Correction to: Religiosity and Health-Related Quality of Life: A Cross-Sectional Study on Filipino Christian Hemodialysis Patients

Journal of Religion and Health - The authors regret that the following error occurred in the original publication of the article. The corrected text has been presented with this erratum. In the...     

Post-traumatic stress and self-disclosure

Post-traumatic stress (PTS) is a significant clinical problem in the general population. However, only a portion of those exposed to trauma develop PTS. Patterns of emotional self-disclosure have the potential to explain some of the individual differences in the development and continuation of symptoms. In this study, the authors investigated the links between emotional self-disclosure, as measured by the Emotional Self-Disclosure Scale (ESDS; W. E. Snell, R. S. Miller, & S. S. Belk, 1988). and a post-trauma psychological state, as measured by the Trauma Symptom Inventory (TSI; J. Briere, 1995). Their results showed that, in general, men engaged in less emotional self-disclosure than did women, and as TSI scores increased, the men were significantly less willing to disclose emotions of happiness. For women, as TSI scores increased they were significantly more willing to engage in talk about emotions related to anxiety but less willing to talk about emotions related to fear. The authors considered these data within current understandings of the role of emotional self-disclosure in the processing of traumatic experiences.     

Changes in personality pathology after pharmacotherapy and combined therapy for depressed patients

The central question addressed by this article is whether courses of treatment consisting of pharmacotherapy or pharmacotherapy combined with psychotherapy (combined therapy) produce different changes in personality pathology at follow-up after 40 weeks. We also examined whether recovery from depression has an influence on outcome. The study population consisted of 128 outpatients in whom personality pathology and severity of depression were determined at the start of the study. For 72 patients, personality pathology and severity of depression were determined again after 40 weeks. Of the group of 72 patients, 25 patients received only pharmacotherapy for 6 months, and 47 patients received combined treatment (pharmacotherapy and psychodynamic supportive psychotherapy). The antidepressant protocol provides for three successive steps in case of intolerance or inefficacy: fluoxetine, amitriptyline, and moclobemide. The combined therapy condition consisted of 16 sessions of Short Psychodynamic Supportive Psychotherapy in addition to pharmacotherapy. In the combined therapy condition there was a significant reduction in personality pathology in patients who recovered from depression but also in patients who had not. In the pharmacotherapy condition the significant decrease was restricted to patients who recovered from depression. The results were most striking for Cluster C psychopatology. Patients with cluster B pathology changed the least. Depressed patients with comorbid personality pathology appear to benefit most from a combination of pharmacotherapy and a form of short, psychodynamic, supportive psychotherapy.     

Measures of effectiveness in a short-term Interpersonal Cognitive Problem Solving programme

The effects of a classroom-based, short-term Interpersonal Cognitive Problem-Solving programme for 24 7- and 8-year-old children were assessed immediately after a 4-week intervention programme and again after a 4-week follow-up period. A previous study (Erwin & Ruane, Counselling Psychology Quarterly, 7, 305–310, 1993) implementing such a short-term programme relied on sociometric testing to measure the social effectiveness of the training and failed to find any changes in social status. The present study incorporated playground observations and found behavioural improvements immediately after training and after the follow-up period for the experimental group. However, confirming the previous study, no significant differences in sociometric status were found. The results highlight the limitations of sociometry as a measure of the effectiveness of a programme of training in Interpersonal Cognitive Problem-solving.     

Traumatherapy 2001, Part I: “The Reparation of the Self” Revisited on the Way into the 21st Century

This paper highlights the contributions of the article, The Reparation of the Self to trauma practice and science. The article was written almost 20 years ago at a time when little appeared in main stream literature to guide the theory and clinical practice of psychotherapy with trauma patients. At that time the article introduced a post-traumatic developmental theory, and a systematic approach to the treatment of war stress in particular, and, according to contemporary trauma experts, established a general model for the treatment of psychological trauma in general. As the present article reviews the original article, it highlights core trauma responses and treatment principles that are likely to be applicable to traumatherapy far into the 21st Century.