Internetbasierte Gesundheitsinterventionen

Background

Internet-based health interventions can serve as a useful supplement to regular face-to-face therapy only if they are accepted by the clients.

Objective

This aim of the current study was to examine the attitudes and opinions of potential users on internet-based health interventions in Germany. This information could make a useful contribution to the development and promotion of measures which target their requirements.

Material and methods

To address this issue psychotherapy patients and persons on a waiting list for outpatient psychotherapy were interviewed about their attitudes towards internet-based interventions and compared with the results from a matched control group.

Results

Compared with the control group, waiting list candidates in particular declared a reduced interest in engaging in internet-based interventions and both patient groups perceived few advantages. All groups appreciated the enhanced flexibility associated with internet-based interventions, but both patient groups thought that the increased anonymity and reduced inhibition threshold for seeking treatment were less advantageous than the control group. Compared to the controls, both patient groups worried more about privacy issues and a possible misinterpretation of their written statements. Both patient groups considered internet-based psychotherapy as conceivable for the treatment of fewer kinds of psychopathological symptoms than the control group. Patients considered that internet-based treatment of panic disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, depression and generalized anxiety disorder was least imaginable although, to date, relatively many internet-based options are available for these disorders. There appears to be interest in the treatment of sexual dysfunctions through the internet.

Conclusion

To address the reservations concerning privacy protection, paper and pencil registration procedures could be provided. In addition, by clearly emphasizing that there is the possibility of establishing personal contact to a therapist either face to face or by video conference, internet-based services could also be more useful in satisfying patient needs.

     

Individual Differences in Diving: Intelligence,Personality, and Underwater Adaptation

Diving is an activity that is carried out in an extreme environment with extraordinary psychophysical demands. It requires the divers to undergo an adaptive process in order to survive, to be able to take advantage of their capabilities, and to achieve an efficient performance. In this ex post facto study, data from a sample of military personnel participating in scuba diving courses (N = 649) were analyzed. Our aim was to verify the role of individual differences in the adaptation to an extreme and hostile environment. The results indicate the existence of psychological variables that differentiate between divers and the general population, those who pass or fail the diving course, and between groups of divers who obtain differential levels of performance in underwater tasks. These findings support that dispositional characteristics have utility for the identification of suitable personnel for professional diving.     

Gender Differences in Experiences with Couples Treatment for IPV

Evidence suggests that conjoint treatment can be effective for certain violent couples in certain situations (Finkel in Rev Gen Psychol 11:193–207, 2007; LaTaillade et al. in J Cogn Psychother 20:393–410, 2006; Fals-Stewart et al. in J Consult Clin Psych 73:239–248, 2005; Stith et al. in J Marital Fam Ther 29(3):407–426, 2003). However, not as much is known about which aspects of conjoint treatment make a difference, nor if male and female participants experience these elements of treatment differently. Knowing which components of couples’ treatment clients perceive as helpful—and whether their perceptions differ by gender—will allow us to redefine models with an eye toward making them more effective. In this study we used qualitative methods to examine the aspects of a particular couples’ treatment program (Stith and McCollum in Aggress Violent Beh 16(4):312–318, 2011) that clients found useful while also considering the differences between men’s and women’s responses. Fourteen couples, in which the male had been identified as the primary aggressor, were interviewed multiple times to gain their perspectives about components of the program they found helpful and their suggestions for program improvement. Themes are analyzed by gender. Implications for treatment and future research are provided.     

Biosecurity and Open-Source Biology: The Promise and Peril of Distributed Synthetic Biological Technologies

In this article, we raise ethical concerns about the potential misuse of open-source biology (OSB): biological research and development that progresses through an organisational model of radical openness, deskilling, and innovation. We compare this organisational structure to that of the open-source software model, and detail salient ethical implications of this model. We demonstrate that OSB, in virtue of its commitment to openness, may be resistant to governance attempts.     

An Empirical Investigation of the Relationship Between Social Capital and Subjective Well-Being in Ghana

This paper uses data from the 2012 Afrobarometer Surveys to empirically investigate the relationship between social capital and subjective well-being (SWB) in Ghana. Two measures of SWB are examined—absolute SWB and relative SWB. Results from OLS and ordered logit regressions are mixed. For instance, while generalized trust has no significant effect on either measure of SWB, interpersonal trust and institutional trust are significantly correlated with both measures. The results also suggest that being satisfied with the way democracy works in Ghana has a positive effect on SWB. Even though membership in a voluntary association is negatively correlated with absolute SWB, it has a positive effect on relative SWB. Finally, members of a religious association tend to report lower relative SWB.     

Observed actions affect body-specific associations between space and valence

Right-handers tend to associate “good” with the right side of space and “bad” with the left. This implicit association appears to arise from the way people perform actions, more or less fluently, with their right and left hands. Here we tested whether observing manual actions performed with greater or lesser fluency can affect observers' space–valence associations. In two experiments, we assigned one participant (the actor) to perform a bimanual fine motor task while another participant (the observer) watched. Actors were assigned to wear a ski glove on either the right or left hand, which made performing the actions on this side of space disfluent. In Experiment 1, observers stood behind the actors, sharing their spatial perspective. After motor training, both actors and observers tended to associate “good” with the side of the actors' free hand and “bad” with the side of the gloved hand. To determine whether observers' space–valence associations were computed from their own perspectives or the actors', in Experiment 2 we asked the observer to stand face-to-face with the actor, reversing their spatial perspectives. After motor training, both actors and observers associated “good” with the side of space where disfluent actions had occurred from their own egocentric spatial perspectives; if “good” was associated with the actor's right-hand side it was likely to be associated with the observer's left-hand side. Results show that vicarious experiences of motor fluency can shape valence judgments, and that observers spontaneously encode the locations of fluent and disfluent actions in egocentric spatial coordinates.