Enduring Change (enduring + change)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Emotion-Focused Couples Therapy and the Facilitation of Forgiveness

JOURNAL OF MARITAL AND FAMILY THERAPY, Issue 1 2010
Leslie Greenberg
The goal of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of an emotion-focused couple therapy intervention for resolving emotional injuries. Twenty couples acting as their own waitlist controls were offered a 10,12-session treatment to help resolve unresolved anger and hurt from a betrayal, an abandonment, or an identity insult that they had been unable to resolve for at least 2 years. Treated couples fared significantly better on all outcome measures over the treatment period compared to the waitlist period. They showed a significant improvement in dyadic satisfaction, trust, and forgiveness as well as improvement on symptom and target complaint measures. Changes were maintained on all of the measures at 3-month follow-up except trust, on which the injured partners deteriorated. At the end of treatment, 11 couples were identified as having completely forgiven their partners and six had made progress toward forgiveness compared with only three having made progress toward forgiveness over the waitlist period. The results suggest that EFT is effective in alleviating marital distress and promoting forgiveness in a brief period of time but that additional sessions may be needed to enhance enduring change. [source]


Use of a think-aloud procedure to explore the relationship between clinical reasoning and solution-focused training in self-harm for emergency nurses

JOURNAL OF PSYCHIATRIC & MENTAL HEALTH NURSING, Issue 2 2009
M. MCALLISTER rn edd
Self-harm is a risk factor for further episodes of self-harm and suicide. The most common service used by self-injurers is the emergency department. However, very often, nurses have received no special training to identify and address the needs of these patients. In addition this care context is typically biomedical and without psychosocial skills, nurses can tend to feel unprepared and lacking in confidence, particularly on the issue of self-harm. In a study that aimed to improve understanding and teach solution-focused skills to emergency nurses so that they may be more helpful with patients who self-harm, several outcome measures were considered, including knowledge, professional identity and clinical reasoning. The think-aloud procedure was used as a way of exploring and improving the solution-focused nature of nurses' clinical reasoning in a range of self-harm scenarios. A total of 28 emergency nurses completed the activity. Data were audiotaped, transcribed and analysed. The results indicated that significant improvements were noted in nurses' ability to consider the patients' psychosocial needs following the intervention. Thus this study has shown that interactive education not only improves attitude and confidence but enlarges nurses' reasoning skills to include psychosocial needs. This is likely to improve the quality of care provided to patients with mental health problems who present to emergency settings, reducing stigma for patients and providing the important first steps to enduring change , acknowledgment and respect. [source]


The attitudes of ,tomorrow's doctors' towards mental illness and psychiatry: changes during the final undergraduate year

MEDICAL EDUCATION, Issue 4 2001
H. Baxter
Aims To compare the efficacy of two teaching styles, didactic teaching and problem based learning, in producing enduring change in final-year medical students' attitudes towards psychiatry and mental illness. Method A 1-year follow-up questionnaire survey of two groups of medical students taught psychiatry in their fourth-year training by two different methods. One-year follow-up scores were compared with pre-attachment and post-attachment scores in the fourth year. Results 70 (68%) students completed both questionnaires at follow-up. The follow-up scores were significantly lower compared with both the fourth-year pre-attachment and post-attachment scores, suggesting that the positive change in attitudes following psychiatric training in the fourth year significantly decayed during the final year. The two teaching methods did not differ in the magnitude of this reduction. Conclusions The positive change that occurs in medical students' attitude towards psychiatry, psychiatrists and mental illness after their fourth-year psychiatric training is transient and decays over the final year. [source]


Nigrostriatal lesion induces D2-modulated phase-locked activity in the basal ganglia of rats

