Svensk Beteendemedicinsk Förening

15th International Philosophy and Psychiatry Conference Registration now open

Elena — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 11:02:15 +0000

We are pleased to announce that online registration is now open for the 15th International Philosophy and Psychiatry Conference to be held at the University of Otago, Dunedin New Zealand. There are a number of activities prior to the conference which may be of interest – more information on the Conference Website www.otago.ac.nz/ppp

”Psychobiological responses in women with regional or widespread musculoskeletal pain conditions”, Roberto Riva, Academic dissertation for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology at Stockholm University.

Elena — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 09:59:05 +0000

Abstract

Musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) are very common. Regional chronic shoulder and neck pain (SNP) and widespread chronic pain due to fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) are examples of MSDs characterized by altered physiology of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) and the hypothalamicpituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. The aims of this thesis are to compare the cortisol awakening respons (CAR) in SNP women, FMS patients and healthy controls, and to compare salivary cortisol levels, urinary catecholamine levels (adrenaline, noradrenaline, and dopamine), and cardiovascular responses in FMS patients and healthy controls. Self-ratings of sleep, anxiety, perceived stress, and pain were also investigated. In Study I, CAR tended to be higher in SNP women than in healthy controls, whereas it was significantly higher than in FMS patients. Moreover, CAR was significantly lower in FMS patients than in healthy controls. Study II showed that cortisol levelswere lower in FMS patients than in healthy controls during the rest of the day as well. In Study III, adrenaline and dopamine (but not noradrenaline) levels were significantly lower in FMS patients than in healthy controls. Resting heart rate was significantly higher in FMS patients than in healthy controls, but no differences emerged during stress provocation or unconstrained daily activities. Finally, SNP women and FMS patients reported more pain and health complaints than did healthy controls, but SNP women were less affected. Potential confounders (e.g., age, obesity, physical exercise) had no effects on the findings. Taken together, the findings show altered ANS and HPA axis regulation in FMS patients. Specifically, the hyperactive HPA axis found in SNP women (i.e., higher cortisol levels) might constitute a preliminary stage of a hypoactive HPA axis in FMS patients (i.e., lower cortisol levels). In view of this, an altered regulation of the HPA axis in the progression from regional to widespread MSDs may follow a temporal development.

Keywords:

fibromyalgia, shoulder and neck pain, salivary cortisol, urinary catecholamines, cardiovascular responses.

Stockholm 2012

http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-65011

ISBN 978-91-7447-420-6

Sammanfattning på svenska

Muskelbesvär är bland de vanligast förekommande hälsoproblemen i den arbetande befolkningen och är också en vanlig orsak till sjukskrivning och förtidspensionering. Det innebär att muskelbesvär medför höga ekonomiska och sociala kostnader. Muskelbesvär liksom kronisk smärta kan i vissa fall begränsas till specifika områden i kroppen, som t ex smärta i nacke och skuldra. Men de kan också vara mer ospecifika och spridda i hela kroppen som exempelvis i fallet med fibromyalgi. Oberoende av om det är smärta inom ett specifikt område eller en mer spridd smärta innebär dessa tillstånd förändrad fysiologisk aktivitet, vilket kan återspeglas i den hypotalamus-hypofys-adrenokortikala (HPA) axeln genom förändrad kortisolutsöndring, men också i det autonoma nervsystemets aktivitet och utsöndringen av katekolaminerna adrenalin, noradrenalin och dopamin.

Mot bakgrund av detta var syftet med denna avhandling att studera biologiska och psykologiska processer och faktorer bland kvinnor med kroniska regionala eller utbredda muskelbesvär. Det specifika syftet var att undersöka kortisolsekretion i saliv på morgonen (den sk uppvaknanderesponsen) och under resten av dygnet, samt katekolaminutsöndring i urin (adrenalin, noradrenalin och dopamin) och puls under olika förhållanden, bl a vid stress, vila och sömn, bland kvinnor med smärta i nacke/skuldra och bland kvinnliga fibromyalgipatienter i jämförelse med friska kvinnor. Vidare undersöktes psykologiska faktorer i form av självrapporterad sömn, stress, oro och smärta i all tre grupperna.

