[Central serous chorioretinitis and depressive disorder - a psychosomatic perspective]. / Die Chorioretinitis centralis serosa und die depressive Störung - eine psychosomatische Perspektive.

Central serous chorioretinitis serosa is repeatedly brought into aetiological considerations with a rather unspecific concept of distress. Depressive disorder represents a specific stressor, which is known in cardiology or diabetology as a significant risk factor. In the present case report, the clinical correlation between a central serous chorioretinitis and a depressive disorder is shown from a psychosomatic point of view, comparing a sequentially-reactive understanding of the disorder complex with a preferable model of simultaneous entanglement.

[Physician's role in "medical drama" pitfall? Reflection of stereotypical images of doctors in context of contemporary doctor's series]. / Die Arztrolle in der "medical drama"-Falle? Reflexion stereotyper Arztcharaktere im Kontext zeitgenössischerTV-Serien.

In contemporary U.S. doctor's series, the characters are usually represented by good-looking or typical character actors. The aim of our pilot study was to investigate whether the long-term impact of this format on German television viewers could have an influence on the choice of doctor in Germany. Two different groups of people anticipating TV consumption patterns were questioned: a first group of younger adults who knew theTV series was asked to judge their doctor choice using a web-based survey tool with respect to three criteria (sympathy, expertise and own treatment preference). The second group of adults beyond the 40th year of life who need not know theTV series were shown photos of the serial figures. Study participants should select the "doctor" of which they would most likely want to be treated and this based on two predetermined reasons (sympathy or expertise). Our results indicate that stereotypical images of doctors found high approval only in the first group of people, while the participants in the second group decided in majorityfora more realistic representation of average appearance.

[Neurobiology of posttraumatic and somatoform disorders in the elderly]. / Neurobiologie posttraumatischer und somatoformer Störungen im Alter.

BACKGROUND: Clinically relevant posttraumatic stress disorders are almost always associated with physical symptoms, which are, on the one hand, classified as somatoform and, on the other hand, may also present as somatic comorbidities. The psychological, neurobiological, endocrinological and immunological correlations are only now beginning to be understood. Thereby, integration into a meaningful biopsychosocial model is still pending. PURPOSE: The following article gives a concise summary of the knowledge concerning the relationship between body and psyche in posttraumatic stress spectrum disorders and provides the neuroscientific foundation which could establish a biological link between the phenomenologies of the disorder. RESULTS: Neurobiological data on posttraumatic disorders and somatoform disorders are diverse and not uniform. This is even more true when it comes to those disorders that are within the intersection of these two entities and, above all, their special features in the elderly. Psychophysiological, neuroanatomical, endocrine-immunological, genetic, and epigenetic factors play an important role here. With regard to posttraumatic stress disorder, for example, higher autonomic reactivity was observed, which indicates an acquired general sensitization of the nervous system.

[Aspects of post-tramatic stress disorder after a traffic acident]. / Aspekte posttraumatischer Symptombildung nach einem Autoverkehrsunfall.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) occurs most frequently in the general population after traffic accidents and affects up to 15 % of those involved. Mental and physical comorbidity, preliminary damage or injury can herald the development of PTSD, but the scope of social support after the accident plays a crucial role in whether and to what extent potential PTSD develops. Against this background, preventive and injury reduction aspects of the interaction between insurance companies and their customers are conceivable, which could also positively affect health economic and aspects of job or customer satisfaction.

[Etiopathogenetic aspects of somatoform disorders]. / Ätiopathogenetische Aspekte somatoformer Störungen.

The etiopathology of somatoform disorders can only be understood against the background of an integrated biopsychosocial model. Cultural and historical influences must be taken into account as well as contemporary settings of scientific or medical priorities. In this context the emphasis on neurobiological findings can be interpreted as the non-accidental struggle for legitimacy of both patients and physicians. Altogether the available data on factors influencing the formation and maintenance of somatoform symptoms has to be described as both diverse and unspecific and thus points to a challenging research program in the coming years.

The grapes of war. Somatoform pain disorder and history of early war traumatization in older people.

