Psychosoziale Interventionen bei Patientinnen mit Brustkrebs

Breast cancer patients are subject not only to physical strain but also to substantial psychological and social stress as well as major threats and challenges.The paper presented gives an overview of the research status on psychosocial interventions to support patients in their coping endeavours.Psychosocial basic care of women with breast cancer is performed by the physicians treating oncologically and includes information fitting patients' information needs,and responding to their emotional stress.Evaluated training and educational programs are available for physicians to enhance their psychosocial competence.Psychosocial basic care is completed by psychoeducational interventions.In 20–30% of women with breast cancer, there is a need for a special psychotherapeutic treatment.Especially, supportive and cognitive-behavioral therapies in an individual or a group setting contribute to a reduction of anxiety and depression. Even anticipated side-effects of somatic treatments can be diminished by psychotherapy. Research in the field supports that there is a need for broad integration of psychosocial interventions into disease management programs for women suffering from breast cancer.     

Constructing Gender in Chat Groups

We investigated the construction of gender in chat groups. Four unacquainted persons chatted in two gender-anonymous conditions and a non-anonymous control condition. In one anonymous condition, the gender focus was made salient. The other groups did not know about the gender focus. All participants had to guess the gender of the others and give reasons for their decisions. Results suggest that (a) overall, 2/3 of gender guesses fit the sex category of the targets, (b) gender anonymity was more comfortable for women, (c) participants used mostly gender-stereotypic cues to infer gender, however, men and women used syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic cues (with different predictive value) to different degrees, (d) conversational behavior varied depending on gender anonymity, and (e) degree of gender salience was irrelevant for the use of gender as an organizing category.     

Two novel 5-HT6 receptor antagonists ameliorate scopolamine-induced memory deficits in the object recognition and object location tasks in Wistar rats

The 5-hydroxytryptamine₆ (5-HT₆) receptor has been suggested to play an important role in the regulation of memory and cognition. In the present study, our aim was to investigate whether the novel, selective 5-HT₆ antagonists compound (CMP) X and CMP Y and the reference 5-HT₆ antagonist GSK-742457 could ameliorate impairments in episodic memory in 3-months-old male Wistar rats. The acetylcholinesterase inhibitor (AChEI) donepezil (Aricept®, approved for symptomatic treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, AD) was used as a positive reference compound. First, effects of the 5-HT₆ antagonists CMP X, CMP Y and GSK-742457 were investigated on object recognition task (ORT) performance in rats treated with the muscarinic antagonist scopolamine (0.1 mg/kg, administered intraperitoneally, i.p., 30 min before trial 1). Second, effects of the combination of suboptimal doses of 5-HT₆ antagonists CMP X and CMP Y with the AChEI donepezil were studied, to determine whether the 5-HT₆ antagonists show additive synergism with donepezil in the ORT. Finally, effects of CMP Y, GSK-742457 and donepezil were investigated on object location task (OLT) performance in rats treated with scopolamine.Donepezil (1 mg/kg, oral administration, p.o.), GSK-742457 (3 mg/kg, i.p.), CMP X (3 mg/kg, i.p.) and CMP Y (30 mg/kg, p.o.), all ameliorated the scopolamine-induced deficits in object recognition. In the ORT, we have found that combined administration of subthreshold doses of CMP X (1 mg/kg, i.p.) and CMP Y (10 mg/kg, p.o.) with the AChEI donepezil (0.1 mg/kg, p.o.), enhanced memory performance in Wistar rats with deficits induced by scopolamine. Donepezil (0.1 mg/kg, p.o.) alone had no discernable effects on performance. This suggests additive synergistic effects of the 5-HT₆ antagonists (CMP X and CMP Y) with donepezil on cognitive impairment. Finally, donepezil (1 mg/kg, p.o.), GSK-742457 (10 mg/kg, p.o.) and CMP Y (30 mg/kg, p.o.) also reduced scopolamine-induced deficits in the OLT.In conclusion, the 5-HT₆ antagonists were found to clearly improve episodic memory deficits induced by scopolamine. In addition, co-administration of the 5-HT₆ receptor antagonists CMP X and CMP Y with the AChEI donepezil to cognitively impaired rats also resulted in potentially additive enhancing effects on cognition. This suggests that these compounds could have potential as monotherapy, but also as adjunctive therapy in patients with AD treated with common treatments such as donepezil.     

