Rolf A Peterson

• George Washington University

This research examined the impact of affectivity and coping on state anxiety and positive emotions among young adults living in the Washington, DC metro area both during and after the Washington, DC sniper killings. Participants completed questionnaires during three waves of data collection: (1) during the sniper attacks (n=92); (2) within two week...

Patients' perception of pain during hemodialysis (HD) and at times between HD treatment and its association with survival have not been well studied in end-stage renal disease (ESRD). We evaluated the experience of pain during HD and at times when the patient was not receiving HD, and assessed possible associations of the perception of pain and sle...

Although anxiety has both dispositional and situational determinants, little is known about how individuals' anxiety-related sensitivities and their expectations about stressful events actually combine to determine anxiety. This research used Information Integration Theory and Functional Measurement to assess how participants' physical concerns sen...

Although anxiety has both dispositional and situational determinants, little is known about how individuals´ anxiety-related sensitivities and their expectations about stressful events combine to determine anxiety. This research used Information Integration Theory and Functional Measurement to assess how participants´ anxiety sensitivity and event...

Relatively little is known about the integration of people's fear-related dispositions and their expectations about stressful events. This research used information integration theory to examine how participants’ anxiety sensitivity and event expectancy are integrated to determine their social anxiety. Three studies were conducted—two with universi...

Depression has been thought to be the most common psychiatric abnormality in hemodialysis (HD) patients. There are few data using psychiatric diagnostic criteria and a lack of large, well-designed epidemiologic research studies in patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) that can render definitive results on this topic. The prevalence of major...

No studies have evaluated the relationship among spirituality, social support, and survival in patients with ESRD. This study assessed whether spirituality was an independent predictor of survival in dialysis patients with ESRD after controlling for age, diabetes, albumin, and social support. A total of 166 patients who had ESRD and were treated wi...

There is growing identification of the need to seriously study the psychiatric presentations of end-stage renal disease patients treated with hemodialysis. This study reports on the course of depression and anxiety diagnoses and their impact on quality of life and health status. The 16-mo course of psychiatric diagnoses in 50 end-stage renal diseas...

Anxiety is a complicating comorbid diagnosis in many patients with medical illnesses. In patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD), anxiety disorders often are perceived to represent symptoms of depression rather than independent conditions and therefore have been relatively understudied in this medical population. To evaluate the psychosocial i...

Depression is quite prevalent in the end-stage renal disease (ESRD) population, with rates as high as 30% in some dialysis centers. There are fewer data on the epidemiology of depression in patients with earlier stages of chronic kidney disease (CKD), but the disease burden may be just as high. Depression may be associated with worse medical outcom...

Psychosocial issues are an understudied yet important concern in the overall health of hemodialysis (HD) patients. Stress is a concomitant of chronic illness and its treatment, and may have meaningful influences on psychological and medical outcomes. This article reviews the influences of psychopathology, social support, family issues, dialysis uni...

Depression is common in patients with end-stage renal disease and has been linked to increased mortality. Screening for depression in the general medical population remains controversial; however, given the high prevalence of depression and its significant impact on morbidity and mortality, a strong case for depression screening in patients with en...

Depression is the most common psychological disorder in end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients with a prevalence rate as high as 20% to 25% by some contemporary estimates. There are several studies linking depression with mortality in ESRD, making early diagnosis and treatment essential. The mechanisms linking depression with survival in ESRD pati...

Social support is an understudied, yet important, modifiable risk factor in a number of chronic illnesses, including end-stage renal disease (ESRD). Increased social support has the potential to positively affect outcomes through a number of mechanisms, including decreased levels of depressive affect, increased patient perception of quality of life...

Few studies have assessed sleep disturbances or perception of pain in patients with early-stage chronic kidney disease. It was hypothesized that perception of pain and sleep disturbance would increase with chronic kidney disease stage, that pain and sleep disturbance would correlate with psychosocial variables, and that there would be a higher prev...

