Clinical psychology

Background. Fatigue is the most common complaint by children both during and after cancer treatment, but in Russia, there is no reliable method for assessing fatigue. 

Objective. To develop a Russian version of the Turkish Scale for the Assessment of Fatigue in Pediatric Oncology Patients Ages 7-18.

Design. Our first step was to translate all the items of the Turkish questionnaire into Russian. Then, through discussion, we created a single proposition for each item. The next step was obtaining expert opinions to assess the validity. Once the expert estimates agreed, a pilot version of the questionnaire was formed. The next step was to collect a large sample of patients to study the reliability and validity of the questionnaire. 

Results. As a result of factor analysis, three factors were identified. The first factor was "fatigue associated with actions;" the second was "fatigue as feeling;" and the third was "fatigue associated with sleep difficulties." The children's and parents’ versions had the same factor structure. 

Conclusion. This study showed the possibility of using the questionnaire in a Russian sample. That’s why it is necessary to continue collecting and analyzing data in this direction. The reliability of the test was also assessed. The reliability of the parent version scored a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.91. The reliability of the children’s version showed a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.93.

Background. In European countries, postpartum depression (PPD) occurs in 13–19% of women. The statistics indicate that postpartum depressive disorders affect up to 300,000 women in Russia annually. There is still an extremely acute lack of psychological comfort provided to women during labor in Russia. 

Objective. To our knowledge, ours is the first study that examines the association between childbirth experience and the risk of PPD in Russia.

Design. We collected data from 190 Russian-speaking mothers, ages 19 to 46, (M = 32 +4.3) two months after their delivery. 

Results. Birth satisfaction and physical well-being two months after delivery were significantly inversely associated with PPD. Birth satisfaction negatively correlated with the perceived severity and unpredictability of labor, and positively correlated with physical well-being two months after delivery. The presence of a partner and a personal midwife or doula at birth was associated with higher birth satisfaction. 

Conclusion. Our results emphasize the significance of childbirth satisfaction in the context of PPD and suggest the importance of individual professional support during labor.

Background. At the beginning of 20^thcentury, the phenomenon of oddity began to be studied. It was defined as a set of characteristics responsible for an individual giving the impression of being unusual, odd, and peculiar. Later, psychiatrists integrated oddity into the concept of schizotypy. Yet, while considered a part of the schizotypy construct, oddity has remained singular  and maintained its status as an independent dimension.

Objective.The present article discusses oddity as a set of particular clinical traits that can be evaluated both by self-report measures and clinical assessment. We  set out to investigate the oddity phenomena as manifested in a clinical sample, in order to delineate key features that constitute this concept.

Design. Seventy-one patients were selected according to a specific set of criteria and subjected to a set of self-report measures (the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire and the Adult Personality Traits Questionnaire), a clinical interview, and a pathopsychological experiment. A number of cognitive, behavioral, and emotional characteristics were analyzed. An intra-group comparison was carried out in order to clarify the potential differences between the self-reported and clinically assessed phenomenon of oddity.

Results. The study’s first finding was that the SPQ-74 does not identify odd personalities in the general population, as reflected in the fact that the sample’s average scores proved to be low. Secondly, restricted emotionality and a deficit in social interactions proved to be the prevalent characteristics of the sample of “odd” individuals. Furthermore, a set of certain speech peculiarities (word coinage, bizarrerie, etc.) and thinking impairments of various types (distortion of abstraction level and motivational deficit) emerged as prominent characteristics in the majority of subjects. Finally, it was determined that clinical assessment allows for a more comprehensive evaluation of the psychology of odd personalities than self-report measures, due to a number of the personality, temperamental, and cognitive characteristics that the latter tend to exhibit.

Conclusion. “Odd” individuals can be characterized by a number of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral features independent of social perception and relevant to clinical practice; they can be captured more successfully by the application of qualitative methods. Further research is needed to elaborate this set of traits and test this hypothesis on new samples.

Background. This article is devoted to the problem of excessively rigid behavior, which the author has named “fixed forms of behavior” (FFB). This term was suggested to me by the concepts of P. Janet (idéefixe), S. Freud (Fixierung), and D. Uznadze (fiksirovanaya ustanovka– fixed set/attitude). By FFB, the author understands a broad spectrum of behaviors of a person or a group of people, which, according to the cultural norms of a given society for persons of a certain age, gender, and status,have become inappropriate, yet are repeated in situations objectively requiring that they change; the degree of realization and acceptance of the need for this change can vary.

Results. Through literature analysis and the collection of experimental data over many years of research, in which over 1,150 persons took part – 550 healthy subjects and 600 mental patients from a broad spectrum – and on the basis of a biopsychosocionoetic model of the nature of man and his health, and a system-network approach, it has become possible to distinguish the following models to explain the nature of fixed forms of behavior: neurodynamic, energy-economic, phylogenetic, person-environment relationship, dispositional, stressogenic, pathogenic, psychodynamic, learning (behavioral-cognitive), system (an excessively rigid system and structural relations between levels of action).