Vermont Department of Mental Health

Personality traits have been found to be related to a variety of health outcomes. The aim of this study was to examine how personality traits were associated with adjustment to the COVID pandemic in college students. The sample included 484 first-year university students (76% female) attending a northeastern university who completed the Big Five Inventory (BFI) personality assessment at the beginning of a semester that was disrupted by the COVID pandemic. Using a phone-based app, students completed daily ratings of mood, perceived stress levels, and engagement in a number of health promotion activities (exercise, mindfulness, adequate sleep, etc.) throughout the semester both before and after the onset of the pandemic (e.g., a within-person longitudinal design). Results, as expected, showed that mood and wellness indices generally declined during the COVID period, although stress levels actually decreased. Further, irrespective of COVID, improved mood, less perceived stress and greater participation in health promotion activities were significantly associated with a number of personality traits including neuroticism (lower), extraversion (higher), agreeableness (higher), and conscientiousness (higher). Of primary interest, mixed-effects models were used to test how major personality traits interacted with any changes in daily ratings from the pre-COVID to COVID period. Significant interactions terms were found suggesting differential impacts of the COVID epidemic for students with low versus high levels of particular traits. Higher levels of extraversion, for example, were found to be related to decreases in mood as the pandemic progressed in contrast to those with lower extraversion, for whom there was a slight increase in mood over time. These data support the conclusion that personality traits are related to mental health and can play a role in a person’s ability to cope with major stressful events. Different traits may also be more adaptive to different types of stressors.

Research is increasingly focusing on the health status of adults with serious mental illness. This study examined databases in Vermont to determine the incidence of cancer in this population. Probabilistic statistical methods were used to determine the overlap between the Vermont Cancer Registry and Vermont mental health treatment databases. The incidence of cancer for adults with mental illness was 1.6 percent, more than twice (2.5 times) that of the general population. Among persons with mental illness, elevated risk was greatest for men younger than 50 years (6.6 times the risk of a comparable group in the general population) and lowest for women aged 50 years and older (1.8 times the risk of a comparable group). These findings raise important questions about the relationship between serious mental illness and cancer. Future research should consider the effect of lifestyle factors, and potential effects of first- and second-generation antipsychotics should be investigated.

Adults with severe and persistent mental illness who received employment services through mental health and/or vocational rehabilitation programs had higher employment rates than individuals who did not receive any employment services. Individuals who received services from both programs had significantly higher employment rates than individuals who received services from only one program. Results indicate that employment services had a greater relative effect on older clients and clients with a schizophrenia diagnosis than on other individuals. This state-wide study relied exclusively on analysis of administrative/operational databases that provide the employment rates for both recipients of vocational services and other clients.

New and emerging collaborative responses to sex offender management are challenging traditional notions about how treatment providers and probation and parole officers (POs) deliver services to this difficult population. Typically, sex offender treatment professionals provide community-based services to offenders who are supervised by POs. Yet, no comprehensive survey has investigated how treatment providers and POs collaborate and view their relationships with each other. This national random survey examined the beliefs and behaviors of community-based adult sex-offender treatment providers concerning various types of provider and PO interactions and collaborative models. Overall, treatment providers reported that they value frequent and substantive communication with POs concerning mutual clients. There was, however, considerable diversity in practice and opinion among providers with regard to POs leading, coleading, and observing sex offender treatment groups. Treatment providers' opinions about various clinical, ethical, and legal issues evident in these collaborative approaches are examined.

Consumer satisfaction is increasingly used to measure community mental health program performance. Understanding the relationship between consumer satisfaction and treatment outcomes is only beginning. This article adds to this understanding by reporting on an assessment of the relationship between consumer evaluation of community mental health services and incarceration after treatment in a statewide system of care. Results indicate that satisfaction with services is related to incarceration after treatment, with satisfied consumers having lower incarceration rates. These results support the use of self-reported consumer satisfaction as a measure of mental health program performance.

Triaxial compression tests following stress paths of constant σ 1 were conducted to determine the shear strength of five processed scrap tire products having different gradations and particle shapes. The interparticle frictional component was separated from the total shear strength according to the energy correction concept proposed by researchers. The experimental results show that all five tire chip products have ultimate internal friction angles of 45° to over 60°. The interparticle frictional component of the strength was fully mobilized and nearly reached a constant value after approximately 5% axial strain. The experimental results confirmed that the strength parameter obtained with constant σ 1 was more reasonable. This finding is supported by field observation in which the tire chips have an angle of repose ranging from 37° to 43° (loosely stock piled) and up to 85° (compacted). The engineering applications of the experimental results are discussed.

In the February 1991 issue of Hospital and Community Psychiatry, Jeffrey Geller, M.D., presented a wide-ranging critique ofprograms designed to divert admissions from state psychiatnic hospitals (1). Empirical support for these arguments was largely denived from analysis of the effect of a diversion program implemented in 1980 at the Northhampton State Hospital in Massachusetts. The results ofGeller’s analysis indicated that neadmission rates were not affected to a statistically significant degree, although the diversion program did have a significant impact on first-admission rates. Because readmissions arc a major concern ofhospitaladministrators in this age of deinstitutionalization, this finding has serious implications for public policy. In neighboring Vermont, a program designed to divert admissions from the Vermont State Hospital, the state’s only public psychiatric hospital, was implemented in 1974. The rural community screening program, which required that all admissions be screened to eliminate mappnopniatc admissions, began in the counties adjacent to the hospital but