Posts Tagged Under: depression

Anxiety in cancer

lazo rosa del cáncer

lazo rosa del Cáncer

Did you know that…..

According to the World Health Organization each year more than 10 million new cases are diagnosed of cancer?

In addition, the WHO foresees that by 2020 the figure of 16 million new cancer cases per year will have been reached.

It is common for people diagnosed with some type of cancer to have anxiety problems. This anxiety is usually experienced both, at the time of cancer diagnosis and throughout the treatment. There are many moments of stress because of the harshness of cancer treatment and the uncertain outcome.

It is also very important to take care of the form and amount of information that is given to the cancer patients, because the degree of anxiety is closely related to it. The more and better information is given to the patients, the better they will face their illness.

We must also point out that not only cancer patients are affected by anxiety, they can also suffer from their closest relatives who will accompany them throughout the process.

Depression can also appear in some patients at any time during treatment, be it surgical, chemotherapy or radiotherapy.

A psychotherapeutic or psychological support is advisable in almost all cases.

(Edited by Dr. María Moya Guirao, MD)

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Edith Jacobson Biography

Edith Jacobson

Edith Jacobson

Biography of Edith Jacobson

Edith Jacobson (1897-1978) was a German psychoanalyst doctor who was born into a Jewish family of doctors from Lower Silesia. She was part of the first generation of women with university education after the First World War.

This psychoanalyst was a very politically committed person. The Gestapo stopped her in October 1935. Fleeing from the Nazi threat she settled in the United States of America, where she died in 1978 (Rochester, New York). In America, Jacobson was a member of the Institute of Psychoanalysis in New York. In that institute he worked as a psychoanalyst for many years.

But back to its beginnings, Edith Jacobson, who had graduated as a doctor and worked as a pediatrician in a hospital in the German city of Heidelberg, began to be interested in Psychoanalysis as a result of knowing sexuality of the kids through his work as a pediatrician.

In 1925 Edith Jacobson entered the Psychoanalytic Institute in Berlin where he had as teachers Sándor Rado, Franz Alexander and Otto Fenichel. Jacobson performed with the latter his Didactic Analysis.

In his early work Edith Jacobson included extensive and detailed clinical material of his experience in the treatment of children with psychic problems. In these studies on child psychic pathology we can be seen a clear influence of the two great founders of psychoanalysis of children, Anna Freud and Melanie Klein.

Among the most important contributions made by Edith Jacobson deserve to mention their interesting studies on the Depression, Psychosis and the Freudian psychic instances of the Self, Id and the Super-ego.

The theories of Edith Jacobson are framed within the current developed by Marxist psychoanalysts of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute. Among these psychoanalysts were Wilhelm Reich and his wife Annie (the latter became a great friend of Edith), Otto Fenichel, Erich Fromm, etc. This group of psychoanalysts, we could say “from the left“, emphasized the importance of external reality for psychological development and the social influence in the development of neuroses.

In this line, Edith Jacobson argued that the environmental factor of reality was as important as the internal world of

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Depressed people

Depression

Depression

Did you know…..

That in Depression is there a tendency to negative thinking, as the result of excessive abstraction and generalization?

Depressed people generalize negative events, and this leads to pessimistic anticipations and a great despair about the future. Depressed people think very negatively about themselves and the events that occur in their lives.

These patiens also do not have specific goals for their lives. They tend to think of abstract personal goals.

Several studies have also found that depressed adolescents have nonspecific personal goals, unlike adolescents who do not suffer from depression. But some studies have also shown that depressed young people can make up specific personal goals after conducting a successful psychotherapy treatment. In young people with depression, motivation, commitment and effort to achieve personal goals are very poor.

(Edited by Dr. María Moya Guirao, MD)

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Pregnancy and Depression

Did you know …..

that a recent research undertaken at the Universities of Cardiff and Bristol (UK) has shown that when a mother suffers from Depression during pregnancy influences the child’s future mental balance ?

They studied a sample of 120 young women. Children were studied at birth, at 4, 11 and 16 years old. That research found that there was more children with antisocial behavior and a depressive mother during pregnancy than in the rest of the population of those ages.

(Edited by Dr. María Moya Guirao, MD)

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Optimism and Psychotherapy

Did you know that.Optimism ….

A recent study, published by Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics Journal, shows that low level of optimism predicts initiation of Psychotherapy for new-onset Depression ?

The participants, 38,717 public sector employees, without history of depression, had to respond to a survey, to a Life Orientation Test, and also their indicators of Depression were followed-up during four years.

That study has been carried out by investigators of Finland (Department of Psychiatry, University of Helsinki), England (University College London Medical School, London), and France (University of Versailles St-Quentin, Versailles).

The conclusion was the following : “This study suggests that although both low optimism and high pessimism increase the risk for depression, only low optimism influences the initiation of psychotherapy as a treatment modality for depression. This could imply that depressed patients with low optimism should receive more attention in the beginning of the depressive episode than patients with high optimism”.

This confirms what we have known for some time that the patient’s personality and disposition of him to his treatment may be an important factor in its success.

(Edited by Dr. María Moya Guirao, MD)

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Pregnancy and Mental Health Among Womens Veterans of War

Did you know that…..

A recent study affirms that the women veterans of war with a pregnancy were twice as likely to have a diagnosis of Depression, Anxiety, Post-traumatic stress, Bipolar disorder, or Schizophrenia as the women veterans without pregnancy ?

This qualified investigation: “Pregnancy and Mental Health between Women Returning Veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan“, has been directed by Kristin M. Hoes, PH. D., and has been published in the Journal of Women’s Health (Volume 19, Number 12).
Many soldiers experience an important stress during the military service that can have lingering effects. The women veterans, like the men, commonly experience problems of mental health after the military service.

The aim of that study was to determine the prevalence of mental health problem between 43.078 pregnant women veterans (between the ages of 18 and 50), which received care in the Veterans Health Administration system.

The authors of that study state that untreated mental problems during pregnancy may produce preterm delivery, and low birth weight.

Since the beginning of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan more than 170.000 female soldiers have been deployed in those countries (7.500 in Vietnam, and 41.000 in Gulf war).

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(Edited by Dr. María Moya Guirao, MD)

mapa de Iraq y Afghanistan

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Amphetamines

Did you know that…..

The effects of Amphetamines are alertness, anorexia, elevated mood, increased wakefulness and concentration ?

Amphetamines produce also a feeling of well-being, but they induce Psychic Dependence and Tolerance.

Continued high doses may produce hallucinations, delusions, anxiety reaction, paranoid psychosis and depression during a which suicide is a possibility.

(Edited by Dr. María Moya Guirao, MD)

Amphetamines

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