Hopelessness negatively affects ovarian cancer patients' quality of life (QOL). Research validating the effects of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) use on QOL and hope is scarce, even ...though QOL and hope are reasons that patients cite for using CAM therapy. Clinicians need effective, evidence-based interventions to improve QOL and reduce hopelessness.
The objectives of this study were to examine factors influencing hopelessness in patients with newly diagnosed disease, long-term survivors, and patients experiencing ovarian cancer recurrence and to examine the effects of CAM on hopelessness in the same population.
Surveys of ovarian cancer patients (N = 219) undergoing treatment at a comprehensive cancer center in the United States were analyzed. Descriptive, correlation, and multivariate analyses described variables and demonstrated the effects of sociodemographics, disease state, psychological distress, QOL, CAM use, and faith on hopelessness.
Patients ages 65 years or older (-0.95, P = .03), with strong faith (-0.28, P = .00), and good QOL (0.11, P = .00) directly reduced hopelessness scores (mean, 3.37). Massage therapy substantially reduced hopelessness scores (-1.07, P = .02); holding age constant, employed patients were twice as likely to use massage (odds ratio, 2.09; P = .04). Patients who had newly diagnosed and recurrent ovarian cancer were more hopeless because of greater distress from symptoms and adverse effects of treatment.
Patients who used massage therapy were significantly less hopeless, as were those with strong faith and well-controlled disease symptoms and treatment for adverse effects.
Support of spiritual needs and symptom management are important interventions to prevent and/or reduce hopelessness, especially for patients with newly diagnosed and recurrent ovarian cancer. Further research testing the positive effect of massage interventions on hopelessness is needed.
In the absence of germ-line-competent ES cells in the rat, pronuclear microinjection remains an essential tool to generate transgenic rat models. However, DNA microinjection procedures first ...developed for mouse do not provide scientists with satisfying results when applied to rat. Here we describe optimized procedures for rat with a special focus on rat embryo production, in vitro incubation and culture, DNA pronuclear injection, and the transfer of embryos into foster females.
“Musicians often pay a high price for sharing their art with us. Underneath the glow of success can often lie loneliness and exhaustion, not to mention the basic struggles of paying the rent or ...buying food. Sally Anne Gross and George Musgrave raise important questions – and we need to listen to what the musicians have to tell us about their working conditions and their mental health.” Emma Warren (Music Journalist and Author). “Singing is crying for grown-ups. To create great songs or play them with meaning music's creators reach far into emotion and fragility seeking the communion we demand of it. However, music’s toll on musicians can leave deep scars. In this important book, Sally Anne Gross and George Musgrave investigate the relationship between the wellbeing music brings to society and the wellbeing of those who create. It’s a much needed reality check, deglamorising the romantic image of the tortured artist.” Crispin Hunt (Multi-Platinum Songwriter/Record Producer, Chair of the Ivors Academy). It is often assumed that creative people are prone to psychological instability, and that this explains apparent associations between cultural production and mental health problems. In their detailed study of recording and performing artists in the British music industry, Sally Anne Gross and George Musgrave turn this view on its head. By listening to how musicians understand and experience their working lives, this book proposes that whilst making music is therapeutic, making a career from music can be traumatic. The authors show how careers based on an all-consuming passion have become more insecure and devalued. Artistic merit and intimate, often painful, self-disclosures are the subject of unremitting scrutiny and data metrics. Personal relationships and social support networks are increasingly bound up with calculative transactions. Drawing on original empirical research and a wide-ranging survey of scholarship from across the social sciences, their findings will be provocative for future research on mental health, wellbeing and working conditions in the music industries and across the creative economy. Going beyond self-help strategies, they challenge the industry to make transformative structural change. Until then, the book provides an invaluable guide for anyone currently making their career in music, as well as those tasked with training and educating the next generation
A response is needed to the numerous issues spurred by the expansion of the gig economy, where flexible patterns of employment prevail in contrast to permanent jobs. In this context of the ...exponential growth of the digital economy and underlying business models the largest nationwide study of its kind into the impact of the working conditions in the UK music industry 'Can Music Make You Sick?' has been conducted by MusicTank/University of Westminster. This research suggests the need to consider the future of work not only from an economic or employment law perspective but from a mental health one too. What are the psychological implications of precarious work and how are factors such as financial instability, the feedback economy and personal relationships reflected in mental health outcomes or connected to the business relationships most musicians and other gig economy participants work under?
Primary care physicians commonly deal with patients who present with a somatic complaint for which no clear organic etiology can be found. This article discusses how a psychiatrist thinks about ...somatic symptoms (eg, pain, insomnia, weight loss and loss of appetite, fatigue and forgetfulness, sexual dysfunction) in a patient who might have depression. The management of a patient in whom no satisfactory medical or psychiatric diagnosis can be made is also reviewed briefly.
"A response is needed to the numerous issues spurred by the expansion of the gig economy, where flexible patterns of employment prevail in contrast to permanent jobs. In this context of the ...exponential growth of the digital economy and underlying business models the largest nationwide study of its kind into the impact of the working conditions in the UK music industry ‘Can Music Make You Sick?’ has been conducted by MusicTank/University of Westminster. This research suggests the need to consider the future of work not only from an economic or employment law perspective but from a mental health one too. What are the psychological implications of precarious work and how are factors such as financial instability, the feedback economy and personal relationships reflected in mental health outcomes or connected to the business relationships most musicians and other gig economy participants work under? Authors Sally-Anne Gross, George Musgrave and Laima Janciute consider which policy measures may help or harm gig economy workers including the taxation of self-employed workers, a universal basic income, education around mental health issues and access to mental health support."
Nine subjects with Parkinson's disease, five subjects with electrodes implanted in the subthalamic nucleus (STN) and four with electrodes in the globus pallidus internus (GPi), were compared with a ...population of ten age-matched control subjects. The measures studied include a set of summary statistic scores, two stochastic parameters, the distribution of the center of pressure (CoP) displacement angles under each foot, and the distribution of bilateral patterns of CoP displacement angles. A Bayes classifier was designed to monitor the trend of postural performance in patients, with different treatments. Results suggested that the selected measures were sensitive to Parkinsonian postural sway abnormalities and highlight differences in response to treatments. Deep brain stimulation restored a more normal postural sway and levodopa increased sway abnormalities. Furthermore, the selected measures appear to detect different responses to levodopa between the STN and GPi groups: the negative side effects of levodopa on posture were less severe for STN than for GPi patients, perhaps due to the decreased need for levodopa intake in STN subjects. The measures proposed in this preliminary study may be useful adjuncts to evaluate balance and postural control strategies in patients with Parkinson's disease and may allow the comparison of DBS electrode sites, on stance posture.
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