Health anxiety and hypochondriasis : the patient's perspective : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Psychology at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand

Appendix C page 107 removed due to Copyright restrictionsThis qualitative study using a social constructionist epistemology looked at seven individuals' experiences of health anxiety and hypochondriasis. Participants were recruited using advertisements on local public notice boards, word of mouth and a published newspaper interview. Participants self-identified as having health anxiety or hypochondria and ranged between 18-64 years of age. There were three male and four female participants. A thematic narrative analysis was undertaken. Common themes that were identified were: childhood attachment styles, trauma, personal experience with illness, the function of health anxiety, health anxiety developing into adulthood, stigma of being labelled a hypochondriac, participants' positioning of self and others, participants' views on their doctors and communication styles. Also outlined were participants' recommendations for managing symptoms and coping with doctors' consultations. Implications include integrating attachment theories into therapy for health anxiety and working towards improving communication skills between medical doctors and health anxious and hypochondriacal patients

Estimating youth locomotion ground reaction forces using an accelerometer-based activity monitor.

To address a variety of questions pertaining to the interactions between physical activity, musculoskeletal loading and musculoskeletal health/injury/adaptation, simple methods are needed to quantify, outside a laboratory setting, the forces acting on the human body during daily activities. The purpose of this study was to develop a statistically based model to estimate peak vertical ground reaction force (pVGRF) during youth gait. 20 girls (10.9 ± 0.9 years) and 15 boys (12.5 ± 0.6 years) wore a Biotrainer AM over their right hip. Six walking and six running trials were completed after a standard warm-up. Average AM intensity (g) and pVGRF (N) during stance were determined. Repeated measures mixed effects regression models to estimate pVGRF from Biotrainer activity monitor acceleration in youth (girls 10-12, boys 12-14 years) while walking and running were developed. Log transformed pVGRF had a statistically significant relationship with activity monitor acceleration, centered mass, sex (girl), type of locomotion (run), and locomotion type-acceleration interaction controlling for subject as a random effect. A generalized regression model without subject specific random effects was also developed. The average absolute differences between the actual and predicted pVGRF were 5.2% (1.6% standard deviation) and 9% (4.2% standard deviation) using the mixed and generalized models, respectively. The results of this study support the use of estimating pVGRF from hip acceleration using a mixed model regression equation

Personality style, psychological adaptation and expectations of psychologists in clinical training

Objectives: The current study aimed to profile the personality styles, expectations and psychological adaptation of Clinical Psychology Trainees. It also aimed to look at the relationship between these variables. Design: A cross-sectional postal questionnaire study, employing between group and correlational analyses. Methods: A sample of 364 psychologists in clinical training (57% response rate) from 15 UK clinical psychology training courses participated in the study. They completed questionnaires of personality, psychological adaptation, social support and an expectations measure specifically designed for the study. Results: The majority of psychologists in clinical training who participated in the study were well adjusted in terms of personality, did not experience extensive problems with psychological adaptation, and had the majority of their expectations met. A significant sub group reported personality adjustment problems and problems with self esteem, anxiety, depression and work adjustment. Low self esteem was present in just under a quarter of the sample. Personality adjustment was found to be related to expectations and psychological adaptation. Trainee psychologists with poorer personality adjustment were less likely to have their expectations met, especially with regard to the impact of training on their life, and were more likely to suffer from poor psychological adaptation, particularly in terms of low self esteem, anxiety, depression and work adjustment problems. Self esteem was related to discrepancies in actual and ideal social support. Some differences were found between year groups. Gender and age were not related to personality adjustment, psychological adaptation or expectations. Conclusions and Implications: The findings were discussed in terms of the interpretation of personality style. Implications for clinical psychology training and the profession of clinical psychology were considered