Huvuddelen av datainsamlingen genomfördes på ett sjukhushotell i Norge där undersökningsdeltagarna fick bo under 2 dygn. Studierna inkluderade 29 fibromyalgipatienter, 18 kvinnor med besvär i nacke/skuldra och 29 friska yrkesarbetande kvinnor. Alla kvinnorna genomgick fysiologiska mätningar som omfattade salivprover, urinprover och kardiovaskulära registreringar. Salivproverna analyserades med avseende på kortisol, urinproverna med avseende på adrenalin, noradrenalin och dopamin och från de kardiovaskulära mätningarna registrerades puls. Dessutom fick kvinnorna svara på en enkät som inkluderade frågor om psykologiska faktorer.

Resultaten från studie I visar att kortisolnivåerna på morgonen var högre i gruppen av kvinnor med besvär i nacke/skuldra än bland friska kvinnor och fibromyalgipatienter. Kortisolnivåerna på morgonen var däremot markant lägre bland fibromyalgipatienter än bland friska kvinnor. Studie II visar att kortisolnivåerna på eftermiddagen och kvällen var lägre i gruppen av kvinnliga fibromyalgipatienter än hos friska kvinnor. I studie III framkom att adrenalin och dopamin (men inte noradrenalin) var signifikant lägre hos fibromyalgipatienterna än hos de friska kvinnorna. Däremot var puls i vila och nattetid högre bland fibromyalgipatienter än hos friska kvinnor. Dock kunde ingen statistiskt säkerställd skillnad påvisas i puls under stress (Stroop och aritmetiska test) eller i samband med vardagliga aktiviteter.

Kvinnor med smärta i nacke och skuldra och fibromyalgipatienter rapporterade som väntat mer hälsoproblem och smärta än friska kvinnor. Dock rapporterade kvinnorna med smärta i nacke/skuldra mindre hälsoproblem och smärta jämfört med kvinnor med fibromyalgi men högre stressnivåer. Fibromyalgipatienterna rapporterade även olika psykiska besvär, samt sov mindre än övriga grupper, troligen på grund av sin smärta.

Sammanfattningsvis visar resultaten att fibromyalgipatienter, jämfört med friska kvinnor, har en förändrad aktivitet i det autonoma nervsystemet och i HPA-axeln. Denna förändrade aktivitet utmärks av låga nivåer av kortisol och katekolaminer. Kortisolnivåerna var istället höga hos kvinnor med smärta i nacke/skuldra-regionen. En möjlig tolkning är att smärta i nacke/skuldra är ett första steg i utvecklingen av fibromyalgi. En sådan kronisk smärta kan inledningsvis synas i ökade kortisolnivåer (som hos kvinnor med smärta i nacke/skuldra). Efter långvarig stress kan dock HPA-axeln bli ”utmattad”, vilket tar sig uttryck i lägre kortisolnivåer (som hos fibromyalgipatienter), dvs en initial överaktivitet i HPA-axeln övergår till underaktivitet när tillståndet blir långvarigt. Denna tolkning stöds av att kvinnorna med fibromyalgi var betydligt äldre än kvinnorna med smärta i nacke/skuldra, samt av att de kvinnor som lidit av fibromyalgi längst (över 11 år) hade de lägsta kortisolvärdena. Om denna tolkning stämmer kan resultaten från kvinnor med nacke/skuldra användas som en varningssignal för att förhindra utvecklingen av fibromyalgi. Resultaten från fibromyalgipatienter kan både användas för att ställa diagnos men också för att utvärdera behandlingar som syftar till att återställa normal utsöndringen av kortisol och katekolaminer.