Depression is well established as a prevalent mental health problem for people with ESRD and is associated with morbidity and mortality. However, depression in this population remains difficult to assess and is undertreated. Current estimates suggest a 20 to 30% prevalence of depression that meets diagnostic criteria in this population. The extent...

Depression has been identified as a complicating comorbid diagnosis in a variety of medical conditions, including end-stage renal disease (ESRD). Despite this, the psychological health of hemodialysis patients is understudied. The purpose of this paper is to review the research and issues involved in the assessment of depression and its sequelae in...

This research examined how individuals' anxiety sensitivity and their expectations about others combine to determine pain anxiety. Two studies - 1 with university students and 1 with clinical anxiety patients - were conducted in which participants were presented with multiple scenarios of a painful interaction with a medical technician. Each scenar...

The prevalence, severity, and clinical significance of physical and emotional symptoms in patients who are on maintenance hemodialysis remain incompletely characterized. This study sought to assess symptoms and their relationship to quality of life and depression. The recently developed Dialysis Symptom Index was used to assess the presence and the...

Symptoms are increasingly recognized as problematic for patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) treated with dialysis. Sleep disorders are common in ESRD patients treated with dialysis and are associated with patients’ perceptions of quality of life, assessed by diverse measures, as well as depressive affect. Sleep disorders appear to be equal...

Social support is a concept recognizing patients exist to varying degrees in networks through which they can receive and give aid, and in which they engage in interactions. Social support can be obtained from family, friends, coworkers, spiritual advisors, health care personnel, or members of one's community or neighborhood. Several studies have de...

Although Latinos in the United States often share similar cultural values and health beliefs, there are differences among Central American, South American, Mexican, and Caribbean Latinos. Central American health beliefs and practices are largely influenced by religious and indigenous worldviews. Health care providers in the United States may fail t...

Lower serum albumin concentration (sAlb) and higher levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines have been reported to predict death in patients treated with haemodialysis (HD). SAlb, along with anthropometric measures, has been used as a surrogate marker for nutritional status in patients with chronic disease. Though adequate nutrition has been considered...

Religious and spiritual aspects of quality of life (QOL) have not been fully assessed in patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) treated with hemodialysis (HD), but psychosocial factors are associated with patient survival. To investigate interrelationships between religious beliefs and psychosocial and medical factors, we studied 53 HD patien...

There are few data on the epidemiology, consequences and treatment of depression in African-American patients with kidney disease in the US, even though such patients disproportionately bear the burden of this illness. This paper reviews data on the diagnosis and pathogenesis of depression and its consequences in patients with and without kidney di...

Compliance with the hemodialysis (HD) prescription is an important predictor of patient outcome. Although there is interest in the concept of patient satisfaction with medical care and caregivers, relatively few such data exist regarding HD patients. We examined whether associations exist between patient satisfaction with medical personnel and depr...

The purpose of the study was to examine how anxiety sensitivity (AS) acts as a dispositional factor in the development of panic symptoms, panic attacks, and panic disorder. Between 1986 and 1988, data were collected from 505 undergraduates at an urban university. At Time 1, measures used were the ASI to assess AS, the trait scale of the State-Trait...

Little research has been performed assessing patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) as parts of marital dyads or within family structures. Recent findings suggest patient interactions within such systems are associated with patient outcomes. To evaluate the relationship between level of patient depression and spouse psychosocial status, 55 co...

Current general health belief measures that are used to assess health behaviors do not capture the full range of health beliefs present among Latinos. The purpose of this study was to develop a reliable and valid measure of Latino health beliefs, the Cultural Health Attributions Questionnaire (CHAQ). Three hundred forty participants were recruited...

The effects of dyadic satisfaction and conflict have not been well defined in the hemodialysis (HD) population. The aim of this study was to determine whether the perception of decreased dyadic satisfaction was associated with mortality in patients treated with HD, and if so, whether there were different relationships between risk factors, and diff...

The medical risk factors associated with increased mortality in hemodialysis (HD) patients are well known, but the psychosocial factors that may affect outcome have not been clearly defined. One key psychosocial factor, depression, has been considered a predictor of mortality, but previous studies have provided equivocal results regarding the assoc...

