Clinica Y Salud最新文献

The Brief Symptom Check List (LSB-50) is an instrument for psychopathological assessment used for the screening of both psychological and psychosomatic symptoms. The LSB-50 defines nine clinical scales and subscales, as well as an index of psychopathological risk, three global indexes and two validity scales. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the reliability and validity of the LSB-50 for psychopathological assessment. The material consisted of data from 1,242 subjects, who filled out the LSB-50; 790 subjects belonged to non-clinical samples, and the rest of them, 452, belonged to clinical samples. Reliability analysis obtained alpha coefficients of the nine scales and subscales in a range from .79 to .90. Analyses of both factorial validity and criterion validity (correlation of LSB-50 dimensions with both interpersonal dependency and bonding variables and discriminant analyses), supported significant validity for the instrument. Possible implications on the conceptualization of both psychoreactivity and psychopathological syndromes are discussed.

The general life satisfaction is the core indicator of subjective well being, a significant health public parameter. This research aims at describing satisfaction with life of people suffering chronic diseases and at determining what personality characteristics are more adaptive in such conditions. For this purpose the total sample of 160 subjects from five population groups (hemodialysis treatment patients, kidney transplant patients, rheumatoid arthritis patients, ankylosing spondylitis patients, and control group) completeted both the Millon Index of Personality Inventory (MIPS, Millon, 2001) and the Satisfaction with Life Scale (Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffing, 1985). The results show that the hemodialysis group is the one with the lowest level of life satisfaction; the personality variables can explain the life satisfaction variance in all groups except in the transplant group. Therefore, the personality factors allow tertiary prevention by improving psychological adjustment and avoiding comorbidity.

The Values in Action Inventory of Strengths (VIA-IS; Peterson, Park, & Seligman, 2005) is a self-report questionnaire that measures 24 widely valued strengths of character. In this paper we present the psychometric properties of the Spanish translation in a sample of 1,060 adults. We analyzed its associations with life satisfaction and positive and negative affect, and examined its factorial structure. Data on the prevalence and demographic correlates of the character strengths are described. The results indicated that the 24 subscales had satisfactory reliability (mean α = .81, mean corrected item-total correlations = .50). Correlations of the VIA-IS subscales with life satisfaction and affect replicated findings from earlier studies and supported the construct validity of the scale. Factor analysis justified the five-dimensions of the original instrument.

Qualitative studies show that patients suffering from Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS) or Idiopathic Environmental Intolerance (IEI) are aware of health-care professionals’ non-awareness of the disease, making communication difficult. The objective of this paper is to describe the suffering in individuals with MCS and to assess the disease's impact on each measured dimension of suffering by means of a descriptive and correlational study. A sample of 125 subjects fill out a survey consisting of three scales for assessing the impact of MCS and three scales for assessing suffering. The results show that MCS affects mostly women. Assessment with the Quick Environmental Exposure and Sensitivity Inventory (QEESI) showed that participants have high levels of disease. The physical sphere of suffering is the most affected, followed by the psychological and the existential. There are high correlations between the QEESI and suffering scales. A multivariate regression equation explained 38.2% of the variance of suffering observed. We conclude that MCS generates physical, psychological, and existential suffering. Severity of symptoms is the variable that generates most suffering, followed by life impact. Psychological distress is marked by anxiety or worry and lack of gaiety; existential suffering reveals thoughts of failure and lack of inner harmony. A detailed description of suffering in MCS is a useful basis for therapy. Lack of awareness among health-care personnel implies inattention of these patients within the general health-care service. With this investigation we hope to raise awareness of this emerging disease in order to improve the communication between health-care workers and patients.

Fibromyalgia is a syndrome that involves multiple symptoms, including widespread musculoskeletal pain, emotional and cognitive problems, and adjustment difficulties. The General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-28) has been widely used, even if little data exist on its use in patients with fibromyalgia. A sample of 301 patients with fibromyalgia was studied, analyzing the goodness of the questionnaire andX its structure. High anxiety levels (

This study investigated the immediate influence of a stress-management training on teachers and physicians’ stress-related outcomes (emotional exhaustion, work distress and irrational beliefs), using meta-analytic techniques. In an action-research perspective, the stress-management training program was implemented in several groups of physicians and teachers in Portugal and in Brazil (n = 144). It was found that in all the samples where this intervention was implemented a decrease on stress-related outcomes occurred; nevertheless not all results obtained were statistically significant. The largest impact of the implemented training program was on the irrational beliefs, with a medium effect size (d₊ = 0.61). These results suggest the short-term benefits of this intervention on teachers and physicians stress.

In order to compare the efficacy of smoking cessation treatment using intensive cognitive-behavioral therapy (I/CBT) versus a combination of I/CBT plus nicotine patches (I/CBT+NP) or a combination of no intensive cognitive-behavioral therapy plus nicotine patches (NI/CBT+NP), a repeated measures experimental study was conducted with 235 adult smokers randomly assigned to one out of three treatments. Among patients who completed treatment (n = 152), I/CBT+NP showed higher abstinence rates at 6-month follow-up and one-year follow-up than those showed by NI/CBT+NP, whereas the abstinence rates of I/CBT were not significantly different from those of the other two treatments. Results suggest that nicotine patches should always be used with a cognitive-behavioral therapy as intensive as possible. They also suggest that intensive cognitive-behavioral therapy administered alone should be given greater prominence in clinical guidelines for smoking cessation.

In its 25 years of existence, the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) has become the most widely used self-report instrument for assessing the severity of anxiety in the countries with higher research productivity in psychology, although in Spain this instrument is still the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI). This paper presents the basic characteristics of the BAI in comparison with the Trait Anxiety scale of the STAI, describes the process of adaptation of the BAI to the Spanish population, summarizes the psychometric properties of this adaptation, and discusses its use in the clinical practice. To this use, norms and cut-off scores are calculated in order to measure the severity of anxiety, evaluate the clinical significance of therapeutic change, screen for clinical anxiety, and aid in the differential diagnosis of anxiety disorders.

Our objective is focused on studying self-concept and adaptation to the process of disease in diabetic pediatric patients. The assessment tools used were an ad-hoc self-report for the socio-demographic and illness variables, the questionnaire of self-concept Garley (CAG), and the questionnaire of adaptive response to the disease in diabetic patients. The sample consisted of 23 subjects evaluated at a single time of measurement, all of them children and adolescents aged between 8 and 16 years of age. The results show that about 50% of the children and adolescents with type I diabetes had a low self-concept in most of the studied dimensions, being especially significant that about 30% of the studied children have a very low self-concept. Moreover, most of the subjects presented a little adaptive behavior before their illness.

Workplace violence has grown exponentially in recent years. The objective of this paper is to present a systematic review of the literature, as well as to point out some specific outlines of psychological intervention. Generally, high rates of physical and verbal violence are reported; however, major differences are observed in the variables associated with aggressions that are likely to be linked to the organization of the healthcare system in each country. It is recommended: a) specialized training to professionals working in emergency services; b) preventions programs aimed to the training in communication skills with patients and/or those accompanying them, identifying risk situations and implementing safety measures; and c) psychological care to professionals who have suffered aggressions.