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William Douglas Pithers

William Douglas Pithers
PennWest University - Edinboro

PhD in Clinical Psychology
25-year follow up of adults, aged 31-37, who were treated for problematic sexual behaviors against others.

About

24
Publications
3,534
Reads
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1,610
Citations

Publications

Publications (24)
Article
This paper reports the results of a cluster analysis on demographic, maltreatment, and psychometric data gathered from 127 children with sexual behaviour problems upon intake into a longitudinal treatment outcome study. Five distinct subtypes of children with sexual behaviour problems were identified: Nondisordered; Abuse Reactive; Highly Traumatiz...
Article
Expert ratings and confirmatory factor analyses were used to derive a posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), dissociation, and a combined PTSD/dissociation scale from the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL). Validity was established by examining the relationship of these scales to features of sexual abuse thought to relate to severity and chronicity, as...
Article
Baseline data are reported on the demographics, psychological adjustment, victimization, and perpetration histories of 127 6- to 12-year-old children who have engaged in developmentally unexpected sexual behaviors. Information regarding the children's caregivers, and their extended families, is also presented. Data were collected during intake of t...
Article
Enhancement of empathy for victims of sexual abuse may foster a more meaningful therapeutic involvement in sex offenders and may deter relapses. Three studies, with a total of 50 males convicted of sexual abuse (both child abuse and rape), are described here. In Exp 1, a contextual empathy deficit was manifested by sexual abusers while they were ex...
Article
This research was conducted to define empirically derived and clinically relevant types of children with sexual behavior problems. A theory-driven hierarchical cluster analysis was performed using Ward's method. Five distinct types of children with sexual behavior problems emerged. Significant differences were found among the five child types on a...
Article
This research examined demographic and functional characteristics of parents of children with sexual behavior problems. Families of 72 children with sexual behavior problems completed a structured interview and several psychometric devices at intake into a treatment outcome study. As a group, caregivers manifested signs of a high level of life stre...
Article
This article is the first report from a 5-year demonstration project examining the comparative efficacy of specialized and traditional treatments with children who have exhibited sexual behavior problems. Baseline data concerning the demographics, psychological adjustment, and victimization and perpetration histories of 72 6 to 12-year-old children...
Article
Most treatment providers who work with sex offenders do so with the belief that it may enable them to refrain from further victimizations. Generally, treatment of abusers is confrontative and challenging but demonstrates respect for the human dignity of individuals who have engaged in behavior that imposes enduring harm on others. However, among se...
Article
While the number of relapse prevention (RP) programs has expanded from just two in 1985 to currently being the most widely used intervention approach, Marlatt has suggested that with the population the model was originally developed for, there is no evidence for its superiority compared to other approaches. However the sex offender adaptation of RP...
Article
A process evaluation was conducted to assess the extent to which a specialized treatment group might enhance the offenders' empathy for sexual abuse survivors. Therapeutic efficacy was assessed through pre- and post-treatment administration of a battery of paper-and-pencil inventories. Pedophiles demonstrated greater empathy at pre-treatment and po...
Article
An examination of the bases of two influential sets of publications suggests that their conclusions regarding the effectiveness of treatment with sex offenders were unnecessarily gloomy. The present article presents a more optimistic view of the literature, asserting that recent, relatively well-controlled evaluations have shown that treatment can...
Article
Traditional explanations of schizophrenics' cognitive deficits have considered faulty selective attention as a single stage, categorical phenomenon. This study examined selective attention as a process that operates with varying degrees of efficiency throughout information processing, including the recoding of stimuli from the perceptual register....
Article
Preparatory interval, the length of time between a warning signal and the imperative stimulus, has been a major independent variable in studies that have examined reaction times of schizophrenics. Based on the hypothesis that schizophrenics have difficulty maintaining a heightened "set" to respond, long preparatory intervals (e.g., 7 seconds) have...
Chapter
Throughout history, whenever a socially frightening disorder existed, and its etiology was not widely known, tentative explanations were invoked that sometimes proved erroneous and regrettable. Ancient Romans feared inhaling nighttime air, believing that it bore vapors, emitted from nearby swamps, which were regarded as the cause of a potentially f...
Article
Full-text available
Metadiagnostic guidelines are delineated for evaluating the utility of both existing diagnostic criteria and recently proposed revisions (Magaro 1980). Among the metadiagnostic guidelines are the demonstration of differential treatment-outcome relationships for different disorders and the applicability of the characteristics of a superordinate diag...
Article
Full-text available
Child abuse has reached epidemic proportions in America. Rather than invoking health promotion strategies to protect children, the social priority appears to be extreme punishment of adult sex offenders. Although incarceration of the most severely entrenched adult sex offenders is a necessary element of a comprehensive prevention strategy, it is hi...
Article
[describes the implementation of relapse prevention (RP)] model in assessing and treating juvenile [sex] abusers / RP has served three distinct functions in sex offender treatment: (1) an Internal, Self-Management Dimension used to enhance the client's self-control; (2) an External, Supervisory Dimension used by a "prevention team" of professional...
Article
society does not yet widely accept an explanation for the existence of sexual aggressors / struggling to ascertain the determinants of sexually abusive acts so that effective treatments may be devised, early theorists proposed a number of speculative accounts past theories regarding etiology of sexual aggression / sexual aggression as an impulsiv...

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