Intressant symposium: Celebration of two decades of research on WOMEN, STRESS and HEALTH – concepts, results and future perspectives

Elena — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 19:49:57 +0000

Karolinska Institutet anordnar ett intressant symposium med följande tema:

Celebration of two decades of research on
WOMEN, STRESS and HEALTH – concepts, results and future perspectives

För programmet och mer information se här!

American Psychosomatic Society invites you to Annual Scientific Meeting ~ March 14-17, 2012, Athens Greece

Elena — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 19:43:54 +0000

American Psychosomatic Society invites you to Annual

Scientific Meeting ~ March 14-17, 2012, Athens Greece

“Symptoms and Patient-Reported Outcomes”

Årets vetenskapliga program är ute nu!

Elena — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 19:35:29 +0000

Årets vetenskapliga program med temat:

The Impact of the Physical Environment on Lifestyle and Psychophysiology

finner du här!

Efficacy of a behavioral self-help treatment with or without therapist guidance for co-morbid and primary insomnia – a randomized controlled trial.

Elena — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:07:36 +0000

Efficacy of a behavioral self-help treatment with or without therapist guidance for co-morbid and primary insomnia – a randomized controlled trial.

Forskarutbildningskurs på KI: psychoneuroimmunology, 3 hp, 23/4-4/5 2012

Elena — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:06:11 +0000

Forskarutbildningskurs på KI: psychoneuroimmunology, 3 hp, 23/4-4/5 2012. För att gå kursen – anmäl dig till Anna.Andreasson@ki.se

The Governing Council of ISBM will present up to ten Early Career Awards, each in the value of USD 500, to encourage a further career in behavioral medicine. The deadline for the award applications is 1 April 2012…

Elena — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:15:26 +0000

First Announcement on Early Career Awards for ICBM 2012 in Budapest

The Governing Council of ISBM will present up to ten Early Career Awards, each in the value of USD 500, to encourage a further career in behavioral medicine. The awards will be distributed at a congress ceremony. For award winners from countries with limited resources, ISBM will provide additional funds to cover the costs of travel, registration and lodging.

Recipients will have distinguished themselves scientifically or in their clinical practice career.

Eligibility

Selection of the Early Career Award is based on total career achievement and review of a submitted and accepted abstract. To qualify for this award, the applicant has to meet the eligibility criteria listed below:

Should be no more than seven (7) years out from their highest degree and/or
Have held a faculty or professional position for no more than seven (7) years.
Must submit an abstract of empirical work.
Must be the first or only author of the accepted abstract.
Attendance and presentation at the congress is required.

Priority may be given to applications from countries with limited resources, and/or representatives from different geographical regions.

Application
In addition to submitting an abstract to the Congress Secretariat, applicants are asked to send a copy of their abstract, a short curriculum vitae (max 4 pages), and a cover letter with full contact details (name, postal address, phone, fax, email) to Dr Anne H Berman, Chair, Education and Training Committee, ISBM, via email (anne.h.berman@ki.se).The applications will be judged by Dr Berman and members of the Scientific Program Committee.

Applicants from countries with limited resources are requested to clearly indicate if they need funds to cover the costs of travel, registration and lodging. Dr Berman and members of the Scientific Program Committee will evaluate these requests.

Deadline
The deadline for the award applications is 1 April 2012. All applicants will be notified of the outcome of their application by 15 May 2012.

To celebrate that Health Psychology Review has been accepted into the Social Sciences Citation Index® you get FREE online access to the top three most highly cited articles of 2010 and 2011 for the month of January 2012.

Elena — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 15:34:14 +0000

Health Psychology Review – Included in the Social Sciences Citation Index^®

Dear colleague,

As Editor-in-Chief of Health Psychology Review, I am delighted to inform you that the journal has been accepted into the Social Sciences Citation Index^®_. This recognises the high quality content published and the fundamental role that the journal plays in the field of health psychology and behavioral medicine. The journal will likely be granted its first impact factor in 2013. Currently the unofficial impact factor stands at 1.333 and it is expected to climb.

To celebrate this exciting development we are giving FREE online access to the top three most highly cited articles of 2010 and 2011 for the month of January 2012.

