The multicenter effectiveness study of inpatient and day hospital treatment in departments of psychosomatic medicine and psychotherapy in Germany

Background: Reliable outcome data of psychosomatic inpatient and day hospital treatment with a focus on psychotherapy are important to strengthen ecological validity by assessing the reality of mental health care in the field. This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of inpatient and day hospital treatment in German university departments of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy in a prospective, naturalistic, multicenter design including structured assessments. Methods: Structured interviews were used to diagnose mental disorders according to ICD-10 and DSM-IV at baseline. Depression, anxiety, somatization, eating disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, as well as personality functioning were assessed by means of questionnaires on admission and at discharge. Results: 2,094 patients recruited by 19 participating university hospitals consented to participation in the study. Effect sizes for each of the outcome criteria were calculated for 4–5 sub-groups per outcome domain with differing severity at baseline. Pre-post effect sizes for patients with moderate and high symptom severity at baseline ranged from d = 0.78 to d = 3.61 with symptoms of PTSD, depression, and anxiety showing the largest and somatization as well as personality functioning showing somewhat smaller effects. Conclusions: Inpatient and day hospital treatment in German university departments of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy is effective under field conditions. Clinical trial registration: https://drks.de/search/de/trial/DRKS00016412, identifier: DRKS00016412

Olfactory Perception in Relation to the Physicochemical Odor Space

A growing body of research aims at solving what is often referred to as the stimulus-percept problem in olfactory perception. Although computational efforts have made it possible to predict perceptual impressions from the physicochemical space of odors, studies with large psychophysical datasets from non-experts remain scarce. Following previous approaches, we developed a physicochemical odor space using 4094 molecular descriptors of 1389 odor molecules. For 20 of these odors, we examined associations with perceived pleasantness, intensity, odor quality and detection threshold, obtained from a dataset of 2000 naïve participants. Our results show significant differences in perceptual ratings, and we were able to replicate previous findings on the association between perceptual ratings and the first dimensions of the physicochemical odor space. However, the present analyses also revealed striking interindividual variations in perceived pleasantness and intensity. Additionally, interactions between pleasantness, intensity, and olfactory and trigeminal qualitative dimensions were found. To conclude, our results support previous findings on the relation between structure and perception on the group level in our sample of non-expert raters. In the challenging task to relate olfactory stimulus and percept, the physicochemical odor space can serve as a reliable and helpful tool to structure the high-dimensional space of olfactory stimuli. Nevertheless, human olfactory perception in the individual is not an analytic process of molecule detection alone, but is part of a holistic integration of multisensory inputs, context and experience

Establishment of a valid and reliable system for body odor description

Body odors play a subtle, but crucial role in many social situations. They are influenced by genetic connections, hormonal changes, current inflammatory processes, and diet, among other factors. Because the apocrine sweat glands are adrenaline sensitive, physiological and emotional arousal also alter body odor. Therefore, body odors enable the recognition and discrimination between different body states, emotions or diseases in our fellow human beings. Although this often happens unconsciously, piloting survey data show marked differences in the way, we describe body odors; e.g., a body odor that originates from exercise is most often described as "sweaty," whereas a body odor from a sick person is referred to as "biting." The goal of this study is to develop a valid and reliable matrix that captures how people perceive and describe different body odors. To this end, an online survey will be conducted including a minimum of n=1000 participants from different countries within and beyond Europe. Each country or language with at least n=100 participants will be included in the sample. Each participant is asked, in their respective language, to name three or more words or phrases that describe body odors in four different states (healthy, sick, stressed, after exercise) and from five body parts (from armpit, mouth, feet, male and female genitalia). The resulting body odor vocabulary from each language will be compared and the most often named words in each language will be used to generate a body odor description matrix. The study is part of the EU-funded project “Smart Electronic Olfaction for Body Odor Diagnostics (SMELLODI)” with the overall goal to digitize olfaction and make it usable for health applications, e.g. for patients with olfactory disorders

Predictors of school burnout among German high school students

Introduction: Burnout refers to characteristic stress symptoms that typically result from chronic overload at the workplace. However, increased stress and strain are observed already in children and adolescents in the context of school with negative consequences on mental health and future educational and occupational pathways. Previous work shows that such symptoms are associat-ed with gender, immigration background, academic achievement and grade level. In addition, they are also linked to personal stressful experiences in the daily lives of students at school. Our goal was to replicate the association of these objective stressors and extend previous findings by investigating subjective situational factors perceived as stressful by the students. Methods: We carried out a survey among 502 German high school students (aged 10 to 18; 48.4% females) using an adapted version of the German "Burnout Bullying Inventory" (BMI). Besides the sociodemographic factors, academic achievement and mental and physical symtp-mos, we also queried subjective stressor categories. Results & Conclusions: Higher burnout scores related to female gender, immigrant background, low academic achievement, and higher grade level. The analysis of subjective stressors revealed a significant relation between "homework" and stress resulting from "pressure to perform at school”. Taken together, all independent variables explained 24% of the variance in burnout scores. These findings provide valuable evidence for effective prevention measures, its optimal timing, target groups, and content to combat school burnout in the German school context

The multicenter effectiveness study of inpatient and day hospital treatment in departments of psychosomatic medicine and psychotherapy in Germany

$\bf Background:$ Reliable outcome data of psychosomatic inpatient and day hospital treatment with a focus on psychotherapy are important to strengthen ecological validity by assessing the reality of mental health care in the field. This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of inpatient and day hospital treatment in German university departments of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy in a prospective, naturalistic, multicenter design including structured assessments. $\bf Methods:$ Structured interviews were used to diagnose mental disorders according to ICD-10 and DSM-IV at baseline. Depression, anxiety, somatization, eating disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, as well as personality functioning were assessed by means of questionnaires on admission and at discharge. $\bf Results:$ 2,094 patients recruited by 19 participating university hospitals consented to participation in the study. Effect sizes for each of the outcome criteria were calculated for 4–5 sub-groups per outcome domain with differing severity at baseline. Pre-post effect sizes for patients with moderate and high symptom severity at baseline ranged from $\it d$ = 0.78 to $\it d$ = 3.61 with symptoms of PTSD, depression, and anxiety showing the largest and somatization as well as personality functioning showing somewhat smaller effects. $\bf Conclusions:$ Inpatient and day hospital treatment in German university departments of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy is effective under field conditions. $\bf Clinical trial registration:$ https://drks.de/search/de/trial/DRKS00016412, identifier: DRKS00016412