Effects of the Transcendental Meditation Program on Substance Use among University Students

A randomized wait-list controlled trial (N = 295 university students) of the effects of the Transcendental Meditation program was conducted in an urban setting. Substance use was assessed by self-report at baseline and 3 months later. For smoking and illicit drug use, there were no significant differences between conditions. For alcohol use, sex X intervention condition interactions were significant; TM instruction lowered drinking rates among male but not female students. TM instruction could play a valuable role in reducing alcohol use among male university students. Limitations are noted, along with suggestions for further research

Delivering stepped care: an analysis of implementation in routine practice

addresses: Mood Disorders Centre, University of Exeter, Exeter, EX4 4QG, UK. [email protected]: PMCID: PMC3283464types: Journal Article; Multicenter Study; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't© 2012 Richards et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.In the United Kingdom, clinical guidelines recommend that services for depression and anxiety should be structured around a stepped care model, where patients receive treatment at different 'steps,' with the intensity of treatment (i.e., the amount and type) increasing at each step if they fail to benefit at previous steps. There are very limited data available on the implementation of this model, particularly on the intensity of psychological treatment at each step. Our objective was to describe patient pathways through stepped care services and the impact of this on patient flow and management

A Genome-Wide Association Study of Diabetic Kidney Disease in Subjects With Type 2 Diabetes

dentification of sequence variants robustly associated with predisposition to diabetic kidney disease (DKD) has the potential to provide insights into the pathophysiological mechanisms responsible. We conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of DKD in type 2 diabetes (T2D) using eight complementary dichotomous and quantitative DKD phenotypes: the principal dichotomous analysis involved 5,717 T2D subjects, 3,345 with DKD. Promising association signals were evaluated in up to 26,827 subjects with T2D (12,710 with DKD). A combined T1D+T2D GWAS was performed using complementary data available for subjects with T1D, which, with replication samples, involved up to 40,340 subjects with diabetes (18,582 with DKD). Analysis of specific DKD phenotypes identified a novel signal near GABRR1 (rs9942471, P = 4.5 x 10(-8)) associated with microalbuminuria in European T2D case subjects. However, no replication of this signal was observed in Asian subjects with T2D or in the equivalent T1D analysis. There was only limited support, in this substantially enlarged analysis, for association at previously reported DKD signals, except for those at UMOD and PRKAG2, both associated with estimated glomerular filtration rate. We conclude that, despite challenges in addressing phenotypic heterogeneity, access to increased sample sizes will continue to provide more robust inference regarding risk variant discovery for DKD.Peer reviewe

Perspectiva constructivista del realismo depresivo: implicaciones para la teoría y terapia cognitivas

The cognitive theory of depression (Ben K. 1967) ‹Shows that the depressed person maintains his negative thinking despite the evidence that contradicts it, because he distorts the feedback he receives from the environment, perceiving it as more negative than it actually is. . The research it receives challenges this hypothesis, suggesting instead that depressives can be realistic if the perception of life circumstances is genuinely negative, while non-depressives are those who maintain unrealistic optimistic thinking. The debate on this theory has been carried out within a realistic meta-theoretical framework in which it conceptualizes objective reality as something external to what it perceives. In this article we will broaden the debate by examining the implications of constructivist theory on the concepts of depressive realism versus depressive distortion or bias. We will finally see the implications of this debate for the cognitive therapy theory of depression.La teoria cognitiva de la depresion(Ben k. 1967) ‹Muestra que el depresivo mantiene su pensamiento negativopese a la muestra de evidencias que lo contradicen , debido a que disiorsiona eI feedback que recibe del ambiente, percibiéndolo mas negativo de lo que en realidad es. La investigacion que recibe pone en entredicho esta hipotesis,sugiriendo en cambio que los depresivos pueden  ser realistas si la percepcion de circunstancias vitales ,genuinamente son negativas, mientras que los no depresivos  son los que mantienen un pensamiento optimista no realista. El debate sobre esta teoria se ha realizado  dentro de un encuadre metateorico  realista en la que conceptualiza a la realidad objetiva  como algo externo a lo que percibe . En este articulo ampliaremos el debate mediante el examen de las implicaciones de la teroia constructivista sobre los conceptos de realismo depresivo versus distorsion o sesgo depresivo. Finalmente veremos las implicaciones de este debate para la teoria de la terapia cognitiva de la depresion. &nbsp