How to Improve Doctor-Patient Connection offers actionable steps for improving communication between health professionals and patients based on visual, auditory, and emotional understanding from the principles of cognitive psychology. Drawing on the author's personal experience as both a healthcare professional and a mother of two children, How to Improve Doctor-Patient Connection explores communication between doctors and patients as well as bias in healthcare. This how-to text includes several practical applications that can be applied to healthcare encounters, enabling readers to form habits based on visual analysis of body language, auditory information from language and tone of voice, and logical emotion perception that will allow for improved doctor-patient connection. By integrating the perspectives of both doctors and patients and applying a psychological lens, this text is invaluable to healthcare practitioners, students of medicine, healthcare, biology, and related fields, and anyone looking to improve their own or other's quality of doctor-patient interactions and overall healthcare experience.

Susan Sontag once described illness as "the night-side of life." When we or our loved ones fall ill, our world is thrown into darkness and disarray, our routines are interrupted, our deepest beliefs shaken. The modern regime of hyper-logical biomedicine offers little solace when it comes to the effects of ill health on our inner lives. By exploring the role of desire in illness, Eros and Illness offers an alternative: an unconventional, deeply human exploration of what it means to live with, and live through, disease. When we face down illness, something beyond biomedicine's extremely valuable advances in treatment and prevention is sorely needed. Desire in its many guises plays a crucial part in illness, David Morris shows. Emotions, dreams, and stories-even romance and eroticism-shape our experiences as patients and as caregivers. Our perception of the world we enter through illness-including too often a world of pain-is shaped by desire. Writing from his own heartbreaking experience as a caretaker for his wife, Morris relates how desire can worsen or, with care, mitigate the heavy weight of disease. He looks to myths, memoirs, paintings, performances, and narratives to understand how illness is intertwined with the things we value most dearly. Drawing on cultural resources from many centuries and media, Eros and Illness reaches out a hand to guide us through the long night of illness, showing us how to find productive desire where we expected only despair and defeat.

Disease, injury, or congenital disorders result in an inability to perform activities of daily living as effectively as others. Most of these activities take place within and are dependent upon the designed environment. This book presents the specialized area of person-centered health care design, which focuses on a person's design needs because of one or more health conditions and requires foundational knowledge pertaining to infection control, bio-physiology, neuroscience, and basic biomechanics. Whether the designer has engaged in person- or condition-centered design, this book examines the causes that bring about health conditions, such as autoimmune disorders, chronic lung disease, muscular dystrophy, and neurological disorders, and the effects these have on a person's quality of life. Over forty various health conditions are discussed in relation to assorted building typologies-schools, group homes, rehabilitation and habilitation centers, and more-to identify design solutions for modifying each environment to best accommodate and support a person's needs. Dak Kopec encourages readers to think critically and deductively about numerous health conditions and how to best design for them. This book provides students and practitioners a foundational framework that supports the promotion of health, safety, and welfare as they pertain to a person's physiological, psychological, and sociological well-being.

With its primary focus on the psychology of eating from a social, health, and clinical perspective, the second edition of "The" "Psychology of Eating: " "From" "Healthy to" "Disordered" "Behavior" presents an overview of the latest research into a wide range of eating-related behaviors Features the most up-to-date research relating to eating behaviorIntegrates psychological knowledge with several other disciplinesWritten in a lively, accessible styleSupplemented with illustrations and maps to make literature more approachable

This book deals with recent perspectives on the panel of addiction behavior in a vast amount of population (young and adult). Thanks to the contribution of experts of the topic of addiction the volume will furnish new perspectives to formulate assessment, diagnosis and intervention in response to the increasing variety of addictions. It focuses the assessment of executive functions in substance and behavioral addictions. More specifically, this assessment consists of a new approach not only inherent to the diagnosis, but also to the treatment and prevention of addictions. In fact, there is a strict relationship between executive functions (EF) and addictive behavior: EF plays a remarkable role in significant phenomena for the treatment of addictions, such as craving, relapse and compliance to treatment.