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE, Issue 7 2007
Camila L. Zold
Abstract There is a debate as to what modifications of neuronal activity underlie the clinical manifestations of Parkinson's disease and the efficacy of antiparkinsonian pharmacotherapy. Previous studies suggest that release of GABAergic striatopallidal neurons from D2 receptor-mediated inhibition allows spreading of cortical rhythms to the globus pallidus (GP) in rats with 6-hydroxydopamine-induced nigrostriatal lesions. Here this abnormal spreading was thoroughly investigated. In control urethane-anaesthetized rats most GP neurons were excited during the active part of cortical slow waves (,direct-phase' neurons). Two neuronal populations having opposite phase relationships with cortical and striatal activity coexisted in the GP of 6-hydroxydopamine-lesioned rats. ,Inverse-phase' GP units exhibited reduced firing coupled to striatal activation during slow waves, suggesting that this GP oscillation was driven by striatopallidal hyperactivity. Half of the pallidonigral neurons identified by antidromic stimulation exhibited inverse-phase activity. Therefore, spreading of inverse-phase oscillations through pallidonigral axons might contribute to the abnormal direct-phase cortical entrainment of basal ganglia output described previously. Systemic administration of the D2 agonist quinpirole to 6-hydroxydopamine-lesioned rats reduced GP inverse-phase coupling with slow waves, and this effect was reversed by the D2 antagonist eticlopride. Because striatopallidal hyperactivity was only slightly reduced by quinpirole, other mechanisms might have contributed to the effect of quinpirole on GP oscillations. These results suggest that antiparkinsonian efficacy may rely on other actions of D2 agonists on basal ganglia activity. However, abnormal slow rhythms may promote enduring changes in functional connectivity along the striatopallidal axis, contributing to D2 agonist-resistant clinical signs of parkinsonism. [source]


Methylphenidate to adolescent rats drives enduring changes of accumbal Htr7 expression: implications for impulsive behavior and neuronal morphology

GENES, BRAIN AND BEHAVIOR, Issue 3 2009
D. Leo
Methylphenidate (MPH) administration to adolescent rodents produces persistent region-specific changes in brain reward circuits and alterations of reward-based behavior. We show that these modifications include a marked increment of serotonin (5-hydroxy-tryptamine) receptor type 7 (Htr7) expression and synaptic contacts, mainly in the nucleus accumbens, and a reduction of basal behavioral impulsivity. We show that neural and behavioral consequences are functionally related: administration of a selective Htr7 antagonist fully counteracts the MPH-reduced impulsive behavior and enhances impulsivity when administered alone in naive rats. Agonist-induced activation of endogenous Htr7 significantly increases neurite length in striatal neuron primary cultures, thus suggesting plastic remodeling of neuronal morphology. The mixed Htr (1a/7) agonist, 8-OH-DPAT, reduces impulsive behavior in adolescent rats and in naive adults, whose impulsivity is enhanced by the Htr7 antagonist. In summary, behavioral pharmacology experiments show that Htr7 mediates self-control behavior, and brain primary cultures experiments indicate that this receptor may be involved in the underlying neural plasticity, through changes in neuronal cytoarchitecture. [source]


THE A.D. 1300 EVENT IN THE PACIFIC BASIN,

GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW, Issue 1 2007
Patrick D. Nunn
ABSTRACT. Around a.d. 1300 the entire Pacific Basin (continental Pacific Rim and oceanic Pacific Islands) was affected by comparatively rapid cooling and sea-level fall, and possibly increased storminess, that caused massive and enduring changes to Pacific environments and societies. For most Pacific societies, adapted to the warmer, drier, and more stable climates of the preceding Medieval Climate Anomaly (a.d. 750,1250), the effects of this A.D. 1300 Event were profoundly disruptive, largely because of the reduction in food resources available in coastal zones attributable to the 70,80-centimeter sea-level fall. This disruption was manifested by the outbreak of persistent conflict, shifts in settlements from coasts to refugia inland or on unoccupied offshore islands, changes in subsistence strategies, and an abrupt end to long-distance cross-ocean interaction during the ensuing Little Ice Age (a.d. 1350,1800). The A.D. 1300 Event provides a good example of the disruptive potential for human societies of abrupt, short-lived climate changes. [source]