Simulated alcoholic delirium

Of 200 diagnosed cases of alcoholic delirium 5 (= 2.5%) involved, from the differential diagnostic viewpoint, simulation of alcoholic delirium with all the symptoms involved. The symptoms of the simulation case are compared with the acute symptoms, and points in common to all simulation cases are presented: Definite alcoholic anamnesis, wide experience of treatment for alcohol abuse, dynamics of a pronounced purposeful action when social complications are imminent and course of the symptoms when the interview turns to simulation. In connection with therapy, special attention is drawn to Distraneurin treatment, which is not indicated in such cases.     

Morbidity rate in delirium tremens

On evaluating an analysis of 105 cases of delirium tremens over a period of five years in a psychiatric base-unit, the following findings were obtained: Delirium tremens, particularly in conjunction with secondary diseases, constitutes a life-endangering medical emergency and requires intensive medical treatment. Letality was 8,57%. The morbidity-rate and the relapse-rate showed a clearly marked increase; the age of contracting the disease had its frequency peak between 30 and forty, i. e. earlier than in many other statistical surveys. Epileptic attacks as symptoms starting off or accompanying delirium occurred in almost one third of our delirium patients. The impact which these attacks have on the development in the course of process-like alcoholism was discussed.     

Football passions: A personal view

Abstract

The first ever conference that brought together psychotherapists, academics, footballers and football fans, took place on Sunday 24 May at Chelsea Football Club. Organized by the Freud Museum and the University of East London, it at first may seem an unlikely combination of interests. However, for many years I have been boring colleagues with insights on therapy based on a love of football. ‘Why not write about it?’ people have said, usually to shut me up. Then it occurred to me that a report of the conference would be an ideal way finally to put pen to paper on the relationship between football and psychotherapy.     

Forced Retirement From Elite Football In Australia

Abstract

Retirement from sport poses a major socioemotional threat to elite athletes. The present study builds on a growing body of literature examining the vacuum created in an athlete's life after retirement. Grounded theory was used to construct how elite football players dealt with forced retirement owing to injury and deselection. Recursive in-depth interviews were conducted with 30 recently retired players who had competed at the highest level in Australian Rules football. The data were characterized by a rich array of personal reflections of loss and grief that reflected four themes: loss of identity, perceived control, financial issues, and social support. Interviewees typically told stories that were tinged with shock, regret, bitterness, distress, and perceived loss of status.     

Racial Athletic Stereotype Confirmation in College Football Recruiting

The present study tested real-world racial stereotype use in the context of college athletic recruiting. Stereotype confirmation suggests that observers use stereotypes as hypotheses and interpret relevant evidence in a biased way that confirms their stereotypes. Shifting standards suggest that the evaluative standard to which we hold a target changes as a function of their group membership. We examined whether stereotype confirmation and shifting standards effects would be seen in college football coaches during recruiting. College football coaches evaluated a Black or White player on several attributes and made both zero- and non-zero-sum allocations. Results suggested that coaches used the evidence presented to develop biased subjective evaluations of the players based on race while still maintaining equivalent objective evaluations. Coaches also allocated greater overall resources to the Black recruit than the White recruit.     

A Pre-Match Video Self-Modeling Intervention in Elite Youth Football

In this study, a self-modelling video intervention was delivered to four elite youth soccer players over 13 weeks of the competitive soccer season. A multiple-baseline, repeated measures single-subject design was used to explore the impact of the intervention on subcomponents of soccer performance and psychological variables, including self-efficacy and positive/negative affect. Statistical analysis indicated that there were significant changes between pre- and post-intervention scores for two players (1 & 3) on three subcomponents of performance (turns, headers and tackles). The findings of this study highlight the potential benefits of designing individualised pre-match video interventions with elite youth athletes.

Lay Summary:

Video self-modelling (VSM) is a behavioural intervention in which an athlete views a video of themselves engaged in adaptive behaviour, in order to learn to reproduce it effectively under pressure. In this study, the impact of a self-modelling video intervention is examined within a youth football soccer environment.     

Towards an Understanding of Mental Toughness in Australian Football

A personal construct psychology (PCP; Kelly, 1955/1991) framework was employed in an attempt to reveal a holistic understanding of mental toughness in the context of Australian Football. Eleven male coaches (M age = 42, SD = 9.62) with considerable playing and coaching experience at the elite level were interviewed using a PCP-based interview protocol. Transcribed verbatim data were analyzed using grounded theory procedures. Three independent categories (characteristics, situations, behaviors) were inductively derived and integrated into a model in which the importance of understanding each component individually was emphasized. The relationship between these three central categories was also highlighted. Results identified the key mental characteristics and their contrasts together with those situations that demand mental toughness, and the behaviors commonly displayed by mentally tough footballers. Conceptualized in the context of these three categories, mental toughness in Australian Football can be considered as a buffer against adversity but also as a collection of enabling factors that promote and maintain adaptation to other challenging situations. Practical implications of the findings are discussed and focus on issues pertaining to enhancing and/or developing mental toughness.     

