Psychotherapy and Culture: Past, Present, Future

During 2020, the twin pandemics of COVID-19 and social unrest exposed significant socioeconomic and racial/ethnic disparities within the United States. Unfortunately, psychotherapy has often reflected these disparities. If psychotherapy is to remain meaningful and credible it needs to be inclusive of the needs and characteristics of all, not just of a privileged few. However, this does not mean that psychotherapy has not strived to diversify. In fact, significant advances in the field are the results of these efforts. In this article, the intersections between culture and psychotherapy are examined through three distinct types of psychotherapy underscoring their strengths and limitations and using these to propose future areas of cultural psychotherapy research. It is hoped that an enhanced awareness of these distinctions will lead psychologists to more effectively embrace a psychotherapy that is more efficacious and beneficial for all. © 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Future directions for psychology in critical care

Recognition of the role of psychology in critical care may be expedited by the international experience of dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. There has been a surge of both academic and media interest in the experiences of patients hospitalized with severe COVID-19 disease, many of whom have experienced delirium and post-hospital problems such as low mood and posttraumatic stress disorder. In the United Kingdom, several national guidelines on both interdisciplinary rehabilitation and trauma-focused psychological services have prompted an increasing number of critical care departments to create roles for new or extra psychology staff. Community psychology practitioners have been trained in the psychological aspects of hospital and critical care for COVID-19 patients. This chapter's aim is to look at UK guidelines for the provision of psychological support in the critical care setting;to consider how well that guidance is carried out in reality;and to visualize a critical care psychology model where those guidelines are enacted in full. It compares and contrasts this model with guidelines or models practiced in other countries. Finally, the chapter imagines the critical care department of the future-with an environment that is psychologically informed, and where psychologists are fully integrated into the health care team. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Anticoagulation Strategies during Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation: A Narrative Review.

The development of extracorporeal life support technology has added a new dimension to the care of critically ill patients who fail conventional treatment options. Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO)-specialized temporary life support for patients with severe cardiac or pulmonary failure-plays a role in bridging the time for organ recovery, transplant, or permanent assistance. The overall patient outcome is dependent on the underlying disease, comorbidities, patient reaction to critical illness, and potential adverse events during ECMO. Moreover, the contact of the blood with the large artificial surface of an extracorporeal system circuit triggers complex inflammatory and coagulation responses. These processes may further lead to endothelial injury and disrupted microcirculation with consequent end-organ dysfunction and the development of adverse events like thromboembolism. Therefore, systemic anticoagulation is considered crucial to alleviate the risk of thrombosis and failure of ECMO circuit components. The gold standard and most used anticoagulant during extracorporeal life support is unfractionated heparin, with all its benefits and disadvantages. However, therapeutic anticoagulation of a critically ill patient carries the risk of clinically relevant bleeding with the potential for permanent injury or death. Similarly, thrombotic events may occur. Therefore, different anticoagulation strategies are employed, while the monitoring and the balance of procoagulant and anticoagulatory factors is of immense importance. This narrative review summarizes the most recent considerations on anticoagulation during ECMO support, with a special focus on anticoagulation monitoring and future directions.

Conclusion: Future directions in analysing digital interaction

This chapter summarises the empirical chapters, drawing out specific aspects of each chapter, including a distinction between the use of traditional methods to study new technologies and the development of innovative techniques to study evolving communication formats. I show how the studies included exemplify some key challenges in this area of using Conversation Analysis (CA), Membership Categorisation Analysis (MCA) and related microanalysis techniques to understand developing technological social interaction, including the ongoing debate about relevance of context in microanalytic studies of interaction. I conclude by considering the relevance of this research field to the COVID-19 global crisis and the ensuing shift to online interaction for numerous aspects of social and working life. Future directions include more focus on videoconferencing, as well as focus on interactions utilising medical and other app development. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

An afterword on future directions in disgust research: A global pandemic, a divided world, and an environmental catastrophe

There is a notable irony in editing a book about an emotion that specifically evolved to help us avoid getting sick during the emergence of the first global pandemic in a century. This irony notwithstanding, here marks a unique point in human history for research into disgust. How the emotion functions, is altered, or utilised, as part of the behavioural immune system during a once-in-a-lifetime international health crisis will likely be of interest to many. In this afterword, we provide reflections on editing the volume during the ongoing COVID-19 crisis and an editorial perspective on areas of particular importance for future disgust research related to global challenges, of which the current pandemic is one, and a rise in nationalism and stimulating sustainable consumption are others. In each area, we briefly review what is known and, moreover, describe research opportunities for the better understanding, regulating, and/or leveraging of disgust in the context of each challenge. Our hope is to inspire more work on disgust in each of these international problems, which has the potential to contribute to betterment in our (collective) lives. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Vaccines and variants: Modelling insights into emerging issues in COVID-19 epidemiology.

Mathematical modelling has played a pivotal role in understanding the epidemiology of and guiding public health responses to the ongoing coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Here, we review the role of epidemiological models in understanding evolving epidemic characteristics, including the effects of vaccination and Variants of Concern (VoC). We highlight ways in which models continue to provide important insights, including (1) calculating the herd immunity threshold and evaluating its limitations; (2) verifying that nascent vaccines can prevent severe disease, infection, and transmission but may be less efficacious against VoC; (3) determining optimal vaccine allocation strategies under efficacy and supply constraints; and (4) determining that VoC are more transmissible and lethal than previously circulating strains, and that immune escape may jeopardize vaccine-induced herd immunity. Finally, we explore how models can help us anticipate and prepare for future stages of COVID-19 epidemiology (and that of other diseases) through forecasts and scenario projections, given current uncertainties and data limitations.

Primary health care and family physicians provide frontline care to the dermatology patients during the era of COVID-19: Recommendations and future directions.

COVID-19 has affected those disciplines where close contact is required and where there is no need for urgent care such as the field of dermatology. Due to the contagious nature of the virus, front line health care workers such as family health care physicians and primary health care doctors are using personal protective measures (PPE), which might result in skin disorders. In addition, social distancing has also resulted in the compromise of teaching and learning mainly bedside teaching in the dermatology wards. Moreover, there is also uncertainty about the guidelines different to be followed by primary health care and family physicians while assessing patients of dermatology. We aim to provide an overview of how COVID-19 has affected the primary health care workers and physicians. We have highlighted the challenges faced by the family health care physicians from the perspective of dermatology along with recommendations and future directions for family health care physicians. Results reveal that wearing PPE measures might be challenging for primary health care workers and family physicians as it can cause facial inflammatory papules, acne rosacea, seborrheic dermatitis, and facial itching. They cannot escape encounter with the patients, and they need to be careful by undertaking some precautionary measures while taking care of the patients in general with a specific focus on COVID-19. COVID-19 has also affected all teaching and learning in the field of dermatology. However, academic institutions can use digital tools such as zoom or skype to continue learning dermatology during the crisis of COVID-19.