Persistent pain is not a normal part of aging. Nevertheless, many older patients have long-lasting, more or less medically unexplained pain symptoms and, consequently, are often severely disabled, incur high health care costs, and have high comorbidity rates. Moreover, the effects of early traumatization, especially due to wars, and even below the level of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are apparent. However, the developmental and neurobiological underpinnings of somatoform pain disorder, especially in pain-prone elderly patients, and its correlations with a history of war traumatization even decades after the incident remain unclear. Furthermore, a management strategy for this disorder tailored to older people and their special needs is lacking. Adequate therapeutic regimens such as adjusted psychotherapeutic procedures for elderly patients can only be promoted through a better understanding of the neurobiological and biographical underpinnings of this still controversial disorder.

[Development of an internet-based clinical pathway exemplified by the fibromyalgia syndrome]. / Entwicklung eines internetbasierten klinischen Pfads am Beispiel des Fibromyalgiesyndroms.

Clinical pathways (CP) are considered to be a tool of clinical process management describing the optimal route for diagnostic and therapeutic medical treatment of a specified patient. Apart from economic aspects CPs can make a contribution to optimization of health quality management as well as to improvement of medical staff and both patient satisfaction and patient safety whereas the feasibility and acceptance of evidence-based medicine guidelines are often found to be low. In order to stimulate critical discussion by offering the opportunity to easily gain first practical experience, a free web-based clinical pathway system for diagnosis and treatment for patients with fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) will be presented.

[Default mode network of the brain. Neurobiology and clinical significance]. / "Default-mode"-Netzwerk des Gehirns. Neurobiologie und klinische Bedeutung.

The resting state of the human brain is intrinsically organized by the so-called default mode network (DMN) which comprises cortical midline structure as well as lateral parietal and temporal areas. The activity of this system increases during self-oriented thinking, e.g. during a resting state but decreases during externally oriented attention and specific cognitive tasks. This review article provides a historical and methodological outline of the DMN model and describes its functional anatomy and putative functions. Based on the empirical literature the clinical implications of alterations of the DMN architecture and its role in various mental disorders are discussed.

Brief psychodynamic interpersonal psychotherapy for patients with multisomatoform disorder: randomised controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: Multisomatoform disorder is characterised by severe and disabling bodily symptoms, and pain is one of the most common and impairing of these. Furthermore, these bodily symptoms cannot be explained by an underlying organic disorder. Patients with multisomatoform disorder are commonly found at all levels of healthcare and are typically difficult to treat for physicians as well as for mental health specialists. AIMS: To test whether brief psychodynamic interpersonal therapy (PIT) effectively improves the physical quality of life in patients who have had multisomatoform disorder for at least 2 years. METHOD: We recruited 211 patients (from six German academic outpatient centres) who met the criteria for multisomatoform disorder for a randomised, controlled, 12-week, parallelgroup trial from 1 July 2006 to 1 January 2009 (International Standard Randomised Controlled Trial Number ISRCTN23215121). We randomly assigned the patients to receive either 12 weekly sessions of PIT (n = 107) or three sessions of enhanced medical care (EMC, n = 104). The physical component summary of the Short Form Health Survey (SF-36) was the pre-specified primary outcome at a 9-month follow-up. RESULTS: Psychodynamic interpersonal therapy improved patients' physical quality of life at follow-up better than EMC (mean improvement in SF-36 score: PIT 5.3, EMC 2.2), with a small to medium between-group effect size (d = 0.42, 95% CI 0.15-0.69, P = 0.001). We also observed a significant improvement in somatisation but not in depression, health anxiety or healthcare utilisation. CONCLUSIONS: This trial documents the long-term efficacy of brief PIT for improving the physical quality of life in patients with multiple, difficult-to-treat, medically unexplained symptoms.

[Intrinsic brain activity with pain]. / Intrinsische Hirnaktivität bei Schmerzen.

Besides the responses to nociceptive stimuli other neural function modes of the brain are necessary to obtain a comprehensive understanding of pain processing in humans. During a resting state without extrinsic stimulation the human brain generates spontaneous low frequency fluctuations of neural activity. This intrinsic activity does not reflect random background noise but is highly organized in several networks. Based on the findings of recent functional imaging studies, the role of these resting state networks in acute and chronic pain is discussed.

[Whiplash and Werther effect: the potential of google insights for search for medical research and public health]. / Schleudertrauma und Werther-Effekt - das Potenzial von Google Insights for Search für die medizinische Forschung und öffentliche Gesundheit.