Smith, J. A. (2011). Evaluating the contribution of interpretative phenomenological analysis. Health Psychology Review, 5(1), 9-27. Retrieved from http://www.informaworld.com/10.1080/17437199.2010.510659. doi:10.1080/17437199.2010.510659

Annesi, J., Marti, C., & Stice, E. (2010). A meta-analytic review of the Youth Fit For Life intervention for effects on body mass index in 5- to 12-year-old children. Health Psychology Review, 4(1), 6-21. doi:10.1080/17437190903168561

Hall, P. A., & Fong, G. T. (2010). Temporal Self-regulation Theory: Looking forward. Health Psychology Review, 4(2), 83-92. doi:10.1080/17437199.2010.487180

To view these articles and download the free content, visit the journal website: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rhpr20/current

We will also provide FREE online access to the most highly-cited article from 2012 so far for the month of February:

McEachan, R. R. C., Conner, M. T., Taylor, N., & Lawton, R. J. (2012). Prospective prediction of health-related behaviors with the Theory of Planned Behavior: A meta-analysis. Health Psychology Review, 5(2), 97-144. doi:10.1080/17437199.2010.521684

To view this article and download the free content, visit the journal website: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rhpr20/current

Health Psychology Review (HPR) is a landmark publication – the first review journal in the important and growing discipline of health psychology and behavioral medicine. This new international forum, edited by a highly respected team, provides a leading environment for review, theory, and conceptual development. HPR contributes to the advancement of the discipline of health psychology and allied disciplines such as medicine and psychology.

We welcome conceptual, theoretical, and empirical review submissions including systematic reviews and meta-analyses from authors in all areas of health psychology and behavioral medicine.

Best Wishes

Martin S. Hagger

Editor-in-Chief

Health Psychology Review

Brev från amerikanska beteendemedicinska presidenten om…storytelling.

Elena — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 15:06:20 +0000

President’s Message

Abby C. King, PhD

Pride, Prejudice, and the Power of Stories to Enrich our Professional Impact on the World

I have always prided myself on ‘wearing the mantle’ of science as best as I could—through being dispassionate, exacting, and appropriately distanced from the objects of my investigations. Isn’t that what we have been taught from the beginning of our careers, starting, for many of us, in that Psychology 101 class with the term “objectivity”? Of course, those basics of scientific inquiry remain fundamental for building an evidence base that is, as much as we can make it, minimally biased, concise, and trustworthy. And I always believed that if I just conducted strong, “tight” science, the results would speak for themselves, my job as a scientist ending with scientific publication and presentations. Surely that is what my academic institution, colleagues, and, by extension, community members and policy makers seemed to care the most about.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. While, yes, my energies in the areas of publication and grant writing began to pay off, I’ve always had that niggling feeling that presenting the scientific results of the hard-fought grants that we had received just wasn’t enough; there was often no real “impact” beyond the scientific community. Even though my team and I were incredibly excited about what we were discovering through our research, that level of enthusiasm never quite reached the non-scientific audiences to which we presented. Why was it when we presented the results of our latest study showing how local neighborhood environments can impact the health of the entire community, local decision makers nodded politely, but when a resident stood up and told her personal story about something going on in her small neighborhood, the same decision makers were totally engaged?

That’s when the art and principles of storytelling began to creep into my consciousness. Most of us are familiar with the stories that we constantly hear or see that end in a request for money or a purchase of a product. Sure, they pull at our emotional heartstrings, but what would that type of communication have to do with science? Truth be told, my sense of pride around scientific inquiry was accompanied by a bit of prejudice concerning the use of personal anecdotes rather than the data-driven conclusions that are at the core of our scientific training. I think that scientists in general are often most comfortable in communicating about “just the facts, ma’am” (as the major character in the old police series “Dragnet” used to expound). So when Tracy Orleans described the power and promise of telling behavioral medicine’s stories in a compelling way at my first Wisdom Council meeting last April in Washington DC (the Wisdom council being comprised primarily of our past presidents), I was intrigued but, at the same time, a bit skeptical. That skepticism began to change to curiosity when other senior members like Red Williams and Bob Kaplan added their support to the concept of storytelling as a means for creating interest in what we do among the non-scientific community. But, given how incredibly busy and time-pressured all of us are these days, how could I learn a bit more about this storytelling concept and how it could be used in the Society’s growing communication and policy activities?

