Depression and Anxiety in Patients with Chronic Renal Failure: The Effect of Sociodemographic Characteristics

“Do the sociodemographic characteristics relate to the levels of depression and anxiety in patients with chronic renal failure in Athens?” The study investigated in a group of renal disease patients differences referring to self-reported mental health, depression, and anxiety, after controlling for gender, age, education, and marital status. Patient-reported assessments included General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-28) of Goldberg, Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D), and State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI I & II) of Spielberger. Female patients reported higher scores in the trait anxiety measure. Elder patients reported higher scores in the GHQ-28 subscale of social dysfunction and in the CES-D depression scale, while less educated patients presented higher scores in the GHQ-28 subscales of anxiety/insomnia and severe depression. Divorced/widowed patients presented higher scores in the severe depression subscale. Findings provide evidence that sociodemographic variables, like being older, less educated, and divorced/widowed, relate to a more compromised mental health

The Effect of Sociodemographic Features and Beliefs about Medicines on Adherence to Chronic Kidney Disease Treatment

Background: Several studies have shown that non-adherence is a common and increasing problem regarding those with chronic illnesses, including chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients undergoinghemodialysis (HD).Objective: The present study aimed to investigate the influence of sociodemographic features as well as beliefs about medicines on adherence to medication treatment among HD patients.Methodology: A sample of 168 individuals was recruited from six General Hospitals in the broader area of Athens, consisting of patients undergoing in - centre HD. Measurements were conducted withthe following instruments: the Medication Adherence Rating Scale (MARS) and the Beliefs about Medicines Questionnaire (BMQ).Results: Medication adherence was associated positively with family (r= 0.24, p= 0.00) and work status (r= 0.26, p= 0.00) as well as BMQ - concern (r= 0.19, p= 0.02).Conclusions: The present study demonstrates the importance of sociodemographic characteristics in understanding medication adherence in HD patients as well as the contribution of beliefs aboutmedicines

A new journal, a new start

Health psychology has been the most rapidly growing field of psychology of the past 15 years. It is an exciting area of study devoted to understanding the psychological influences on how people stay healthy, why they become ill and how they respond when they do

Quality of life research: interview with Professor Robert Cummins

Health-related quality of life (HRQOL) is a fundamental concept in the field of clinical medicine and has been studied during the last years by psychologists, sociologists, economists and managers. The concept of HRQOL includes those aspects of overall QOL that can be indicated to have an impact on patients’ health, either physical or psychological. Concerning the individuals, this incorporates physical and mental health cognitions, including sociodemographic factors, sexual functioning, fatigue, sleep disorders and functional status. One of the most eminent experts in the world in the field of QOL is Prof. Robert Cummins [Professor of Psychology at Deakin University in Australia (School of Psychology, Deakin University, 221 Burwood Highway, Victoria 3125 Melbourne, Australia. E-mail: [email protected])] who kindly accepted to answer our questions in the con- text of this special edition

FaceRNET: a Facial Expression Intensity Estimation Network

This paper presents our approach for Facial Expression Intensity Estimation from videos. It includes two components: i) a representation extractor network that extracts various emotion descriptors (valence-arousal, action units and basic expressions) from each videoframe; ii) a RNN that captures temporal information in the data, followed by a mask layer which enables handling varying input video lengths through dynamic routing. This approach has been tested on the Hume-Reaction dataset yielding excellent results

Measuring pain self-efficacy and health related quality of life among hemodialysis patients in Greece: a cross-sectional study

Patients suffering from end-stage kidney disease often complain about pain. It is also known that the presence of chronic pain greatly impacts upon patients’ quality of life (QOL) and can play a crucial role in the co-morbidity of mental health symptoms such as depression and anxiety. The main aim of this study protocol is the investigation of pain self-efficacy, QOL as well as their relation in patients undergoing hemodialysis treatment. The final sample size will be around 70-80 patients. Each subject’s QOL and pain self-efficacy will be measured using the following instruments: i) the Missoula-ITAS Quality of Life Index-15 and ii) the Pain Self-Efficacy Questionnaire. QOL is expected to be related to pain self-efficacy scores. This probable association will be indicated performing regression as well as correlation analysis after controlling for gender, age, education and marital status

Burnout and optimism among health workers during the period of COVID-19

Aim: The investigation of the level of burnout and optimism as well as the effect of socio-demographic and other factors on the above two variables among health workers during the period of covid-19. Methods: The following two psychometric tools were used to collect the research data: the Maslach Burnout Inventory to assess burnout and the Revised Life Orientation Test (LOT-R) to assess the level of optimism. Results: In the present study 10 men (24.4%) and 31 women (75.6%) participated. The majority of them were between 36-45 years (36.6%), married and unmarried (48.8% and 48.8% respectively), holding bachelor degree (61.0%) and with 11-25 years of work experience (53.7%). Very high levels of exhaustion and especially emotional exhaustion and depersonalization were observed with also a high degree of personal achievement. The levels of optimism were high. There were statistically significant differences between the two genders in terms of burnout (only the dimension of emotional exhaustion) with women showing higher rates. Employees aged 25-35 years and those who had 1-10 years of work seemed to have higher levels of emotional exhaustion (all differences were considered statistically significant for p<0.05). Finally, a statistically significant correlation took place between burnout and optimism (p<0.05). Conclusions: The level of burnout among health workers seems to be high during the period of covid-19. In addition, various socio-demographic and occupational factors appear to influence burnout

The Impact of Self-Reported Anxiety and Body Ιmage on Female Sexual Function

Over the past years, female sexual function and dysfunction has acquired a growing body of research. Some studies have indicated that links may exist among the sexual function of women, their body image and anxiety. The purpose of this study is to examine the direct impact of self-report anxiety and body image on female sexual function but also the potential association of the age, the marital status, the occupation, the education level and the existence of a psychological disorder diagnosis with the self-reported anxiety, the body-esteem and the female sexual function. The sample consisted of sixty women from general population. Three questionnaires were used to measure each variable (Greek version of Zung's Self Anxiety Scale, Body–Esteem Scale for Adolescents and Adults, Female Sexual Function Index GR). The results showed that the correlations among anxiety, body image and sexual function were not statistically significant. From the demographic characteristics, only occupation status was significantly associated with the sexual function which was found significantly greater for private employees compared to university students (p = .001), with the last’s total score in FSFI being below the cutoff point. This result is constant with previous researched which have found women University students at risk of experiencing a sexual dysfunction