As recently detailed in an Institute of Medicine Report, pain represents one of the most costly and prevalent public health conditions in the United States, and the burden of pain is substantially greater for women than men. Women make up half of the world's population. Yet, the overall treatment of pain in women remains challenging to this day. The differences between men and women are anatomical, physiological and psychosocial in nature. Consequently, several unique features come to mind when discussing pain as experienced by women, such as pain related to pregnancy, pain related specifically to female organs, and chronic painful conditions which have a higher prevalence in the female population. The purpose of this book is to address the current understanding of mechanisms related to sex differences, and the clinical management of common acute and chronic painful conditions in women, using up-to-date evidence-based information. The painful conditions discussed include those that are specific to female anatomy and physiology and conditions that have a higher female prevalence. The book is divided into three sections. The first section covers basic science topics related to sex differences in pain. The epidemiology of painful conditions with female prevalence; sex differences in response to pain, and to analgesics; the role of sex hormones and genotype in pain perception and analgesia; sex differences in cerebral responses to pain revealed by brain imaging ; and the role of psychosocial factors, including psychological interventions will be discussed in this section. The second and third sections are clinically directed. The second section focuses on pain specific to female patients. Topics include the management of labor pain; the management of painful conditions during pregnancy; and the management of pain in the opioid tolerant pregnant patient. The latter includes discussion on the impact of pain management on the fetus in utero, and on the newborn who is breastfed. Chronic pain specific to females, including dysmenorrhea, chronic pelvic pain and vulvodynia will be discussed in this section. Cancer-related pain issues in women will be addressed in the chapter on persistent pain after breast cancer treatment and the chapter on interventional management of pelvic cancer pain. The third section covers painful conditions with high female prevalence. These include fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome and neuropathic pain in complex regional pain syndrome. Visceral pain with female prevalence such as irritable bowel syndrome, chronic pelvic pain of undetermined etiology will also be addressed in this section. This section also includes chapters on the presentation of cardiac pain in women; headaches including migraine; and temporomandibular joint disorders and orofacial pain. The book is intended for a wide readership, including physicians and allied healthcare professionals who encounter female patients with acute or chronic painful conditions. In addition, residents and medical students in training as well as graduate students in health sciences will benefit greatly from this book as they continue to learn about and manage difficult and complex issues related to pain in female patients.

A groundbreaking science-based guide to protecting your brain health for the long term.

Whatever your age, having a healthy brain is the key to a happy and fulfilled life. Yet, for both young and old, diseases of the brain and mental health are the biggest killers in the 21st century. We all know how to take care of our physical health, but we often feel powerless as to what we can do to protect our mental well-being too.

How to Build a Healthy Brain is here to help. Written by a passionate advocate for the importance of mental health, Chartered Psychologist Kimberley Wilson draws on the latest research to give practical, holistic advice on how you can protect your brain health by making simple lifestyle choices. With chapters on Sleep, Nutrition, Exercise and Meditation, Kimberley has written an empowering guide to help you look after both your physical and mental well-being.

This book teaches how truly to heal war trauma in veterans, their families, and our communities. Drawing on history, mythology, and soldiers' stories from World War I to Iraq, it affirms the deep damage war does to the psyche and addresses how to reclaim the soul from war's hell.

This book discusses anger in psychology, its mechanisms, predisposing factors, precipitating factors, its impacts on brain structure. Anger in psychology is considered from two perspectives - function, and its impacts on physical health. This book is compiled of cutting-edge research, presenting anger in a new, modern and educational way. It presents a mathematical expression for the law of anger, allowing us to understand anger before it truly occurs and to control the anger to prevent its occurrence. The book is highly specialized with anger and considers various perspectives, such as race, historical origin and how these theories align with the modern psychology and neurosciences.

This book explores the contemporary practice of Neo-shamanism and its relationship to mental health. Chapters cover the practice of Neo-shamanism, how it differs from traditional shamanism, the technology of the shamanic journey, the lifeworlds of some of its practitioners, as well as its benefits and pitfalls. The author's analysis draws on an in-depth study of existing literature, original qualitative-phenomenological research into the lifeworlds of practitioners, and nearly three decades of observation and experience as a student, teacher and practitioner of Neo-shamanism. She discusses the potential role of Neo-shamanic journey technology as an approach for psychology-based studies of consciousness and anomalous phenomena; its value as a tool for self-exploration as part of a supervised curriculum; as well as the possible therapeutic applications of the journey and shamanic healing protocols for use by mental health professionals. This book is a rich and timely resource for students and teachers of psychology, anthropology and sociology, psychotherapists, and anyone who is interested in consciousness and parapsychology.

'Beautifully written, intimate and intellectually fascinating' Nathan Filer 'This book represents, genuinely, a moment of ground-breaking importance for how we think about nature, access and wellbeing in late capitalism' Dr Alice Tarbuck 'Impeccably researched . . . A call to us all to find a place within the simplicity and complexity of nature' Lara Maiklem, bestselling author of Mudlarking Everybody is talking about the healing properties of nature. Hospitals are being retrofitted with gardens, and forests reimagined as wellbeing centres. On the Shetland Islands, it is possible to walk into a doctor's surgery with anxiety or depression, and walk out with a prescription for nature. Where has this come from, and what does 'going to nature' mean? Where is it - at the end of a garden, beyond the tarmac fringes of a city, at the summit of a mountain? Drawing on history, science, literature and art, Samantha Walton shows that the nature cure has deep roots - but, as we face an unprecedented crisis of mental health, social injustice and environmental devastation, the search for it is more urgent now than ever. Everybody Needs Beauty engages seriously with the connection between nature and health, while scrutinising the harmful trends of a wellness industry that seeks to exploit our relationship with the natural world. In doing so, this book explores how the nature cure might lead us towards a more just and radical way of life: a real means of recovery, for people, society and nature.