Medical mortality determinants in end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients treated with hemodialysis (HD) are well known. More recently, associations have been established between the dose of dialysis administered and patient survival. We showed in a prospective study that both dialyzer type and patient compliance with the dialysis prescription were...

The goal of the present study was to assess the psychological functioning level and the relationship between psychosocial variables and psychological functioning and social support buffering effects among a population of outpatients with chronic renal insufficiency (CRI). The Beck Depression Inventory, Illness Effects Questionnaire, Multidimensiona...

Anxiety sensitivity (AS) is the fear of anxiety-related bodily sensations based on the belief that they are harmful. The purpose of this study was to examine how AS contributes to functional status in chronic pain populations. This study examined the relationship between functional status and AS, demographic, work-related, and pain-related variable...

Although the medical determinants of mortality in patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) treated with hemodialysis (HD) are well appreciated, the contribution of immunologic parameters to survival in such patients is unclear, especially when variations in age, medical comorbidity and nutrition are controlled. In addition, although dysregulati...

The medical risk factors associated with increased mortality in hemodialysis (HD) patients are well known, but the psychosocial factors that may affect outcome have not been clearly defined. Psychosocial factors could affect mortality through interaction with parents' nutrition or their compliance with the dialysis prescription. We conducted a pros...

Psychologic and demographic characteristics have been shown to correlate with behavioral compliance in studies of prevalent hemodialysis (HD) patients. Few data, however, exist on the psychologic characteristics or their relationship to compliance in patients initiating HD treatment, or incident patients. Our previous work with prevalent HD patient...

The proper means of measuring quality of life in chronically ill patients is unclear. Because different measures may assess varied aspects of patients' experience and because they may be interrelated in different ways, the relationship between several of these quality-of-life measures, including indices of psychological well-being, social support,...

The relationship between compliance and outcome is poorly understood, partially because there has been no gold standard for measuring compliance in hemodialysis patients. To investigate interrelationships between psychological, medical, and compliance factors, hemodialysis (HD) patients were studied with the Beck Depression Inventory, and a subset,...

Employed the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children to show that children diagnosed with an anxiety disorder score significantly higher on the Childhood Anxiety Sensitivity Index (CASI) than nondiagnosed children. Interviews and self-report measures regarding the child were completed by 201 children and their parents from a metropolitan area mi...

Depression has been identified at the most prevalent psychologic problem in patients with ESRD treated with hemodialysis (HD). Depression has been associated with mortality in HD patients; however, the similarity of the symptoms of depressive disorders to those of uremia and the difficulties in measuring depression and dissociating psychologic from...

Evaluated a scale for measuring anxiety sensitivity (i.e., the belief that anxiety symptoms have negative consequences), the Child Anxiety Sensitivity Index (CASI), in 76 7th–9th graders and 33 emotionally disturbed children (aged 8–15 yrs). The CASI had sound psychometric properties for both samples. The view that anxiety sensitivity is a separate...

A role of depression in affecting outcome in patients with end stage renal disease (ESRD) has been suggested but few have assessed psychological parameters and medical factors thought to influence survival simultaneously and prospectively. To assess whether depression or perception of illness influences survival in patients treated for ESRD, we pro...

The causes, extent, and quantification of depression in end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients have been a concern of psychologists and physicians. To assess depression and its possible causes, 57 patients with ESRD treated with hemodialysis (HD, n = 43) or continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis (CAPD, n = 14) and 16 patients with chronic renal...

The purpose of this investigation was to further define the role of anxiety sensitivity, in relation to physiological arousal and the cognitive perception of anxiousness, as a determinant of anxiety. One hundred and thirty-two undergraduates at an urban university served as subjects. Two physiological measures of arousal and two cognitive measures...

Between one-fifth and one-third of patients hospitalized on general medicine wards experience significant depressive symptoms during their hospitalization. This study employed 71 general medical in-patients and examined the relative association of illness/hospitalization characteristics, patient characteristics and environmental characteristics wit...