Liepmann's test and its specific significance in the alcoholic delirium]

The perceptional characteristics of hallucinatory events and the phenomenal forms of artificially produced hallucinations were studied on a total of 210 patients (144 patients with delirium tremens, alcoholic hallucinosis, abstention from alcoholic beverages freedom from abstinence symptoms and 66 subjects with schizophrenia, symptomatic epilepsy, general paralysis, neuroses, and conditions of intoxication). The results of our studies show that Liepmann's test may be used to reliably diagnose genuine hallucinoses. They are usually preceded by a number of different stages, these being the stages of stability of development and full development of prehallucinatory phenomena, simultaneous and suggestive periods of geniune hallucinations. Liepmann's test is specifically distinctive of psychopathological disorders associated with delirium tremens.     

Walk the Talk: Financial Fairness in European Club Football

UEFA’s Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations represent the most restrictive regulatory intervention European club football has ever seen. Put simply, it demands from clubs to operate on the basis of their own football-related incomes. While the policy has attracted considerable attention from the economic and social sciences, very few contributions systematically investigate it from a philosophical-ethical perspective. The present paper fills this research gap by posing questions on FFP in relation to fair play as a normative concept. We draw on sport economic assessments concerning potential outcomes of FFP and argue that the policy should go beyond the mere pragmatic goal of promoting financial sustainability and truly aim for creating a level playing field, otherwise it should not be labeled ‘fair play’.     

Football and exchange rates: empirical support for behavioral economics

Recently, economic theory has been expanded to incorporate emotions, which have been assumed to play an important role in financial decisions. The present study illustrates this by showing a connection between the sports performance of popular national football teams (Besiktas, Fenerbahce, and Galatasaray) and performance of the Turkish economy. Specifically, a significant positive association was found between the success of three major professional Turkish football teams and the exchange rate of the Turkish lira against the U.S. dollar. The effect of the football success of several Turkish football teams on the exchange rate of the Turkish lira was examined using the simultaneous multiple regression model with predictor measures of wins, losses, and ties for different combinations of teams to predict the depreciation rate of the Turkish lira between the years 1987 and 2003. Wins by Turkish football teams against foreign (non-Turkish) rivals increased with exchange rate depreciation of the Turkish lira against the U.S. dollar.     

Electrolyte disorders, EEG changes and epileptic seizures in alcohol withdrawal delirium

For 180 patients suffering alcohol-withdrawal induced delirium, electrolytic concentration in the serum of Na, K, Ca, and Mg was determined in the early withdrawal phase, and the electroencephalograms of 95 delirium patients evaluated in respect of local and diffuse changes and epileptic activity, and compared in delirium patients with and without initial seizures. Delirium patients who had initial seizures suffered significantly longer-lasting periods of delirium and significantly more frequent electrolytic changes in the form of hypomagnesemia and hypopotassemia (hypokalemia). There was no significant difference in the EEG changes. A temporary metabolic disorder in the initial phase of the two-phase withdrawal process should be assumed to be the cause of seizures during alcohol withdrawal, and the pathogenetic significance of hypomagnesemia and hypopotassemia should be taken into consideration.     

Cortisol,interleukins and S100B in delirium in the elderly

In independent studies delirium was associated with higher levels of cortisol, interleukin(IL)s, and S100B. The aim of this study was to simultaneously compare cortisol, IL-6, IL-8, and S100B levels in patients aged 65 years and older admitted for hip fracture surgery with and without delirium. Cortisol, IL-6, IL-8, and S100B were assayed in repeated blood samples. 120 patients (mean age 84 years, 62 patients with delirium) were included. Highest levels of IL-8 (27.1, 95% Confidence Interval (CI): 13.6–53.1 pg/ml) and cortisol (666, 95% CI: 475–859 nmol/L) were before delirium, but of IL-6 (84.3, 95% CI: 46.5–151.4 pg/mL) and S100B (0.18, 95% CI: 0.12–0.24 μg/L) during delirium. In multivariable analysis cortisol, LogIL-6, and LogS100B were significantly associated with delirium, but adjusted for pre-existing cognitive impairment, only LogS100B remained significantly associated. Cortisol, IL-6 and S100B may have a role in the pathogenesis of delirium, but S100B is the strongest independent marker.     

