The effects of group play therapy on self-concept among 7 to 11 year-old children suffering from thalassemia major

Background: Children suffering from thalassemia have higher levels of depression and lower levels of self-concept. Objectives: The aim of this study was to determine if group play therapy could significantly increase self-concept among children with thalassemia major ages 7 to 11 years old in teaching hospitals of Golestan province, Iran, in 2012. Patients and Methods: In this randomized, controlled clinical trial, 60 children with thalassemia major were randomly assigned to intervention (30 children) and control (30 children) groups. The intervention included eight 45 to 60 minute sessions during four weeks, during which the intervention group received group play therapy. The control group received no interventions. Selfconcept was measured three times using the Piers-Harris children’s self-concept scale: before, immediately after, and a month after the intervention. Results: For the intervention group, results showed that the mean self-concept score was significantly higher at the second point in time compared to the baseline (P 0.05). Conclusions: The results showed that group play therapy improves self-concept in children suffering from thalassemia major. © 2016, Iranian Red Crescent Medical Journal

Low Q2Q^2 proton structure function, using gluon and pseudoscalar meson clouds in the constituent quark framework

The idea of the meson cloud approach in the chiral quark model has been extended to include gluon cloud in order to achieve the parton densities in the nucleon, based on the constitute quark framework. The splitting function of the quark to the quark-meson and quark-gluon at low $Q^2$ value are used to obtain parton densities in the constituent quark. The phenomenological constituent model is employed to extract the parton distributions in the proton at low $Q^2$ value. Since we have access to the parton densities at low $Q^2$, we are able to obtain $F_{2}(x,Q^2)$ structure function at low $Q^2$ value. The result is in good agreement with available experimental data and some theoretical models. To confirm the validity of our calculations, the fraction of total momentum of proton which is carried by gluon at high $Q^2$ and also the Gottfried sum rule are computed. The results are in good agreement with what are expected.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figure

Facilitating and inhibiting factors related to treatment adherence in women with polycystic ovary syndrome: a qualitative study

Background: Adherence issues in PCOS patients have not been examined thoroughly. Patients report prolonged periods of treatment and side effects of drug as the most common reason for withdrawal from treatment. To improve the effective management of PCOS patients, it is fundamental to understand facilitating and inhibiting factors to treatment adherence. Objective: to explore facilitating /inhibiting factors related to treatment adherence among PCOS patients. Material and Methods: This was a qualitative study with a purposive sample of women with confirmed diagnosis of PCOS. The data were collected via 20 in-depth semi-structured interviews with women aged between 21 to 34. A qualitative content analysis was used to analyze the data. Results: Five themes were identified which described different types of facilitating /inhibiting factors to treatment adherence. Inhibiting factors included financial issues, patient-related, disease-related, health care provider-related factors; social factors were found to be both facilitating and inhibiting. Conclusion: The findings suggest that successful adherence to PCOS treatment is highly dependent on patients recognizing and adapting to financial, social, and health care related inhibiting factors. It is also crucial for clinicians and policy makers to recognize these key inhibiting factors in order to improve treatment outcomes Keywords: polycystic ovarian syndrome, adherence, qualitative researc