Michael Rutter

Bio: Michael Rutter is an academic researcher from King's College London. The author has contributed to research in topics: Autism & Conduct disorder. The author has an hindex of 188, co-authored 676 publications receiving 151592 citations. Previous affiliations of Michael Rutter include VCU Medical Center & Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.

Observation of parent-child interaction with two- to three-year-olds.

Abstract: A method of home observations of mother-child interaction is described. Its development is outlined in terms of the relevant conceptual and methodological issues, and the concomitant tactical decisions involved in development are discussed. The scheme focuses on parental responsivity, affect, social communication and social control, and a novel combination of time-interval and event-sequential recording is used to discriminate parental functioning in these areas. The measures have been shown to have a satisfactorily high level of reliability, and preliminary analysis indicates construct validity.

Psychiatric interviewing techniques V. Experimental study: eliciting factual information.

Abstract: Four experimental interview styles, each recommended by experts in the field, were compared for their efficiency in eliciting factual information during the initial diagnostic interviews with the mothers of children referred to a psychiatric out-patient clinic. If encouraged to talk freely, mothers tended to mention most (but not all) key issues without the need for standardized questioning on a pre-determined range of topics. However, systematic questioning was essential in order to obtain good quality factual data. Better data were obtained when interviewers were sensitive and alert to factual cues and chose their probes with care. Clinically significant factual information, idiosyncratic to the family and outside the range of standard enquiry was common, but was obtained satisfactorily with all four styles. No one style was generally preferred by informants. The advantages of systematic questioning for obtaining factual information were not associated with any disadvantages with respect to the eliciting of emotions and feelings.

Head Injury and Later Reading Disability

Abstract: Reading ability was studied in a sample of school-age children who had previously sustained a compound depressed fracture of the skull resulting in damage to the underlying cortex. A third of the children were found to have a reading age of at least 24 months behind their chronological age. Severe reading backwardness in children who had post-traumatic epilepsy was more common in boys than girls. Later reading disability was not found to be associated with site of injury. The high rate of reading backwardness in this group suggests the need for careful monitoring of educational progress after childhood head injury.

X. conclusions: overview of findings from the era study, inferences, and research implications

Abstract: In this monograph, we have brought the findings of the English and Romanian Adoptee (ERA) study up to age 15 years and, in so doing, have focused especially on the question of whether there are deprivation-specific psychological patterns (DSPs) that differ meaningfully from other forms of psychopathology. For this purpose, our main analytic strategy was to compare the subgroup of young people who had received institutional care in Romania that persisted up to at least the age of 6 months and a pooled comparison group that comprised the remainder of the sample. In chapter II, we presented the evidence that there were no significant variations among the three subgroups that made up the pooled comparison group. A large proportion of this pooled comparison group came from the 52 individuals adopted before the age of 6 months from within the United Kingdom, who had not experienced institutional care or other major deprivation experiences. In addition, there were 45 children who had experienced institutional care that had ceased before the age of 6 months. Finally, there was a small group of 21 Romanian individuals who had come from a severely deprived background but who had not experienced institutional care. In the young people who experienced institutional deprivation, we found that a cut-off at 6 months marked the division between those without appreciable sequelae and those with a substantial proportion of persisting deficits. Because we found that the rate of deficits in the group who had experienced institutional care for 46 months did not vary according to the duration of institutional care, we pooled the entire group of individuals experiencing institutional care up to at least the age of 6 months. We found that these two pooled groups differed substantially and significantly in the rate of maladaptive outcomes. The details of the evidence justifying this pooling and a two-way comparison are provided in chapter II. Because of our interest in exploring the possibility of DSPs, our main subdivision within the above 6-month group was between those individuals showing the putative DSPs and those showing other forms of psychopathology or not showing deficits at all.

Child psychiatric disorder. Measures, causal mechanisms, and interventions

Abstract: DURING RECENT decades there has been a spectacular burgeoning of research into child psychiatric disorders. The results have changed clinical practice in child psychiatry1and have done much to aid understanding of the childhood roots of some adult psychiatric disorders.2The set of 12 articles in this issue of theArchivesillustrate well the accomplishments and the serious challenges that remain. They cover a wide territory, but their key messages may be summarized under the headings of measurement, causal mechanisms, and therapeutic interventions. MEASUREMENT Psychiatric research continues to be troubled by difficulties in measurement.3At one time, many investigators thought that the use of standardized interviews and operationalized criteria for diagnosis would solve the problems, but it is evident that they have not. The study by Boyle et al4is helpful in focusing on the relative merits and demerits of structured respondent-based interviews and checklists. They conclude that there is

The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation.