Team activity recognition in Association Football using a Bag-of-Words-based method

In this paper, a new methodology is used to perform team activity recognition and analysis in Association Football. It is based on pattern recognition and machine learning techniques. In particular, a strategy based on the Bag-of-Words (BoW) technique is used to characterize short Football video clips that are used to explain the team’s performance and to train advanced classifiers in automatic recognition of team activities. In addition to the neural network-based classifier, three more classifier families are tested: the k-Nearest Neighbor, the Support Vector Machine and the Random Forest. The results obtained show that the proposed methodology is able to explain the most common movements of a team and to perform the team activity recognition task with high accuracy when classifying three Football actions: Ball Possession, Quick Attack and Set Piece. Random Forest is the classifier obtaining the best classification results.     

Athletic Identity and Conformity to Masculine Norms Among College Football Players

Sport represent an influential institution of masculinity socialization that impacts the psychosocial development of many men in American society. In order to examine this dynamic, we investigated conformity to masculine norms among 523 college football players. Results indicated that participants’ conformity to traditional masculine norms was influenced by year in school, on-field position played, and athletic identity. Results of this interdisciplinary endeavor between the fields of sport psychology and the psychological study of men and masculinity can assist sport psychologists in designing interventions to help football players better understand messages of masculinity conveyed within the unique socialization context of football.     

Bayesian networks for unbiased assessment of referee bias in Association Football

ObjectivesTo assess referee bias with respect to fouls and penalty kicks awarded by taking explanatory factors into consideration.DesignWe present a novel Bayesian network model for assessing referee bias with respect to fouls and penalty kicks awarded. The model is applied to the 2011-12 English Premier League season.MethodUnlike previous studies, the model takes into consideration explanatory factors which, if ignored, can lead to biased assessments of referee bias. For example, a team may be awarded more penalties simply because it attacks more, not because referees are biased in its favour. Hence, we incorporate causal factors such as possession, time spent in the opposition penalty box, etc. prior to estimating the degree of penalty kicks bias.ResultsWe found fairly strong referee bias, based on penalty kicks awarded, in favour of certain teams when playing at home. Specifically, the two teams (Manchester City and Manchester United) who finished first and second appear to have benefited from bias that cannot be fully justified by the explanatory factors. Conversely Arsenal, a team of similar popularity and wealth and who finished third, benefited least of all 20 teams from referee bias at home with respect to penalty kicks awarded.ConclusionsAmong our conclusions are that, in contrast to many previous studies, being the home team does not in itself result in positive referee bias. More importantly, the model is able to explain significant discrepancies of penalty kicks bias into non-significant after accounting for the explanatory factors.     

A subculture of mental toughness in an Australian Football League club

ObjectiveThe current study aimed to provide a subcultural analysis of mental toughness in a high-performance context in sport.DesignUsing Schein's (1990) framework of organisational culture, an exploratory qualitative analysis, employing focus group and individual interviews, was used to investigate mental toughness in an Australian Football League club.MethodNine senior coaches and players participated in focus group and individual interviews. Photo elicitation was used as a method to capture mental toughness through the identification of prominent club artefacts. Participants were considered to have significant subcultural knowledge of their football club and were willing to describe personal experiences and perceptions of mental toughness through this cultural lens. Deductive and inductive analyses were conducted to capture the core themes of mental toughness across the disparate levels of Schein's organisational framework.ResultsMental toughness was found to be a socially derived term marked by unrelenting standards and sacrificial displays. These acts were underpinned by subcultural values emphasising a desire for constant improvement, a team first ethos, relentless effort, and the maintenance of an infallible image. At its core, mental toughness was assumed to be an internal concept, epitomised an idealised form of masculinity, elitist values, and was rhetorically depicted through metaphors of war.ConclusionsIt may be difficult to understand mental toughness without giving attention to the contextual norms related to the term. Appreciating how people promote, instil, and internalise prized ideals coveted as mental toughness could be intriguing for future research in sport psychology.     

Representativeness in the Market for Bets on National Football League Games

In laboratory experiments the representativeness heuristic has been shown to affect participants' judgments. Finding representativeness in a real-world economic market would indicate that even decision makers who are highly experienced and motivated use the heuristic, and would, in addition, violate the efficient market hypotheses, i.e. the theory that market prices fully reflect all available information. Testing for representativeness in the market for bets on National Football Leagues games avoids complications that make tests of representativeness in a stock market difficult to interpret. Evidence for representativeness in the NFL betting market is found in a data set from an earlier study which failed to test for representativeness, and in the 1976– 9 market. Representativeness does not appear to exist in the contemporary market, however, perhaps because with the advent of the personal computer the market depends less on purely human judgment.