Management of cannabis use disorder and related issues. A clinician’s guide.

This guide provides the knowledge essential to help people reduce, cease, or manage their cannabis-use problems. The manual aims to provide facts, figures, and useful techniques to assist clinicians in providing evidence-based treatments for cannabis users wishing to change the patterns of their use. The manual also provides a number of worksheets to use with cannabis clients. The manual is divided into 12 sections: Chapter 1: Background information Chapter 2: Working with cannabis users Chapter 3: Screening for cannabis use Chapter 4: Assessment Chapter 5: Withdrawal management Chapter 6: Brief interventions Chapter 7: Special considerations Chapter 8: Family interventions Chapter 9: Psycho-education and social support Chapter 10: Treating mental health in cannabis users Chapter 11: Screening tools Chapter 12: Worksheet

Review on biomedical sensors, technologies, and algorithms for diagnosis of sleep-disordered breathing: Comprehensive survey

This paper provides a comprehensive review of available technologies for measurements of vital physiology related parameters that cause sleep disordered breathing (SDB). SDB is a chronic disease that may lead to several health problems and increase the risk of high blood pressure and even heart attack. Therefore, the diagnosis of SDB at an early stage is very important. The essential primary step before diagnosis is measurement. Vital health parameters related to SBD might be measured through invasive or non-invasive methods. Nowadays, with respect to increase in aging population, improvement in home health management systems is needed more than even a decade ago. Moreover, traditional health parameter measurement techniques such as polysomnography are not comfortable and introduce additional costs to the consumers. Therefore, in modern advanced self-health management devices, electronics and communication science are combined to provide appliances that can be used for SDB diagnosis, by monitoring a patient's physiological parameters with more comfort and accuracy. Additionally, development in machine learning algorithms provides accurate methods of analysing measured signals. This paper provides a comprehensive review of measurement approaches, data transmission, and communication networks, alongside machine learning algorithms for sleep stage classification, to diagnose SDB

Substance Abuse Treatment for Persons With Co-Occurring Disorders

Summary: This TIP, Substance Abuse Treatment for Persons With Co-Occurring Disorders, revises TIP 9, Assessment and Treatment of Patients With Coexisting Mental Illness and Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse. The revised TIP provides information about new developments in the rapidly growing field of co-occurring substance use and mental disorders and captures the state-of-the-art in the treatment of people with co-occurring disorders. The TIP focuses on what the substance abuse treatment clinician needs to know and provides that information in an accessible manner. The TIP synthesizes knowledge and grounds it in the practical realities of clinical cases and real situations so the reader will come away with increased knowledge, encouragement, and resourcefulness in working with clients with co-occurring disorders. View book on publisher\u27s websit

Low Back Pain (LBP)

Low back pain (LBP) is a major public health problem, being the most commonly reported musculoskeletal disorder (MSD) and the leading cause of compromised quality of life and work absenteeism. Indeed, LBP is the leading worldwide cause of years lost to disability, and its burden is growing alongside the increasing and aging population. The etiology, pathogenesis, and occupational risk factors of LBP are still not fully understood. It is crucial to give a stronger focus to reducing the consequences of LBP, as well as preventing its onset. Primary prevention at the occupational level remains important for highly exposed groups. Therefore, it is essential to identify which treatment options and workplace-based intervention strategies are effective in increasing participation at work and encouraging early return-to-work to reduce the consequences of LBP. The present Special Issue offers a unique opportunity to update many of the recent advances and perspectives of this health problem. A number of topics will be covered in order to attract high-quality research papers, including the following major areas: prevalence and epidemiological data, etiology, prevention, assessment and treatment approaches, and health promotion strategies for LBP. We have received a wide range of submissions, including research on the physical, psychosocial, environmental, and occupational perspectives, also focused on workplace interventions

Anxious lives: Tracing the life course of a medical diagnosis through illness narratives

