured interviews were conducted until data saturation was reached and the meaning was understood....

Combining insights from Freud and Weber, this article explores whether Protestants (vs. Catholics and Jews) are more likely to sublimate their taboo feelings and desires toward productive ends. In the Terman sample (Study 1), Protestant men and women who had sexual problems related to anxieties about taboos and depravity had greater creative accomplishments, as compared to those with sexual pro...