The answer came in a webinar series by Andy Goodman and colleagues of the Goodman Center that an intrepid group of SBMers (Karen Emmons, Ellen Beckjord, Sherry Pagoto, Amy Stone, and I) participated in this past month. Initial uncertainty on our part turned first to a basic understanding and then a growing appreciation of the power and potential of telling compelling stories about our scientific successes in a way that will grab people’s hearts as well as their minds. We learned what many of us have long suspected—people who tell compelling stories, regardless of their credentials or knowledge in a particular area, are having a greater impact on the choices and behaviors of the public and decision-makers alike than those of us who have actually generated the evidence! This was brought home to us in striking ways when comparing a “facts and figures” narrative head-to-head with the same information presented as a compelling, person-oriented story of obstacles overcome and benefits achieved.

But why would this be so? Apparently because we all carry around stories in our heads concerning how the world works, many of which emanate from the right side of our brain (the emotional, passionate side); and given this, no story that focuses only on the analytic, data-oriented left side of the brain will likely have sufficient impact to change people’s current views. Changing our minds not only requires new or better evidence but new and better stories to displace the old ones. The goal, then, is to speak to both the right and the left sides of the brain in presenting our evidence; in essence, to tell a persuasive story. Notably, as Sherry Pagoto has pointed out, it was often our own passion and caring that led us to study what we do in the first place. But the ways that we have learned to communicate our science can at times get in the way of convincing others to care as much as we do about what we’re discovering about behavior and health. For a recent JAMA publication on the power of storytelling in medicine, see http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/306/18/2022.extract.

I also discovered as part of this initial foray into storytelling that all of us (even those like me who have been a bit shy about straying too far from my “scientific narrative” roots), have compelling scientific stories that can be told in a convincing and engaging fashion; that we already have talented “storytellers” in our midst (see Brad Hesse’s book on “Making Data Talk”); and, finally, that there are different kinds of stories aimed at different aspects of our professional lives. These include our unique “success” stories that highlight our knowledge and contributions; stories that describe the nature of our field’s challenges and the solutions that we seek; and those that embody our collective vision and aspirations for our field (i.e., where we’re headed). These different stories can expand the impacts and reach of our own research as well as the larger activities of SBM and the behavioral medicine field as a whole.

Perhaps the most important thing that I’ve discovered is that compelling stories lurk in even the “driest” of data, if we can open our eyes to the promise of what they mean for people living outside of academia, the true beneficiaries of our hard work. In the coming months we hope to begin to highlight, with specific examples, how the same results can be presented in these two different ways (via the typical narrative vs. story-telling approach). To begin to “mine” the myriad compelling scientific stories currently lying dormant among our members, we aim to begin to explore, as an organization, several different activities. These include harnessing our website, newsletters, and other communication pathways to spotlight our members’ scientific success stories, particularly those with direct or indirect policy implications; providing tips and “how to’s” on compelling storytelling that our members can use in their own work; developing an informational storytelling session for next April’s scientific conference; and fashioning SBM’s scientific stories in effective ways that resonate with local, regional, and national decision-makers.

Why do this? Because it’s becoming increasingly clear that sound evidence is often insufficient on its own to promote action among legislators and other decision makers who are in the “driver’s seat” concerning funding, health policy, and related areas of prime importance to our field. If we don’t engage the public and decision-makers by telling our stories of how our research and interventions matter in people’s lives, who will?

What scientific stories might you have to tell about how the research that you’re doing touched the life of a community member, a patient, an organization, a colleague or a decision maker? Stay tuned to hear more about our collective next steps in this arena!

Best, Abby King