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Mental Health Concerns (mental + health_concern)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Psychology	50%
Medical Sciences	50%

Selected Abstracts

Emotion regulation therapy for generalized anxiety disorder

CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHOTHERAPY (AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THEORY & PRACTICE), Issue 1 2004
Douglas S. Mennin
Generalized anxiety disorder is increasingly being recognized as a considerable mental health concern. However, it remains a poorly understood and insufficiently treated chronic disorder. Recent conceptualizations have highlighted the role of emotion acceptance, utilization and management as a core feature of the disorder. An emotion regulation perspective may shed light on treatment approaches to GAD. An integrative approach to treating GAD, entitled Emotion Regulation Therapy (ERT) is presented through the case of a young woman. ERT addresses cognitive, emotional and contextual factors of GAD and is divided into four phases: (1) psychoeducation, monitoring and developmental history; (2) skills training in somatic awareness and emotional knowledge, utilization and regulation; (3) use of these skills to confront core thematic issues using experiential exposure exercises; (4) and progress review, relapse prevention and termination processing. ERT was shown to successfully treat symptomatic, functional and qualitative aspects of the case presented, suggesting a future direction for therapeutic investigation of GAD.,Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Improving geriatric mental health nursing care: Making a case for going beyond psychotropic medications

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MENTAL HEALTH NURSING, Issue 1 2003
Philippe Voyer
ABSTRACT Providing high-quality mental health nursing care should be an important and continuous preoccupation in the gerontological nursing field. As the proportion of elderly people in our society is growing, the emphasis on high-quality care will receive increasing attention from administrators, politicians, organized groups, researchers and clinical nurses. Recent findings illustrate unequivocally the important contribution of nurses to achieving the goal of high-quality geriatric care. However, the quality of care for the elderly with psychological difficulties has not been addressed. The objective of this article is to illustrate that while nurses can accomplish much to improve the well-being and mental health of the elderly, their skills are often underutilized. Psychotropic drugs are often the first-line interventions used by health-care professionals to treat mental health concerns of elderly persons. Alternative therapies that could be implemented and evaluated, such as psychological counselling, supportive counselling, education and life review, are infrequently used. Nevertheless, current scientific data suggest that it would be very advantageous if nurses were to play a dominant role in the care of elderly people who are depressed or experiencing sleep pattern disturbances. The same can be said about elderly chronic users of benzodiazepines, as well as those with cognitive impairment. Evidence for the use of psychotropic medications as a viable treatment option for the elderly both in the community and in the long-term care setting who are experiencing mental health challenges is examined. Alternative non-pharmacological approaches that nurses can use to augment care are also briefly discussed. [source]

Personality disorder scale predictors of depression stability over time as a partial function of mental health history

PERSONALITY AND MENTAL HEALTH, Issue 4 2009
Alan R. King
The high comorbidity of personality disturbance and psychiatric symptomatology has been well established. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual-IV (DSM-IV) personality disorder symptom clusters often represent aberrant, intense and labile emotional reactions to stressors. The role of personality disorder traits on the variability of depression symptoms as expressed over time, however, has gained relatively little research attention. The presence and number of personality disorder diagnoses have been associated with earlier depression onset and less favourable treatment outcomes suggesting that this form of mood disturbance may be more durable over time when associated with Axis II features. The present study examined Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) temporal stability as a function of Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI-II) personality disorder base rate scores among 406 college students with and without reported histories of significant mental health concerns. Instability of BDI scores across time was shown to be predicted (r = 0.15) by selected personality disorderscale dimensions (antisocial, self-defeating, borderline and total number of MCMI-II personality disorder elevations). BDI reliability did drop significantly among participants reporting a mental health treatment history and multiple personality disorder elevations. Gender differences were not found in the strength of these bivariate correlations. Women generated smaller BDI absolute differences than men. While BDI test,retest reliability was only linked modestly to personality disorder attributes in this college sample, further study may be warranted to evaluate similar relationships within a clinical sample. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Mental Health and Social Justice: A Vision for the 21st Century

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ORTHOPSYCHIATRY, Issue 3 2003
Gary B. Melton PhD
If the American Orthopsychiatric Association is to prosper, it must follow a vision grounded in its historic concern with social justice, relevant to contemporary concerns, and pursued through the expertise of its members. Such a vision may lie in a 3-part agenda: (a) a psychologically-minded analysis of, and advocacy for, human rights; (b) attention to mental health concerns in the work of the Washington Group of international agencies; and (c) advocacy for access by disadvantaged people with mental health problems to a broad array of services and to a climate of respect. [source]