'Bloody Sunday': National Trauma and National Cinema

This paper examines Paul Greengrass’ 2002 docudrama ‘Bloody Sunday’, paying particular attention to the way in which the film operates within the sphere of trauma therapy. To this end it analyses the role the film plays in re-narritivising or demythologising the historical event and how this helps to achieve acoming to terms with the violent break in the history of Northern Ireland that Bloody Sunday constitutes. In order to do this the paper focuses on the way in which Greengrass has attempted to achieve, in his own words, ‘an account[of the story] we can all broadly share’ through his use of the documentary aesthetic, non-actors, binary characterisations and large amounts of improvised dialogue in his script. Finally, the paper examines the way in which the film breaks with traditional narratives of the event and the effect this had on its reception in both Ireland and Britain

Mesolithic and later activity at North Barr River, Morvern

At North Barr River, Morvern, inspection of forestry planting mounds on a raised beach terrace identified a chipped stone assemblage associated with upcast deposits containing charcoal. An archaeological evaluation of the site, funded by Forestry Commission Scotland, sought to better understand the extent and character of this Mesolithic and later prehistoric lithic scatter. The lithic assemblage is predominantly debitage with some microliths and scrapers. The range of raw materials including flint, Rùm bloodstone and baked mudstone highlights wider regional networks. Other elements, including a barbed and tanged arrowhead, belong to later depositional episodes. Two mid-second millennium bc radiocarbon dates were obtained from soil associated with some lithics recovered from a mixed soil beneath colluvial deposits. The chronology of a putative stone bank or revetment is uncertain but the arrangement of stone may also date to the second millennium bc

Contra: A Programmable System for Performance-aware Routing

We present Contra, a system for performance-aware routing that can adapt to traffic changes at hardware speeds. While existing work has developed point solutions for performance-aware routing on a fixed topology (e.g., a Fattree) with a fixed routing policy (e.g., use least utilized paths), Contra can be configured to operate seamlessly over any network topology and a wide variety of sophisticated routing policies. Users of Contra write network-wide policies that rank network paths given their current performance. A compiler then analyzes such policies in conjunction with the network topology and decomposes them into switch-local P4 programs, which collectively implement a new, specialized distance-vector protocol. This protocol generates compact probes that traverse the network, gathering path metrics to optimize for the user policy dynamically. Switches respond to changing network conditions at hardware speeds by routing flowlets along the best policy-compliant paths. Our experiments show that Contra scales to large networks, and that in terms of flow completion times, it is competitive with hand-crafted systems that have been customized for specific topologies and policies

Rethinking the Core List of Journals for Libraries that Serve Schools and Colleges of Pharmacy.

The Core List of Journals for Libraries that Serve Schools and Colleges of Pharmacy is a guide for developing and maintaining pharmacy-affiliated library collections. A work group was created to update the list and design a process for updating that will streamline future revisions. Work group members searched the National Library of Medicine catalog for an initial list of journals and then applied inclusion criteria to narrow the list. The work group finalized the fifth edition of the list with 225 diverse publications and produced a sustainable set of criteria for journal inclusion, providing a structured, objective process for future updates

Targeting Astrocytes Ameliorates Neurologic Changes in a Mouse Model of Alzheimer\u27s Disease

Astrocytes are the most abundant cell type in the brain and play a critical role in maintaining healthy nervous tissue. In Alzheimer\u27s disease (AD) and most other neurodegenerative disorders, many astrocytes convert to a chronically activated phenotype characterized by morphologic and biochemical changes that appear to compromise protective properties and/or promote harmful neuroinflammatory processes. Activated astrocytes emerge early in the course of AD and become increasingly prominent as clinical and pathological symptoms progress, but few studies have tested the potential of astrocyte-targeted therapeutics in an intact animal model of AD. Here, we used adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors containing the astrocyte-specific Gfa2 promoter to target hippocampal astrocytes in APP/PS1 mice. AAV-Gfa2 vectors drove the expression of VIVIT, a peptide that interferes with the immune/inflammatory calcineurin/NFAT (nuclear factor of activated T-cells) signaling pathway, shown by our laboratory and others to orchestrate biochemical cascades leading to astrocyte activation. After several months of treatment with Gfa2-VIVIT, APP/PS1 mice exhibited improved cognitive and synaptic function, reduced glial activation, and lower amyloid levels. The results confirm a deleterious role for activated astrocytes in AD and lay the groundwork for exploration of other novel astrocyte-based therapies