Differential therapeutic outcomes of community-based group interventions for women and children exposed to intimate partner violence.

J Interpers Violence. 2011 Aug;26(12):2457-82

Authors: McWhirter PT

Abstract
Two community-based group therapies, emotion focused versus goal oriented, are compared among women exposed to intimate partner violence (n = 46) and their children ( n = 48) aged between 6 and 12 years. A series of repeated measures analyses are employed to evaluate the effects of time from baseline to postintervention following random assignment. Main and treatment effects for women provide support for the relative effectiveness in increasing quality of social support in the emotion-focused intervention and in the reduction of both family conflict and alcohol use for the goal-oriented intervention.

PMID: 20889533 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Ethical quandaries in spiritual healing and herbal medicine: A critical analysis of the morality of traditional medicine advertising in southern African urban societies.

Pan Afr Med J. 2011;10:6

Authors: Munyaradzi M

Abstract
This paper critically examines the morality of advertising by practitioners in spiritual healing and herbal medicine heretofore referred to as traditional medicine, in southern African urban societies. While the subject of traditional medicine has been heavily contested in medical studies in the last few decades, the monumental studies on the subject have emphasised the place of traditional medicine in basic health services. Insignificant attention has been devoted to examine the ethical problems associated with traditional medicine advertising. Critical look at the worthiness of some advertising strategies used by practitioners in traditional medicine in launching their products and services on market thus has been largely ignored. Yet, though advertising is key to helping traditional medicine practitioners' products and services known by prospective customers, this research registers a number of morally negative effects that seem to outweigh the merits that the activity brings to prospective customers. The paper adopts southern African urban societies, and in particular Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe as particular references. The choice of the trio is not accidental, but based on the fact that these countries have in the last few decades been flooded with traditional medicine practitioners/traditional healers from within the continent and from abroad. Most of these practitioners use immoral advertising strategies in communicating to the public the products and services they offer. It is against this background that this paper examines the morality of advertising strategies deployed by practitioners in launching their products and services. To examine the moral worthiness of the advertising strategies used by traditional medical practitioners, I used qualitative analysis of street adverts as well as electronic and print media. From the results obtained through thematic content analysis, the paper concludes that most of the practitioners in traditional medicine lack both business and medical ethics. That said, the paper urges practitioners to seriously consider the morality of their adverts as in most cases they (adverts) do more harm than good. Further to that, the piece recommends the governments of the affected countries to put in place stringent measures to address this mounting problem.

PMID: 22187588 [PubMed - in process]

[The efficacy of restoring the professional health of flight personnel in a combat unit]

Lik Sprava. 1994 Jul-Aug;(7-8):149-52

Authors: Shakula AV, Varus VI

It is shown in the paper that sanitary and rehabilitative measures (graded physical exercise, saunas, manual massage with the elements of biodynamic correction of the spinal column, relaxation exercises in the framework of remedial gymnastics, electrotranquilization of the central nervous system, psychosomatic self-regulation, functional music, video programmes, self-massage of biologically active points, specific diet) taken under conditions of drill by command of the flying personnel, tend to lead to lowering of the general morbidity rate (by a factor of 1.7), work losses (by a factor of 1.8), probability of occurring of iatrogenic diseases (by a factor of 1.6), thereby promoting rise in the level of functional efficiency of the pilot and safety of flights.

PMID: 7900344 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Biodynamic massage.

Complement Ther Nurs Midwifery. 1996 Apr;2(2):47-51

Authors: Westland G

This paper introduces biodynamic massage, locates it in the field of massage, and body psychotherapy, describes some of its historical development and basic theoretical assumptions. A case study illustrates its usage in an National Health Service facility.

PMID: 9439273 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Clinical supervision for 'potent' practice.