This investigation evaluated the relationship between anxiety sensitivity (the fear of anxiety) and other fears. The results are based on new analyses of previously published data for a sample of 147 college students. In the first study, a factor analysis of pooled items from the Anxiety Sensitivity Index (ASI) and the Fear Survey Schedule-II (FSS-...

Reliability, factor structure, and factor independence from other anxiety measures for the Anxiety Sensitivity Index (ASI) was assessed. One hundred and twenty-two anxious college students were administered the ASI, Cognitive-Somatic Anxiety Questionnaire, and the Reactions to Relaxation and Arousal Questionnaire. The results suggest that the ASI i...

This study investigated perceptual and physiological sensitivity to stimuli semantically associated with trauma in 10 Vietnam combat veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). We used an auditory recognition task in which subjects were presented with target words related to Vietnam stressors (e.g., Firefight), phonetically similar words (e...

The burgeoning research in psychosomatic medicine requires quantitative measures reflecting important biological, psychological, and social variables. The Seriousness of Illness Rating Scale (SIRS), although twenty years old, is currently utilized in psychosomatic research as an index of illness seriousness. In light of medical advances during the...

A distinction is proposed between anxiety (frequency of symptom occurrence) and anxiety sensitivity (beliefs that anxiety experiences have negative implications). In Study 1, a newly-constructed Anxiety Sensitivity Index (ASI) was shown to have sound psychometric properties for each of two samples of college students. The important finding was that...

Two studies assess attitudes toward the childless life-style. One study uses an unstructured response style in order to determine the motivation for and effects of the decision attributed to the person intending to be childless. The second study assesses the relationship between self-reported attitudes measures. The studies suggest the person selec...

A series of studies are presented which examine the relation between parenthood intentions (intend to be a parent and intend to remain childless) and self-concept, mental health, and grade point average in a college student population. The results suggest that college students not intending to have a child tend to be statistically deviant on all th...

The relation between the development of moral judgment (MJ) and locus of control (LC) in children 7-11 years old was examined with 2 studies. Measures of MJ and LC on 130 children in grades 1-5 revealed significantly increasing trends in both constructs with intentionality (MJ) appearing to precede internality (LC). Intentionality increased most no...

The present investigation concerned the development of the Primary Self-Concept Inventory (PSCI), a group-administered self-report self-concept inventory for children of ages 5 through 8. Replicated analysis of the factor structure of the PSCI data indicated that a seven-component pattern provides an appropriate fit. As a result of this analysis, s...

A six-card Primary Grade Apperception Battery (three cards from the CAT and three from the SAM) was administered to one group of first grade children on a 4 month test-retest schedule and to a new group of first graders 1 year later. Two clinical psychologists read the protocols and made clinical judgments regarding home and school adjustment on a...

Two samples of college students, one obtained in 1971 and one in 1973, were asked to draw a picture of a happily married couple. Some subjects were asked to draw the couple after two years of marriage and some after five years of marriage. The pictures were scored for the presence or absence of children as an estimate of the attitude that children...

The Pd, K and L scales of the MMPI and four of Kolberg's Moral Judgment Situations were administered to three criterion groups; adolescent delinquents, college students, and individuals belonging to a therapy collective which provides free community service. Greater than 50% of both the delinquent and therapy collective subjects were classified as...

The possibility of considering the child̂s reaction to the change from a dry state to a wet urinous state as an important variable in normal nocturnal bladder control is presented. The learning paradigm, ways in which the change can become aversive (innate and learned) and future research are discussed. RÉSUMÉ Développement naturel du contrôle vés...

Investigated the effects of previous aggression level of aggressor and target persons, along with level of threatened retaliation, in an experimental situation which required aggressive responding. 4 male aggressors and 2 male targets, classified as high or low in aggressiveness, were selected from each of 10 3rd grade classrooms. Each aggressor re...

Previous studies of the “conditioning method” of enuresis treatment have confounded the effects of conditioning with those of nonspecific psychotherapeutic aspects of the procedure. The present study compared three groups of enuretic children: (1) under the conventional bell-light conditioning procedure; (2) under a similar procedure, but which inv...