ABSTRACT
This article aims at providing a general overview of psychological interventions intended to promote psychological adjustment of children with cancer and their parents. To achieve this goal, we reviewed published articles between 1998-2010, using a combination of the following key-words: psychosocial intervention, psychotherapy, trial, treatment, adjustment, well-being, adaptation, cancer, childhood cancer, pediatric cancer, anxiety and depression in the electronic databases: Psycinfo, Medline, Scielo, Lilacs, Psicodoc and Psyarticles. Fourteen articles were found and analyses show that most interventions had some efficacy in the psychological adjustment of children and their parents; nevertheless, there is a limited number of treatments that can in fact be considered effective. The convenience of psychological interventions is discussed and how they must comprehend strengths and the promotion of psychological health and should not be based solely on deficits and psychopathological models. Possibly, this re-orientation will help fostering significant clinic changes regarding the stress associated to cancer and its treatment
Esta revisión tiene como objetivo ofrecer un panorama general sobre la eficacia de las intervenciones psicológicas destinadas a promover el ajuste psicológico de niños aquejados de cáncer y de sus padres. Con este fin se revisaron los artículos publicados entre 1998-2010, empleando las siguientes palabras-clave: intervención psicosocial, psicoterapia, ensayo, tratamiento, ajuste, bienestar, adaptación, cáncer, cáncer infantil, cáncer pediátrico, ansiedad y depresión (combinándolas entre sí) en las siguientes bases de datos: Psycinfo, Medline, Scielo, Lilacs, Psicodoc y Psyarticles. Se localizaron un total de catorce artículos, de cuyo análisis se concluye que la mayoría de las intervenciones utilizadas resultan de alguna utilidad para mejorar el ajuste psicológico tanto de los niños como de los padres, aunque el número de tratamientos que pueden considerarse realmente eficaces es más limitado. Se discute sobre la conveniencia de que la intervención psicológica dirigida a este tipo de población se centre más en las fortalezas y en la promoción de la salud y deje de apoyarse exclusivamente en modelos de tratamiento basados en déficits y psicopatología. Posiblemente, este cambio de orientación contribuirá a fomentar cambios clínicamente relevantes en relación al estrés que acompaña al cáncer y su tratamiento
Subject(s)
Humans , Male , Female , Child , Neoplasms/psychology , Adaptation, Psychological , Stress, Psychological/epidemiology , Evaluation of the Efficacy-Effectiveness of Interventions , Sickness Impact Profile , Family RelationsABSTRACT
OBJECTIVES: Selective processing of emotion-relevant information is considered a central feature in various types of psychopathology, yet the mechanisms underlying these biases are not well understood. One of the first steps in processing information is to gather data to judge the covariation or association of events. The aim of this study was to explore whether patients with persecutory delusions would show a covariation bias when processing stimuli related to social threat. DESIGN AND METHODS: We assessed estimations of covariation in-patients with current persecutory (CP) beliefs (N=40), patients with past persecutory (PP) beliefs (N=25), and a non-clinical control (NC) group (N=36). Covariation estimations were assessed under three different experimental conditions. The first two conditions focused on neutral behaviours (Condition 1) and psychological traits (Condition 2) for two distant cultural groups, while the third condition included self-relevant material by exposing the participant to either protective social (positive) or threatening social (negative) statements about the participant or a third person. RESULTS: Our results showed that all participants were precise in their covariation estimations. However, when judging covariation for self-relevant sentences related to social statements (Condition 3), all groups showed a significant tendency to associate positive social interaction (protection themed) sentences to the self. Yet, when using sentences related to social-threat, the CP group showed a bias consisting of overestimating the number of self-referent sentences. CONCLUSIONS: Our results showed that there was no specific covariation assessment bias related to paranoid beliefs. Both NCs and participants with persecutory beliefs showed a similar pattern of results when processing neutral or social threat-related sentences. The implications for understanding of the role of self-referent information processing biases in delusion formation are discussed.
Subject(s)
Cognition Disorders/psychology , Delusions/psychology , Emotions , Paranoid Disorders/psychology , Verbal Behavior , Adolescent , Adult , Aged , Association , Cognition Disorders/diagnosis , Control Groups , Delusions/diagnosis , Female , Humans , Interpersonal Relations , Judgment , Male , Middle Aged , Models, Psychological , Self Concept , Social PerceptionABSTRACT
The main objective of this study was to analyze the hypothesis that patients with persecutory delusions would show a depressive-type self-concept when assessed with implicit measures of self-schema (i.e., a free recall test of self-relevant adjectives) but would show a normal self-concept when assessed with explicit measures (i.e., a self-concept questionnaire and a task requiring endorsement of self-relevant adjectives). The sample consisted of 136 participants (40 acute deluded participants, 25 remitted deluded participants, 35 depressed patients and 36 normal controls). Our results revealed that both groups of deluded participants showed no significant discrepancy between explicit and implicit measures of self-concept. These findings do not support the hypothesis of an implicit negative cognitive schema in persecutory deluded participants.