Abstract: A hypothesized need to form and maintain strong, stable interpersonal relationships is evaluated in light of the empirical literature. The need is for frequent, nonaversive interactions within an ongoing relational bond. Consistent with the belongingness hypothesis, people form social attachments readily under most conditions and resist the dissolution of existing bonds. Belongingness appears to have multiple and strong effects on emotional patterns and on cognitive processes. Lack of attachments is linked to a variety of ill effects on health, adjustment, and well-being. Other evidence, such as that concerning satiation, substitution, and behavioral consequences, is likewise consistent with the hypothesized motivation. Several seeming counterexamples turned out not to disconfirm the hypothesis. Existing evidence supports the hypothesis that the need to belong is a powerful, fundamental, and extremely pervasive motivation.

The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire: A Research Note

Abstract: A novel behavioural screening questionnaire, the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), was administered along with Rutter questionnaires to parents and teachers of 403 children drawn from dental and psychiatric clinics. Scores derived from the SDQ and Rutter questionnaires were highly correlated; parent-teacher correlations for the two sets of measures were comparable or favoured the SDQ. The two sets of measures did not differ in their ability to discriminate between psychiatric and dental clinic attenders. These preliminary findings suggest that the SDQ functions as well as the Rutter questionnaires while offering the following additional advantages: a focus on strengths as well as difficulties; better coverage of inattention, peer relationships, and prosocial behaviour; a shorter format; and a single form suitable for both parents and teachers, perhaps thereby increasing parent-teacher correlations.

Prevalence, Severity, and Comorbidity of 12-Month DSM-IV Disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication

Abstract: Background Little is known about the general population prevalence or severity of DSM-IV mental disorders. Objective To estimate 12-month prevalence, severity, and comorbidity of DSM-IV anxiety, mood, impulse control, and substance disorders in the recently completed US National Comorbidity Survey Replication. Design and Setting Nationally representative face-to-face household survey conducted between February 2001 and April 2003 using a fully structured diagnostic interview, the World Health Organization World Mental Health Survey Initiative version of the Composite International Diagnostic Interview. Participants Nine thousand two hundred eighty-two English-speaking respondents 18 years and older. Main Outcome Measures Twelve-month DSM-IV disorders. Results Twelve-month prevalence estimates were anxiety, 18.1%; mood, 9.5%; impulse control, 8.9%; substance, 3.8%; and any disorder, 26.2%. Of 12-month cases, 22.3% were classified as serious; 37.3%, moderate; and 40.4%, mild. Fifty-five percent carried only a single diagnosis; 22%, 2 diagnoses; and 23%, 3 or more diagnoses. Latent class analysis detected 7 multivariate disorder classes, including 3 highly comorbid classes representing 7% of the population. Conclusion Although mental disorders are widespread, serious cases are concentrated among a relatively small proportion of cases with high comorbidity.

Human biochemical genetics

Abstract: So far in this course we have dealt entirely with the evolution of characters that are controlled by simple Mendelian inheritance at a single locus. There are notes on the course website about gametic disequilibrium and how allele frequencies change at two loci simultaneously, but we didn’t discuss them. In every example we’ve considered we’ve imagined that we could understand something about evolution by examining the evolution of a single gene. That’s the domain of classical population genetics. For the next few weeks we’re going to be exploring a field that’s actually older than classical population genetics, although the approach we’ll be taking to it involves the use of population genetic machinery. If you know a little about the history of evolutionary biology, you may know that after the rediscovery of Mendel’s work in 1900 there was a heated debate between the “biometricians” (e.g., Galton and Pearson) and the “Mendelians” (e.g., de Vries, Correns, Bateson, and Morgan). Biometricians asserted that the really important variation in evolution didn’t follow Mendelian rules. Height, weight, skin color, and similar traits seemed to

Adolescence-limited and life-course-persistent antisocial behavior: A developmental taxonomy.

Abstract: This chapter suggests that delinquency conceals two distinct categories of individuals, each with a unique natural history and etiology: A small group engages in antisocial behavior of one sort or another at every life stage, whereas a larger group is antisocial only during adolescence. According to the theory of life-course-persistent antisocial behavior, children's neuropsychological problems interact cumulatively with their criminogenic environments across development, culminating m a pathological personality. According to the theory of adolescence-limited antisocial behavior, a contemporary maturity gap encourages teens to mimic antisocial behavior in ways that are normative and adjustive. There are marked individual differences in the stability of antisocial behavior. The chapter reviews the mysterious relationship between age and antisocial behavior. Some youths who refrain from antisocial behavior may, for some reason, not sense the maturity gap and therefore lack the hypothesized motivation for experimenting with crime.