Stress in Parents of Children With Genetically Determined Leukoencephalopathies: A Pilot Study

Genetically determined leukoencephalopathies comprise a group of rare inherited white matter disorders. The majority are progressive diseases resulting in early death. We performed a cross-sectional pilot study including 55 parents from 36 families to assess the level of stress experienced by parents of patients with genetically determined leukoencephalopathies, aged 1 month to 12 years. Thirty-four mothers and 21 fathers completed the Parenting Stress Index-4th Edition. One demographic questionnaire was completed per family. Detailed clinical data was gathered on all patients. Statistical analysis was performed with total stress percentile score as the primary outcome. Mothers and fathers had significantly higher stress levels compared with the normative sample; 20% of parents had high levels of stress whereas 11% had clinically significant levels of stress. Mothers and fathers had comparable total stress percentile scores. We identified pediatric behavioral difficulties and gross motor function to be factors influencing stress in mothers. Our study is the first to examine parental stress in this population and highlights the need for parental support early in the disease course. In this pilot study, we demonstrated that using the Parenting Stress Index-4th Edition to assess stress levels in parents of patients with genetically determined leukoencephalopathies is feasible, leads to valuable and actionable results, and should be used in larger, prospective studies.

Nonlinear effect of dispersal rate on spatial synchrony of predator-prey cycles

Spatially-separated populations often exhibit positively correlated fluctuations in abundance and other population variables, a phenomenon known as spatial synchrony. Generation and maintenance of synchrony requires forces that rapidly restore synchrony in the face of desynchronizing forces such as demographic and environmental stochasticity. One such force is dispersal, which couples local populations together, thereby synchronizing them. Theory predicts that average spatial synchrony can be a nonlinear function of dispersal rate, but the form of the dispersal rate-synchrony relationship has never been quantified for any system. Theory also predicts that in the presence of demographic and environmental stochasticity, realized levels of synchrony can exhibit high variability around the average, so that ecologically-identical metapopulations might exhibit very different levels of synchrony. We quantified the dispersal rate-synchrony relationship using a model system of protist predator-prey cycles in pairs of laboratory microcosms linked by different rates of dispersal. Paired predator-prey cycles initially were anti-synchronous, and were subject to demographic stochasticity and spatially-uncorrelated temperature fluctuations, challenging the ability of dispersal to rapidly synchronize them. Mean synchrony of prey cycles was a nonlinear, saturating function of dispersal rate. Even extremely low rates of dispersal (<0.4% per prey generation) were capable of rapidly bringing initially anti-synchronous cycles into synchrony. Consistent with theory, ecologically-identical replicates exhibited very different levels of prey synchrony, especially at low to intermediate dispersal rates. Our results suggest that even the very low rates of dispersal observed in many natural systems are sufficient to generate and maintain synchrony of cyclic population dynamics, at least when environments are not too spatially heterogeneous.

A genetic algorithm for designing distributed computer network topologies

The topological design of distributed packet switched networks consists of finding a topology that minimizes the communication costs by taking into account a certain number of constraints such as the delay and the reliability. This paper proposes a genetic algorithm (GA) for generating low-cost feasible computer network topologies subject to these constraints. The implementation of this algorithm has been subjected to extensive tests in order to measure the quality of solutions. Computational results confirm the efficiency of the GA to provide good solutions for medium-sized computer networks, in comparison with well-tried conventional methods.

[Adequacy of health care services for young immigrant families]

This article relates the results of descriptive exploratory research conducted through interviews with 297 young immigrant families and 40 health and social workers on the primary health problems encountered by the families and on how they resolved these problems. Families and workers rank problems in different orders of priority. While families give priority to the health problems of their children, workers give priority to the problems encountered by the mothers, and in particular, mental health problems. Families and workers alike express a desire for help from the health and social service system for these problems. For families, this help would come from family doctors and nurses. These health providers are subsequently consulted; when they are not, language is determined to be the main obstacle to accessibility. Difficulties related to cultural compatibility of services are seen as more numerous by workers than by families.

[The radical psychiatry trend and intervention with women (a Californian experience).]

It was in the wake of the movement for a critical psychiatry, originated by Eric Berne, that the Radical psychiatry collective developed in Berkely California at the beginning of the 70's. Starting with an analysis of the dominant therapeutic intervention, which was seen alienating, and its resultant, an oppression of which the individual is unaware, the Collective teaches a new practice represented by the following equation : consciousness of one's oppression + contact with other in the same situation + action = liberation. This equation is intended to reply to the preceeding formula : oppression + unawareness of one's oppression + isolation = alienation. Utilizing the personality composant concepts elaborated in transactional analysis, that is the ego state : the Parent, the Adult, and the Child, the Collective shows that certain aspects of social Males, learned through socialization, are unequally and differently developed in men and women. Consequently, a harmonious meeting of man and woman is impossible. To resolve these difficulties, the Collective runs mixed therapeutic help, and women's groups. The latter, developed primarily by Hogie Wyckoff, take into consideration the specific oppression of women and help them to work on those qualities wich are insufficiently developed or undervalued by an inequitable capitalist society. The thrust of radical psychiatry associates the fundamental characteristics of capitalist society, principally human relation, and the problems of everyday individual experience. It also demonstrates the logical ordeming of social males - limiting and unsatisfactory by functional -in such a society. The approach is highly interesting in relation to therapeutic practice with women in general, and more specifically, with social and health service clients. Nevertheless, the approach should not be limited to the sole consideration of the concrete and interactional factors involved in the relation between an intervener from the educated middle class and a client from a popular milieu, often deprived at many levels. The repercussions of class differences on a supposedly equal relationship are still unknown, since radical psychiatry interveners works principally with a middle class clientele. This gap constitutes the principal limit of the observed approach, a limit which should be more thoroughly investigated and analysed.