Illness behaviour involves cultural, situational and personal predispositions. World Wide Web search statistics provided by internet applications like Google Insights for Search have the potential to facilitate our research on the distribution of mental disorders, our understanding of both sociocultural imprintings and trends in psychophenomenology and could make a remarkable contribution to medical research and public health.

[Psychosomatic aspects of chronic recurrent cystitis]. / Psychosomatische Aspekte der chronisch rezidivierenden Zystitis.

INTRODUCTION: In spite of intensive research, chronic recurrent cystitis is etiologically a still insufficiently understood clinical picture. CASE REPORT: A 52-year-old patient presented with recurrent cystitis that had been treated exclusively somatically for years for which at least a psychosomatic co-pathogenesis of magnitude of the discomfort was diagnostically representable as well as being of therapeutic utility. CONCLUSION: In recollection of a bio-psychosocial understanding of human diseases, psychosomatic considerations should be undertaken at last but not least in patients with persistent cystitis.

I know the pain you feel-how the human brain's default mode predicts our resonance to another's suffering.

Introspective and self-referential in nature, the human brain's default mode network (DMN) is presumed to influence our behavior in response to the environment in predictive manner [Raichle ME, Gusnard DA (2005) J Comp Neurol 493:167-176; Bar M (2009) Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 364:1235-1243]. In the current study, we hypothesize that the strength of DMN-connectivity contributes to distinct introspective psychological processes in every-day social life such as the intuitive understanding of other people through inner representation of their affective states -e. g. his or her pain. 19 healthy individuals underwent functional MRI scanning, which consisted of a resting-state-scan followed by the presentation of visual stimuli depicting human limbs in painful and non-painful situations. After scanning, participants were asked to evaluate the stimuli in terms of pain intensity perceived from the first person perspective. Independent component analysis (ICA) demonstrated that higher integration of the left medial orbitofrontal cortex (BA 32) into the anterior default mode network (aDMN) was associated with higher post-scan pain ratings. Furthermore, the exposition to the "Pain"-pictures led to relative increases of aDMN-activity compared to "No Pain"-stimuli which were also correlated with the subjective pain intensity. The behaviorally predictive functional architecture during a task-free period supports the notion that the DMN serves as a "memory of the future" [Ingvar DH (1985) Hum Neurobiol 4:127-136] in terms of a neuronal cache, storing "a priori scripts," which are recalled to deal efficiently with upcoming environmental events. In addition, our results suggest that an individual predisposition to identify oneself with another's pain influences the automatic response of the DMN during the observation of painful situations.

Functional relaxation and guided imagery as complementary therapy in asthma: a randomized controlled clinical trial.

BACKGROUND: Asthma is a frequently disabling and almost invariably distressing disease that has a high overall prevalence. Although relaxation techniques and hypnotherapeutic interventions have proven their effectiveness in numerous trials, relaxation therapies are still not recommended in treatment guidelines due to a lack of methodological quality in many of the trials. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the efficacy of the brief relaxation technique of functional relaxation (FR) and guided imagery (GI) in adult asthmatics in a randomized controlled trial. METHODS: 64 patients with extrinsic bronchial asthma were treated over a 4-week period and assessed at baseline, after treatment and after 4 months, for follow-up. 16 patients completed FR, 14 GI, 15 both FR and GI (FR/GI) and 13 received a placebo relaxation technique as the control intervention (CI). The forced expiratory volume in the first second (FEV(1)) as well as the specific airway resistance (sR(aw)) were employed as primary outcome measures. RESULTS: Participation in FR, GI and FR/GI led to increases in FEV(1) (% predicted) of 7.6 +/- 13.2, 3.3 +/- 9.8, and 8.3 +/- 21.0, respectively, as compared to -1.8 +/- 11.1 in the CI group at the end of the therapy. After follow-up, the increases in FEV(1) were 6.9 +/- 10.3 in the FR group, 4.4 +/- 7.3 in the GI and 4.5 +/- 8.1 in the FR/GI, compared to -2.8 +/- 9.2 in the CI. Improvements in sR(aw) (% predicted) were in keeping with the changes in FEV(1) in all groups. CONCLUSIONS: Our study confirms a positive effect of FR on respiratory parameters and suggests a clinically relevant long-term benefit from FR as a nonpharmacological and complementary therapy treatment option.