This dissertation is a study of medical diagnosis, specifically anxiety disorder diagnosis, from the perspective and through the narratives of people who have been diagnosed. In this study, I address two core research questions. First, how does social materiality (e.g., bodies and objects) contribute to, shape, and lend empirical understanding to the experience of an anxiety disorder and the experience of illness in general? Second, how does medical diagnosis translate from the medical institution into the lives of people who have been diagnosed, and how do those diagnoses transform in and through the social lives of people? To address these questions, I conducted in-depth interviews with forty people who had been diagnosed with three specific forms of an anxiety disorder: generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder with agoraphobia, and panic disorder without agoraphobia. I also conducted eight months of participant observation at anxiety disorder support groups. Through these illness narratives, I traced the co-construction of illness experience and medical diagnosis from the perspectives of people who have been diagnosed. These narratives were loosely divided into three parts: before, during, and after diagnosis, which mirror the structure of the dissertation. Accordingly, I first describe how people came to decide to seek medical care and diagnosis. Then, I turn to how gendered bodies and the gendering of anxiety/ fear in general and the gendering of the diagnosis of anxiety disorders in particular complicated the diagnostic process itself. And, finally, I explore how the medical diagnoses evolved in and through everyday social interactions and experiences, often well beyond the purview of medical institutions. These narratives suggest that physical bodies, everyday objects, and medical diagnoses figure prominently in the life course of an anxiety disorder

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis

This Special Issue on CFS/ME collects 18 papers with an interdisciplinary view on the current demographic and epidemiological data and immunological characteristics of CFS/ME and examines the different pathogenic hypotheses, as well as giving information about the latest knowledge on diagnostic investigations, pharmacological, integrative, physical, cognitive-behavioral and psychological curative approaches

Living in two worlds: pastoral responses to possession in Singapore

Possession behaviour and exorcism have become more common in Singapore churches since 1972 with the increasing popularity and influence of the charismatic movement. This study aims to describe, analyse, and evaluate the responses of pastors in Singapore to people who display possession behaviour. The in- depth interview of 16 pastors involved in exorcism/deliverance ministry forms the primary material for this study and is complemented by interviews of subjects of possession, psychiatrists, and other informed persons. The study is divided into three phases.In the descriptive phase (chapters 3-5), the pastors' worldview and understanding of the epidemiology, symptomatology, and therapeutic management of possession behaviour are described. They espouse a traditional spirit worldview which views life as a battle between God and and a hierarchy of evil spirits who play an intimate role in the daily lives of people. People are believed to be possessed by evil spirits through contact with occultic and non-Christian religious practices. According to the pastors, people from the lower socio-economic strata, and those with emotional problems and other needs are predisposed to such contact: Demon possession is said to manifest itself through the emergence of an alternate personality, with accompanying personality and behavioural changes and disturbances. The pastors' respond in such instances by attempting to exorcise the "demon" through a deliverance session.In the analytical phase (chap 6-7), the pastors' understanding, explanation, and response to possession behaviour is compared with competing paradigms from the scientific disciplines (eg psychiatry and social anthropology). The similarities between the two sets of discourses are shown using their epidemiological (and phenomenological) description of possession suggesting that they may be describing similar phenomena. However, the fundamental tension between the two discourses emerges when their hermeneutic understanding of possession is examined. This tension is centred in competing epistemological and cosmological assumptions. The pastors' accounts are constructed around a two-worlds worldview while the scientific accounts are based on modern science's one- world worldview. The pastors respond to the competing scientific paradigm by attempting to live between both their worlds in various ways. Some focus on the other (spiritual) world, while others attempt to live in one world at a time. Yet others try to live in between both worlds. Analysis of the pastors' approach shows that their demonological paradigms are created and reinforced by various social and psychological factors largely centred around the theme of competition played in various arenas: ecclesiastical, religious, professional, and personal. While such hermeneutics of suspicion a.re employed to unmask the motivations of the pastors and the way their worldview is shaped, this does not mean that science and scientific explanations can provide the metanarrative with which we can evaluate the pastors' response.The evaluative phase of the study (chapt7-8) develops this question further by looking at the limitations of modern science and contemporary theologies constructed around the scientific paradigm. This is done by examining the theological questions of epistemology, theodicy, and cosmology. The limitations of reductionist epistemologies and theodicies are shown with a critique of both modern science and theology, and charismatic demonology. The model of living in both worlds simultaneously is proposed using the cosmological understanding of Orthodox theology and Christology, thus recovering the patristic paradigm of a spiritual universe and embodied spirituality. The implications of this for pastoral responses to possession behaviour are then outlined centering on the theological vision of two co-existing worlds (a spiritual universe) and the pastoral task of unmasking and resisting evil in all its varieties and depth