This chapter provides multiple-choice questions designed to reinforce and expand your knowledge of anxiety and stress-related disorders, including symptom presentation and assessment, neurobiology, treatment mechanisms, clinical characteristics of treatments, treatment strategies, and considerations for special populations.

This chapter provides multiple-choice questions designed to reinforce and expand your knowledge of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, including symptom presentation and assessment, neurobiology, treatment mechanisms, clinical characteristics of treatments, treatment strategies, and considerations for special populations.

Personality disorder (PD) is a complex condition, which has been the subject of both debate and research. However, maternal PD has only been the focus of research in the last two decades. In this chapter I discuss that research in the context of what is known generally about PD, as a disorder with a predictable presentation of signs and symptoms; an aetiology, and indications for effective treatment. There has been more research on maternal PD in the last 15 years, which shows that mothers with PD may struggle to care for their children, especially in the postnatal period, and their mental health may also deteriorate during pregnancy. In this chapter I describe the issues described above and discuss how clinicians approach the management of mothers with PD. I place special emphasis on the impact of maternal PD on mother-child relationships and attachment, and the implications for child health.

The notion that people with psychopathy traits do not respond positively to treatment efforts may sound intuitive. If people are inflexible, uncaring towards others, manipulative, and just generally difficult to get along with, it follows that treatment might be ineffective. However, what is intuitive and what is accurate do not always overlap perfectly. The analyses in this chapter contribute to a growing body of literature indicating that individuals with psychopathy traits can change and respond in expected ways to intervention strategies (Bernstein et al., 2021; Wong et al., 2015). The analyses in this chapter identified that people with psychopathy traits who spent more time incarcerated, thereby increasing access to rehabilitative services, experienced a subsequent decline in offending. It is possible that these findings reflect the efficacy of the risk-need-responsivity model, wherein intensive intervention strategies reduce criminal behaviour for high-risk persons. Treatment modalities for people with psychopathy traits are discussed.

I wrote this book to help readers entering into the psychopathy literature come away with an understanding of psychopathy that is not watered down. As a professor, I regularly encountered students who sought to learn more about psychopathy but found that peer-reviewed papers were overly technical and assumed a certain level of background knowledge on the part of the reader. Books are not always a viable alternative, as they can be informal and make statements about psychopathy in the absence of empirical evidence. Edited books feature multiple authors, which is a strength; however, they often present contrasting opinions, and no explanation is provided for the differences in opinion. Popular culture sources like True Crime podcasts are regularly factually inaccurate when it comes to discussing psychopathy. In this chapter, I reflect on the limitations of my analyses, describe key take-home messages from each chapter, and integrate these messages to identify overarching themes from the book.

Because of advances in technology and the provision of critical care, an increasing number of patients are surviving critical illness; this growing population of survivors of critical illness is characterized by heightened vulnerability to a host of adverse health outcomes and by the development of multidimensional impairments that significantly impact their quality of life and societal participation. Post-intensive care syndrome (PICS) is defined as new or worsening impairments in physical, cognitive, or mental health status arising after a critical illness and persisting beyond acute care hospitalization. PICS-Family describes the psychological and social impairments that family members, loved ones, and caregivers can develop as a consequence of their loved one’s critical illness. Survivors of critical illness are a heterogeneous patient population, and considerable variation exists with respect to the breadth, depth, duration, and mutability of their symptoms and impairments. This chapter explores the clinical manifestations of PICS, its incidence and prevalence, the co-occurrence of impairments in multiple domains, duration and severity of impairments, risk factors for its development, prediction tools, prevention strategies, screening and diagnosis, and treatment options. Additional topics include the biophysical model of disability, functional trajectories following critical illness, and the lack of communication about post-ICU problems.

As discussed in Chapter 1, the primary focus of this book is on the potential of neurotechnology to support the rehabilitation of convicted persons by improving risk assessment and risk management – rather than on its potential for diagnosing and treating mental or brain disorders. Still, in some cases, neurorehabilitation might well become conducive or even crucial to the improvement of mental health in forensic populations. Brain stimulation to attenuate aggressive impulses might serve to reduce the mental distress experienced by some persons subject to these impulses. Furthermore, aggression can be a symptom of a recognised mental illness, such as a psychotic disorder, or may be a core feature of a disorder, as in intermittent explosive disorder. Diminishing aggression using neurotechnology could in such cases be relevant to the person’s mental health, which appears to be an interest protected by human rights law. For example, Article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) recognises a “right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health”.

Delirium, which is an important risk factor for post-intensive care syndrome (PICS), is common during critical illness, affecting between 20% and 80% of patients. It is associated with numerous adverse outcomes, including longer time on mechanical ventilation, longer time in the intensive care unit (ICU) and hospital, death, and long-term cognitive impairment. Delirium in the ICU can be reliably detected using multiple tools, including the Confusion Assessment Method in the ICU (CAM-ICU) and the Intensive Care Delirium Screening Checklist (ICDSC). The exact cause of delirium, however, remains elusive even though there are many purported mechanisms, including neuroinflammation, metabolic insufficiency, neuronal dysfunction, and neurotransmitter disturbances. Due to knowledge gaps regarding the mechanism(s) of delirium, effective medical treatments for delirium also remains elusive. Current practice involves the prevention of delirium through the recognition and management of modifiable risk factors. The well-studied ABCDEF bundle is one such strategy, which is primarily non-pharmacologic, to prevent or mitigate delirium and thus limit its adverse outcomes. Unfortunately, delirium still occurs at a high rate, and the work to understand the underlying mechanism and its varied manifestations and to develop an effective treatment continues.

This chapter provides an overview of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a neurodegenerative disease associated with repetitive head trauma. It discusses the historical background of CTE, its neuropathology, clinical features, and epidemiology. The chapter also explores the current understanding of CTE staging and common co-pathologies. It highlights the challenges in diagnosing and monitoring CTE in living patients and the ongoing research efforts to develop biomarkers for early detection. The chapter concludes by discussing the prevention, treatment, and future directions in CTE research. It is important to recognize the risks of head trauma and implement measures to reduce the incidence of CTE and other neurodegenerative diseases associated with head trauma.