Holy Apparition or Hyper-Religiosity:Prevalence of Explanatory Models for Religious and Spiritual Experiences in Patients with Bipolar Disorder and Their Associations with Religiousness

One point that emerges from qualitative research on religion and bipolar disorder (BD) is the problem patients with BD experience in distinguishing between genuine religious experiences and hyper-religiosity. However, clinical practice does not obviously address communication about differences in explanatory models for illness experiences. The aim of the current study is first to estimate the frequencies of different types of explanations (medical versus religious) for experiences perceived as religious and related to BD, second to explore how these types relate to diagnosis and religiousness, and third to explore the frequency of expectation of treatment for religiosity. In total, 196 adult patients at a specialist outpatient center for BD in the Netherlands completed a questionnaire consisting of seven types of explanations for religious experiences and several items on religiousness. Of the participants who had had religious experiences (66%), 46% viewed the experiences as 'part of spiritual development' and 42% as 'both spiritual and pathological,' 31% reported 'keeping distance from such experiences,' and 15% viewed them as 'only pathological.' Measures of religiousness were positively associated with 'part of spiritual development' and negatively associated with 'keeping distance from the experiences' and 'only pathological.' Half of the sample viewed religiosity as an important topic in treatment. It can be hypothesized that strength of religiousness may help people to integrate destabilizing experiences related to BD into their spiritual development. However, the ambiguity of strong religious involvement in BD necessitates careful exploration of the subject in clinical practice

A q-analog of the ADHMN construction and axisymmetric multi-instantons

In the preceding paper (Phys. Lett. B463 (1999) 257), the authors presented a q-analog of the ADHMN construction and obtained a family of anti-selfdual configurations with a parameter q for classical SU(2) Yang-Mills theory in four-dimensional Euclidean space. The family of solutions can be seen as a q-analog of the single BPS monopole preserving (anti-)selfduality. Further discussion is made on the relation to axisymmetric ansatz on anti-selfdual equation given by Witten in the late seventies. It is found that the q-exponential functions familiar in q-analysis appear as analytic functions categorizing the anti-selfdual configurations yielded by axisymmetric ansatz.Comment: 11pages, Latex2e, to appear in Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and General as a `Special Issue/Difference Equations

Depressive symptoms and risk of Alzheimer's disease in more highly educated older people

In an earlier study we observed that a depressive syndrome was highly predictive of developing Alzheimer's disease (AD) in older persons with normal baseline cognition and higher levels of education. We interpreted these findings as the depression being an early noncognitive manifestation of AD in persons with more cognitive reserve. The present study examines whether specific symptoms of depression can be identified that predict AD among older subjects with higher levels of education. In the community-based Amsterdam Study of the Elderly (AMSTEL), a sample of 3,147 nondemented persons with normal cognition, 65 to 84 years old, was selected and divided into subjects with >8 years and 8 years and 31 with 8 years of education depressed mood and subjective bradyphrenia were strongly associated with incident AD. No association between depressive symptoms and AD was observed among subjects with <or =8 years of education. Both depressed mood and subjective bradyphrenia seem to indicate subclinical AD in older people with higher levels of education. Clinicians should be alert that in these persons, AD may become apparent within a relatively short period of tim

Criterion validity of the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression scale (CES-D): results from a community-based sample of older subject in the Netherlands

The Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression scale (CES-D) has been widely used in studies of late-life depression. Psychometric properties are generally favourable, but data on the criterion validity of the CES-D in elderly community-based samples are lacking. In a sample of older (55-85 years) inhabitants of the Netherlands, 487 subjects were selected to study criterion validity of the CES-D. Using the 1-month prevalence of major depression derived from the Diagnostic Interview Schedule (DIS) as criterion, the weighted sensitivity of the CES-D was 100%; specificity 88%; and positive predictive value 13.2%. False positives were not more likely among elderly with physical illness, cognitive decline or anxiety. We conclude that the criterion validity of the CES-D for major depression was very satisfactory in this sample of older adults

Probing for Instanton Quarks with epsilon-Cooling

We use epsilon-cooling, adjusting at will the order a^2 corrections to the lattice action, to study the parameter space of instantons in the background of non-trivial holonomy and to determine the presence and nature of constituents with fractional topological charge at finite and zero temperature for SU(2). As an additional tool, zero temperature configurations were generated from those at finite temperature with well-separated constituents. This is achieved by "adiabatically" adjusting the anisotropic coupling used to implement finite temperature on a symmetric lattice. The action and topological charge density, as well as the Polyakov loop and chiral zero-modes are used to analyse these configurations. We also show how cooling histories themselves can reveal the presence of constituents with fractional topological charge. We comment on the interpretation of recent fermion zero-mode studies for thermalized ensembles at small temperatures.Comment: 26 pages, 14 figures in 33 part