Quality of Life,Anxiety and Depression in Soft Tissue Sarcomas as Compared to More Common Tumours: An Observational Study

The aim of this study is to compare the quality of life and the levels of anxiety and depression in a relatively large group of subjects undergoing chemotherapy for soft tissue sarcoma and a control group of subjects undergoing chemotherapy for the most common types of cancer. 56 soft tissue sarcoma affected patients and 56 patients with common tumours, homogeneous in regards to stages of disease and sociodemographic characteristics, were enrolled in two oncological centres in Turin, Italy. Quality of life was assessed by Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-General and anxiety and depression by Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. All patients had ongoing chemotherapy. The comparison between the two groups shows no difference in either quality of life or in anxiety and depression. There are instead gender differences, since females in the group of common tumours show higher levels of anxiety in comparison to those affected by sarcomas, while males show, at a lower degree, the opposite trend. This study suggest that levels of Quality of Life, anxiety and depression are similar in rare and common tumours. The majority of patients are able to cope with the disease in an adaptive manner. However, for some patients the disease poses a threat to their physical and mental integrity; psychological support of these patients may reduce the development of significant morbidity and help patients to better manage the course of the disease and the effects of the treatment.     

Exact results related to the periodic Anderson model in D » 1 dimensions

We present exact results related to the T = 0 phase diagram of the periodic Anderson model in the strong coupling U =infinity limit for D = 2,3 dimensions. In a restricted parameter region, a ground state with simple algebraic structure was deduced in both dimensions, and its region of existence was characterized by sufficient conditions. The quasiparticle creation operator that builds up the ground state wave function does not satisfy the standard fermionic anticommutation relations.     

Millon Behavioral Medicine Diagnostic (MBMD) Predicts Health-Related Quality of Life (HrQoL) Over Time Among Men Treated for Localized Prostate Cancer

Prostate cancer treatment presents multiple challenges that can negatively affect health-related quality of life (HrQoL), and that can be further compromised by maladaptive personality styles and psychological adjustment difficulties. This study examined the utility of a comprehensive psychosocial screening tool to identify psychosocial traits that prospectively predict HrQoL status among men treated for localized prostate cancer. The Millon Behavioral Medicine Diagnostic (MBMD) was administered to 66 men (M age = 68 years, 59% White) treated by either radical prostatectomy or radiotherapy along with standard measures of general and prostate-cancer-specific quality of life assessed at a 12-month follow-up. Higher scores on both summary MBMD Management Guides (Adjustment Difficulties and Psych Referral) and higher scores on personality styles characterized by avoidance, dependency, depression, passive aggressiveness, and self-denigration predicted lower HrQoL (β range = –.21 to –.50). Additionally, higher scores on the MBMD Depression, Tension-Anxiety, and Future Pessimism scales predicted lower HrQoL. Finally, higher scores on the MBMD Intervention Fragility and Utilization Excess scale also consistently predicted poorer mental and physical health functioning over time. These results point to the utility of the MBMD to help screen for potential impairments in mental and physical health functioning in men undergoing treatment for prostate cancer.     

Likelihood of suicidality at varying levels of depression severity: a re-analysis of NESARC data

Although it is clear that increasing depression severity is associated with more risk for suicidality, less is known about at what levels of depression severity the risk for different suicide symptoms increases. We used item response theory to estimate the likelihood of endorsing suicide symptoms across levels of depression severity in an epidemiological data set. Regardless of depression severity, suicide attempts were less frequently endorsed than ideation, which was less frequently endorsed than feeling like one wanted to die. All suicide symptoms were generally less likely to be endorsed than other depression symptoms. There was a low probability of suicidality at depression levels that likely would not merit a diagnosis of major depression.     

The Validity of Assessment Centres for the Prediction of Supervisory Performance Ratings: A meta‐analysis

The current meta‐analysis of the selection validity of assessment centres aims to update an earlier meta‐analysis of assessment centre validity. To this end, we retrieved 26 studies and 27 validity coefficients (N=5850) relating the Overall Assessment Rating (OAR) to supervisory performance ratings. The current study obtained a corrected correlation of .28 between the OAR and supervisory job performance ratings (95% confidence interval .24≤ρ≤.32). It is further suggested that this validity estimate is likely to be conservative given that assessment centre validities tend to be affected by indirect range restriction.     

Effects of dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate and progesterone on spatial learning and memory in young and aged mice

Young (2-4 months) and aged (14-16 months) male Swiss-Webster albino mice (n = 7 per group) were subcutaneously injected with 20 mg/kg/day dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate (DHEAS), progesterone (P), DHEAS + P, or vehicle control and trained over a 5-day period in a Morris water maze. The subjects were tested 48 hr after training for memory recall as measured by latencies to locate the hidden platform, and trunk blood was collected immediately thereafter. As expected, latency to platform decreased for all groups over the 6 testing days, with aged mice taking longer to reach platform than did young mice. However, results did not support the hypotheses that DHEAS-treated mice would exhibit shorter latencies and that P-treated mice would show longer latencies to platform in comparison with age-matched controls. These results raise doubts about the effectiveness of commercially available supplements claiming to promote enhanced memory in humans.     

Hindsight bias in insight and mathematical problem solving: Evidence of different reconstruction mechanisms for metacognitive versus situational judgments

This article presents two experiments that used insight and mathematical problems to investigate whether different factors would affect hindsight bias on metacognitive and situational judgments. In both studies, participants initially rated their likelihood of solving each problem within a certain amount of time (metacognitive judgments) and rated the importance of each component of the problem for finding the solution (situational judgments). Next, participants attempted to solve each problem. In Experiment 1, all participants were given solution feedback information, but in Experiment 2, participants were not given any solution feedback. After 1 week, participants were asked to recall their original judgments. Hindsight bias was assessed by comparing the initial with the final ratings. Insight problems and math problems showed different patterns of hindsight bias effects on the metacognitive and situational judgments. The results suggest that two competing models of hindsight effects are actually complementary explanations for judgment reconstruction on different types of judgment tasks.     

Psychoeducational Interventions with Pediatric Cancer Patients: Part I. Patient Information and Knowledge

We present a systematic review of published research on psychoeducational interventions for children with cancer. The current lack of an organizational model for this literature makes it difficult to form a coherent picture of the scattered literature and draw nomothetic conclusions. A model is described that is based on functional concepts from the literature on learning and instructional design. It is argued that it makes sense conceptually to analyze psychoeducational interventions in terms of psychoeducational principles, especially if the purpose is to illuminate the learning processes involved. Three categories of intervention are distinguished and the first of these, informational interventions to influence patient knowledge, is considered in this paper, and the other two categories will be reviewed in a subsequent paper. This review is organized by categories of information needs, intervention modes, and major types of independent variables. We concluded that the research supports few generalizable conclusions at this time, except that development of health-related knowledge in children is best accomplished by information transfer methods that are highly interactive and individualized. Interactive multimedia formats such as video games are seen as having the best potential, but further research is required.