Affective disorders present a widespread public health problem as they are among the most frequently diagnosed psychiatric disorders. Clinical practice in the therapy of affective disorders, ...including depressive and bipolar disorders, has showed that pharmacological treatment as a stand-alone therapy proved as less efficient in the long term, compared to those treatments involving any form of adjunctive psychosocial interventions. Functional remediation has been convincingly shown as effective in schizophrenia treatment, and thus it has been considered as increasingly relevant to treatment of depressive and bipolar affective disorders. Functional remediation in persons with affective disorders comprises apart from maintenance treatment also psychoeducational intervention and cognitive remediation, i.e. cognitive skills training. Its aim is to restore the ability to carry out everyday activities in individuals, to help them reintegrate into society as well as to improve occupational outcome and to prevent affective recurrences. The programme of functional remediation is implemented by an interdisciplinary team of professionals from different occupations: psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and nurses. The article summarises research outcomes, theoretical underpinnings of functional remediation of persons with depressive and bipolar affective disorders and some current implementation aspects. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
The article analyses discursive construction of menopause and aims to examine the ways in which menopause is represented. Through six semi-structured individual interviews the study hears from women ...how they approach the menopausal experience, which social and cultural factors influence it and who were the major sources of information about menopause. Discursive analysis of women's menopause experiences has shown that predominant medical discourse on menopause is combined with managerial discourse, denial discourse and the feminist-emancipatory discourse. A patchwork of different discourses provides an opportunity for different positions, which can give meaning to women's experience of menopause. Those positions enable that experience of menopause becomes more embedded in the social context and more positive (or at least neutral) then in the dominant medical discourse. Adapted from the source document.
Hospital social work in Slovene health care sector is neither formally recognized nor has its proper standards and norms. Tasks and duties carried out by a social worker at the Clinical Institute of ...Clinical Neurophysiology are much more extensive in their contents than tasks and duties of social workers in health care sector. The nature of work derives from medical viewpoint, because the amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) disease requires that everything is provided quickly, economically and with the least effort for patient and its family. In a master's degree the survey that estimates contents of a social worker's tasks and duties in the Group for the treatment of people suffering from ALS was conducted. It was important to ascertain how much of the contents pertain to activities of social work and how much to activities of a coordinator. Adapted from the source document.
Peer support in mental health services - the reciprocal sharing of the experience of mental health distress - is an innovative new way of working which, through an emerging evidence base, is becoming ...gradually embedded into health and social care services in the UK The article focuses on the genesis of peer support in mental health services, demonstrating a different pathway from examples given in general health services. It describes the modalities and delivery of peer support reflecting the different situational contexts in which the activity takes place. The emphasis on the need for training peer supporters to carry out this function is explored together with the existing, yet insufficient, evidence base in both intervention and cost effective terms. The article concludes with a discussion on the interrelationship between the unique and ambiguous components that the concept of peer support raises. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
The paper is focused on the constructions of genders in popular medical discourse in printed news and online information media. It leads to the basic conclusion that an illness or a health problem ...itself is engendered on the level of a syndrome. As the most characteristic and transparent construction of an illness from genders perspective the breast cancer is thematized; the naming itself (in Slovene language) is denoting the exclusion of men, which is in contradiction with the quantitative data related to the phenomenon. At the same time the cultural meaning of women's breasts is being confirmed. Applying the semiotics and criticism of ideology in the analysis of numerous cases the author argues that illnesses, which relate to reproductive anatomy and physiology, are echoed most in the media public -- introducing the 'natural' associative logic of sexual character, which conveys, just like genders, discriminatory meanings. Besides, gender biased and sexualized is also the understanding of pain and the instance of care in interpersonal relations related to illnesses and health problems. Adapted from the source document.
Hospital social work in Slovene health care sector is neither formally recognized nor has its proper standards and norms. Tasks and duties carried out by a social worker at the Clinical Institute of ...Clinical Neurophysiology are much more extensive in their contents than tasks and duties of social workers in health care sector. The nature of work derives from medical viewpoint, because the amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) disease requires that everything is provided quickly, economically and with the least effort for patient and its family. In a master's degree the survey that estimates contents of a social worker's tasks and duties in the Group for the treatment of people suffering from ALS was conducted. It was important to ascertain how much of the contents pertain to activities of social work and how much to activities of a coordinator. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
Medicalization of motherhood in the very beginning - in pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum - is typical for the second half of the twentieth century. What are the promising ways to achieve empowerment ...of mothers/women? An analysis of the selected testimony of the childbirth experience reveals complex issues regarding contemporary relationships among birthing women and health care professionals, midwives especially. Midwifery is tied to deeper understanding of the birthing process as intersection of nature and culture and of the basic needs of women and babies in perinatal period. Midwifery as profession, processes of professionalization of support, care and compassion and problematical images of midwives, are carefully analysed. The focus is on the actual task: it is essential to conceptualise midwifery as contemporary caring profession and to provide circumstances for its realisation in maternity care practices. Reprinted by permission of the publisher
Like in other countries, in Slovenia too, the number of people who are in need of an assisted reproductive technology is increasing. Nevertheless, the discourse in the area is dominated by the ...medical model and social workers are almost non-existent. Social workers would be needed to support people during their reproductive choices and during the process of assisted reproductive technology. The article gives an overview over the current global processes of assisted reproductive technology and emphasises the issues of the donation of the gametes by the third party. It also analyses the ethical concerns about the child's right to know about his or her genetic history and the ethical dilemmas about the right of the parents to tell. The ethnographic material is based on the analysis of Slovenian internet forums of people who use assisted reproductive technology. Reprinted by permission of the publisher
