Getting access to the self: Effects of self-management therapy on the development of self-regulation and inhibitory control in obese adolescents

Background and aims: This study investigated the role of self-regulation competencies in general and specifically in a food-related context for the control of body weight in a three-year weight loss program. Methods: The sample consisted of 30 male and female adolescents (age range: 11–18 years) who participated in a three-year therapy program for severe obesity (mean BMI at the beginning of the intervention was 33.6). Assessment of self-regulation competencies was conducted at three different stages (1st–3rd graduation/class year). Therefore, three independent groups of adolescents (N = 10) at these different stages were tested (initial-to final-stage of therapy). At the time of testing the BMI of these groups significantly differed from 38.8 to 28.7. Analyses of covariance were performed to determine whether the adolescents also differed in self-regulation skills like “resistance to temptation” and food-related Stroop interference along with ameliorating their energy-balance regulation. Results: In addition to the main effects of age and body mass index, adolescents further displayed significant improvements of executive functions with respect to resistance to temptation and inhibition. Conclusions: Interventions aimed at enhancing energy-balance regulation in adolescents may further benefit from efforts to facilitate executive functions such as self-regulation and food-related cognitive inhibition

JOB STRESSORS AND SLOW MEDICINE IN HEALTH CARE: A SCOPING REVIEW

This paper provides a framework for addressing the stressors in modern medical health care, especially those that relate to psychology and psychiatry. Despite its advances, organized medicine is beset with inefficiencies and imperfections. The extent of burnout and stress for health professionals is documented in this scoping review. The impact on mental health is described and an approach based on a slower medicine is advocated

I rhyme / To see myself, to set the darkness echoing1

s a child, they could not keep me from wells, ” wrote “ASeamus Heaney in his version of the Narcissus myth. “I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells / of waterweed, fungus and dank moss. ” In countless versions, the ancient myth strikes a universal chord: person sees self, meets death. Ovid told of handsome Narcissus and Echo, the nymph who fell in love when she saw him “chasing frightened deer into his nets. ” Rejected, she wasted away, until nothing was left but her voice, “heard by all. ” He, “Tired from both his enthusiasm for hunting and from the heat, ” rested a spell, caught glimpse of his reflection in a pool of water, and fell in love with “all the things for which he himself is admired. ” Unable to tear himself from the fateful reflection, he too wasted away. At this spot later sprouted narcissus, the flower. Favored by poet and artist alike, the story intrigues anyone who searches for or reconstructs the self. In art, variations abound, among them one by the great Author affi liation: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Design, validation and dissemination of an undergraduate assessment tool using SimMan® in simulated medical emergencies

Background: Increasingly, medical students are being taught acute medicine using whole-body simulator manikins. Aim: We aimed to design, validate and make widely available two simple assessment tools to be used with Laerdal SimMan (R) for final year students. Methods: We designed two scenarios with criterion-based checklists focused on assessment and management of two medical emergencies. Members of faculty critiqued the assessments for face validity and checklists revised. We assessed three groups of different experience levels: Foundation Year 2 doctors, third and final year medical students. Differences between groups were analysed, and internal consistency and interrater reliability calculated. A generalisability analysis was conducted using scenario and rater as facets in design. Results: A maximum of two items were removed from either checklist following the initial survey. Significantly different scores for three groups of experience for both scenarios were reported (p0.90). Internal consistency was poor (alpha<50.5). Generalizability study results suggest that four cases would provide reliable discrimination between final year students. Conclusions: These assessments proved easy to administer and we have gone some way to demonstrating construct validity and reliability. We have made the material available on a simulator website to enable others to reproduce these assessments

Health care and subjective well-being in nations

With the ever-increasing costs incurred by medical health care in the majority of the industrialized nations of the world, attempts have been made to identify and rectify the deficiencies in the health industry and improve quality management assessment. A central question for politicians and researchers is, to what extent does a country's health care system influence the subjective well-being in its citizens

Using Short-Term Concentration Measures and Intelligence in Rehabilitation Settings

Psychological assessment of cognitive functioning among clinical groups that include psychiatric and geriatric patients is a difficult task. This study examines the interrelationship between intelligence and concentrative ability for a group of psychiatric patients. Intellectual and concentrative ability were assessed among a group of 85, predominantly schizophrenic, patients (mean age 32 years) from a Sheltered Workshop (GWN) and neurological-psychiatric institutionalized care units within the Neuss region of North-Rhine Westphalia, Germany. Moderate bivariate relationships were found between all IQ subtests and the concentration performance variables (d2). A substantial overlap in variance was found between “nonverbal” intelligence and the concentration variables (using multiple regression and discrimination analysis). Error rate on the concentration task was significantly negatively correlated with the IQ variables, the magnitude of the correlation coefficient increasing as a function of the time on the task. Future studies would benefit from comparisons in factor structure similarity between abnormal and normal groups as well as between-clinical groups. At a practical level, the relatively easy use (less complex administration) and less obtrusive (hence, low level of personal threat) and inexpensive procedures of the letter cancellation task makes it a useful, albeit “approximate”, measure of cognitive functioning