Does bias about medical diagnosis link to expectations of mental health problems for infants and their parents?

Marvellous

Thanks Aanya--Robin

Thank you, Lilly— I’m glad you enjoyed it.

Thank you Kathy. I enjoy this work and hope to do further studies!

Thanks, Dona—I appreciate the encouragement.

Thank you, Cassi. My presentation on this data from a parent-professional lens was well-received among neonatologists and other neonatal intensive care staff earlier this month at the Gravens conference. The concepts apply to premature babies who experience brain bleeds or severe oxygen loss in the NICU and staff focus on poorer expected outcomes—perceiving parents who retain high hopes for their child are “in denial.”

Thanks for your encouragement of my work. It means a lot!

Thanks, Nona! We are excited to move this forward to the next phase of a full-blown study that can test all of our hypotheses. Cordially, Robin

It is a great post.

Thank you, Lois. The pilot study results were strong with 52 of the 56 doctors (93%) having strong bias against persons with intellectual disability. These doctors likewise expected a few days’s old infant with vague signs of Trisomy 21 (Down syndrome) to do sugnifuvantly more poorly on early social engagement skills and daily living skills in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, as well as to have significantly more traits linked intellectual disability and significantly fewer traits linked to no disability than infants in the meconium aspiration condition. Their expected advice for parents matched these ideas of lower expected outcomes for the Trisomy 21 group, which ideas we hypothesize to be rooted in bias that may in part result from training to look at facial traits as diagnostic, past clinical cases of such infants, and data from medical journals.

Wonderful post...... I like this post....

good luck on meeting your goal. I look forward to following your project.

Thanks, Dr. Feder! There is a lab note with a sample YouTube Implicit Association Test (IAT), in case you want to see how that works!

Good luck and keep us all posted on how it goes!