Deutende Interventionstechniken bei Patienten mit schweren Persönlichkeitsstörungen

The growing influence of ego-psychology, self psychology, object relations theory, and interpersonal concepts on the psychoanalytic psychotherapy of patients with personality disorders is reflected in a preference of relational therapeutic strategies and in a controversial discussion of interpretative techniques. It is shown that interpretative strategies are of invaluable importance in many patients with personality disorders. However, modifications of technique necessary for this group of patients should be considered. Especially, transference interpretation in the here and now can be of great use even in the treatment of patients with severe personality disorders. It is of outstanding relevance for the therapist to understand the interactional message a patients infers from his interpretation and to take into account the patient's reaction to the interpretation.     

Neuropsychological Sequelae of PTSD and TBI Following War Deployment among OEF/OIF Veterans

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) are highly prevalent among Veterans of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. These conditions are associated with common and unique neuropsychological and neuroanatomical changes. This review synthesizes neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies for both of these disorders and studies examining their co-occurrence. Recommendations for future research, including use of combined neuropsychological and advanced neuroimaging techniques to study these disorders alone and in concert, are presented. It is clear from the dearth of literature that addiitonal studies are required to examine and understand the impact of specific factors on neurocognitive outcome. Of particular relevance are temporal relationships between PTSD and mTBI, risk and resilience factors associated with both disorders and their co-occurrence, and mTBI-specific factors such as time since injury and severity of injury, utilizing comprehensive, yet targeted cognitive tasks.     

Factor structure and initial validation of a brief measure of perceived emotional and physical distress tolerance in post-9/11 US Veterans

Distress tolerance (i.e., perceived or actual capacity to tolerate aversive internal states) has received considerable research attention as a transdiagnostic risk-factor underlying the development and maintenance of psychopathology. Lower levels of emotional distress tolerance have been linked to psychopathology (e.g. Posttraumatic Stress Disorder) within Military populations; however, the association of physical distress tolerance to psychopathology in this population has been under-researched. This research gap may be due in part to a paucity of comprehensive, temporally stable and brief measures of distress tolerance that have been validated within Military populations, which may hinder further examination and refinement of the construct. Addressing this problem, the current study evaluates the psychometric properties of a novel and brief measure of emotional and physical distress tolerance in a sample of United States post-9/11 Veterans. Participants were 307 Veterans (M_age = 38.9, 67.7% male) who completed the 10-item Distress Tolerance Inventory at baseline and annual follow-up. Exploratory structural equation modeling was used to examine the optimal latent factor structure and longitudinal invariance of the DTI measurement model, along with correlational analyses to examine the convergent properties of the DTI subscales. The DTI reflected a longitudinally invariant two-factor structure (emotional and physical distress tolerance), with excellent internal consistency and preliminary evidence of convergent validity. Thus, the DTI represents a brief, reliable and temporally stable measure of physical and emotional distress tolerance.     

Couple resilience and life wellbeing in firefighters

The validity of the Couple Resilience Inventory was tested using 102 married or cohabiting firefighters. This instrument measures types of relationship behavior that often occur during stressful life events and that are expected to be associated with an ability to cope with employment in a stressful occupation. It includes scales measuring two nearly orthogonal dimensions, with one dimension pertaining to positive behavior and the other to negative. Firefighters completed an online questionnaire that included the Couple Resilience Inventory and measures of relationship satisfaction, exposure to traumatic events, and life wellbeing. In line with hypotheses, scales measuring positive and negative couple resilience were nearly orthogonal to each other, and distinct from a measure of relationship satisfaction, but both scales correlated positively with exposure to traumatic events, and both correlated in opposite directions with relationship satisfaction and life wellbeing. Results were consistent with the theoretical model and they supported instrument validity.