Complement Ther Nurs Midwifery. 1997 Apr;3(2):38-41

Authors: Mackereth P

The author has received regular supervision since completing his training in biodynamic massage therapy. This is a requirement of the Code of Conduct for the Association of Holistic Biodynamic Massage Therapists. Initially, this proved difficult to arrange as supervisors familiar with this form of bodywork were based either in London or Cambridge, UK and the author has been living and working in the North West of England. One-to-one supervision was tried over the telephone, supported by 3-monthly meetings with a supervisor in London. Four years ago, the author was able to obtain monthly one-to-one supervision locally. He is now a member of a small supervision group who meet for 3 hours per month. More recently, he has taken on the role of supervisor with a focus on working with nurses involved in either complementary therapies and/or in developing clinical supervision. The following article explores the concept of supervision with the intention of sharing these experiences and promoting discussion on an understanding of the process and potential application within therapeutic nursing work.

PMID: 9432428 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

[Nonpharmacologic treatment for insomnia].

Nippon Rinsho. 2009 Aug;67(8):1601-5

Authors: Amano Y, Iwasaki A, Hashizume M, Tsuboi K

Nonpharmacologic treatment for insomnia occupies an important position on the treatment of insomnia. It is necessary to educate the patient on sleep hygiene to adjust the unappropriate sleep pattern. Within methods of relaxation, autonomy training and biofeedback method are methods using muscle relaxation to achieve psychological balance. Morita therapy is a method to accept insomnia as it is, and give guidance on the patient's life activity in a constructive way. It is important to listen carefully to the patient's life background and choose treatment based on that information. For this, an appropriate construction of a doctor-patient relationship is essential.

PMID: 19768948 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

[Evaluation of the "Schema-focused Emotive Behavioural Therapy" (SET) for patients with personality disorders: results of a randomised controlled trial].

Psychother Psychosom Med Psychol. 2008 Sep-Oct;58(9-10):371-8

Authors: Zorn P, Roder V, Soravia L, Tschacher W

Abstract
The "Schema-focussed Emotive Behavioral Therapy" (SET) was developed by our research group as a new group therapy approach for patients with personality disorders from all clusters (A to C; DSM-IV). It was evaluated in a randomised controlled study (n = 93). Data were collected before and after treatment as well as one year after study entry. A completer analysis was conducted with matched subgroups (n = 60). After therapy, SET patients improved in the outcome domains interactional behavior, strain, and symptomatic complaints (IIP-D, GAF, VEV-VW, BSI-P). Furthermore, they showed a significant lower dropout rate. At the follow-up assessment, Cluster C patients of the experimental group deteriorated with regard to symptomatic complaints (BSI-P). In contrast, cluster B patients improved more over time compared to control subjects. SET seems to be an adequate and effective group therapy with effects that seem to be stable over time, especially for patients with Cluster B diagnosis.

PMID: 18240113 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

[From chaos to insight--the character of the dynamics of therapeutic changes with a linguistic analysis of verbatim transcripts].

Psychother Psychosom Med Psychol. 2008 Sep-Oct;58(9-10):379-86

Authors: Bergmann B, Villmann T, Gumz A

Abstract
The objective of this study is to determine and to analyze so-called key sessions in the frameworks of Therapeutic Cycles Model introduced by Mergenthaler and the Energy Model proposed by Caspar. For this purpose, different measures for key session identification are used based on linguistic text variables. The investigation is done for 10 high-frequency, psychodynamic, inpatient, individual therapies consisting of overall 206 therapeutic sessions, all of which were completely videotaped and transcribed. The text analysis was performed using the automated text analysis tool provided by Mergenthaler, which measures the construct of Emotional Tone as a linguistic manifestation of the emotional event and the construct of Abstraction as a linguistic manifestation of cognitive-reflective processes in speech and texts. Feeding these variables into both models, results reveal their coherence: Therapeutic change may occur, whenever an emotional and cognitive-reflective processing of the internal conflicts begins after destabilisation of coherent patterns of behaviour and experiencing. The discussion suggests a more detailed specification of the definition of key sessions in the Therapeutic Cycles Model by Mergenthaler.

PMID: 21918951 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]