Disease, injury, or congenital disorders result in an inability to perform activities of daily living as effectively as others. Most of these activities take place within and are dependent upon the designed environment. This book presents the specialized area of person-centered health care design, which focuses on a person's design needs because of one or more health conditions and requires foundational knowledge pertaining to infection control, bio-physiology, neuroscience, and basic biomechanics. Whether the designer has engaged in person- or condition-centered design, this book examines the causes that bring about health conditions, such as autoimmune disorders, chronic lung disease, muscular dystrophy, and neurological disorders, and the effects these have on a person's quality of life. Over forty various health conditions are discussed in relation to assorted building typologies-schools, group homes, rehabilitation and habilitation centers, and more-to identify design solutions for modifying each environment to best accommodate and support a person's needs. Dak Kopec encourages readers to think critically and deductively about numerous health conditions and how to best design for them. This book provides students and practitioners a foundational framework that supports the promotion of health, safety, and welfare as they pertain to a person's physiological, psychological, and sociological well-being.

This special issue is devoted to the cancerchemopreventive effects of the trace element selenium. Although epidemiological and animal model studies have contributed enormously to this field, the clinical trial headed by the late Dr. Larry Clark brought to light the very real possibility that selenium compounds may serve as protective agents in populations at risk for prostate, colon, and lung cancers. For this reason, experts from various disciplines have been brought together to address the current state of the knowledge of the role of selenium as an anticancer agent. It is hoped that by bringing these various approaches together in one place, the research community, both graduate students and established investigators, can better grasp the complex nature of this field. The papers in this issue cover the entire spectrum of cancer research, ranging from clinical trials to animal model studies and molecular biology.

This book provides a socio-psychological enquiry of the phenomenon of suicide in the Indian context. It addresses the rising trend of suicides across the world and through case studies explores its primary reasons, the after-effects on survivors and families and measures to prevent them. The volume focuses on deciphering the social and psychological meanings associated with suicide. Through an examination of psycho-social autopsies of numerous cases, it highlights the patterns and trends which emerge around mental well-being, suicide and bereavement. It examines the primary roadblocks for robust suicide prevention measures and provides great insights into behavioral and personality categories and their relationship with suicide. Offering theoretical and empirical perspectives on the issue of suicide and self-harm, this book will be of interest to students, researchers, and faculty of behavioral sciences, psychology, social anthropology, demography, criminology, social work and sociology. It will also be an essential read for psychologists and counselors, policy makers, NGOs, CSOs, legal experts and media personnel working in the area of suicide prevention and research.

This Handbook presents a broad overview of the current research carried out in environmental psychology which puts into perspective quality of life and relationships with living spaces, and shows how this original analytical framework can be used to understand different environmental and societal issues. Adopting an original approach, this Handbook focuses on the links with other specialties in psychology, especially social and health psychology, together with other disciplines such as geography, architecture, sociology, anthropology, urbanism and engineering. Faced with the problems of society which involve the quality of life of individuals and communities, it is fundamental to consider the relationships an individual has with his different living spaces. This issue of the links between quality of life and environment is becoming increasingly significant with, at a local level, problems resulting from different types of annoyances, such as pollution and noise, while, at a global level, there is the central question of climate change with its harmful consequences for humans and the planet. How can the impact on well-being of environmental nuisances and threats (for example, natural risks, pollution, and noise) be reduced? How can the quality of life within daily living spaces (home, cities, work environments) be improved? Why is it important to understand the psychological issues of our relationship with the global environment (climatic warming, ecological behaviours)? This Handbook is intended not only for students of various disciplines (geography, architecture, psychology, town planning, etc.) but also for social decision-makers and players who will find in it both theoretical and methodological perspectives, so that psychological and environmental dimensions can be better taken into account in their working practices.

This expansive text offers a comprehensive mind/body/spirit framework for relieving individual patients of the debilitating effects of long-term disease while reducing the public burden of chronic illness. It introduces the patient-centered Pathways Model, featuring a robust scientific base for psychotherapy, complementary and alternative modalities, and a religious/spiritual element, in progressive levels of treatment from self-help to professional help. Chapters spotlight component skills of the model, including treatment planning, patient rapport, and choosing therapies for optimal well-being. The authors advocate for interventions ranging from lifestyle change to mindfulness, and biofeedback to pastoral counseling. In addition, in-depth case studies detail memorable patient journeys from diagnosis and referral to assessment, engagement in treatment and outcome. Among the topics covered: * Mind, body, and spirit in chronic illness. * The need for an integrative model to support comprehensive health-supportive change. * Chronic disease from a functional medicine perspective. * Mechanisms by which religious engagement and religion-based variables affect health. * Complementary and integrative medicine for the Pathways Model. * PLUS: Pathways approaches to chronic pain, caregiver stress, diabetes, mood disorders, PTSD, brain injury, heart disease, cancer, and more. Emphasizing patient individuality and clinician creativity, Integrative Pathways models a compassionate approach to lessening persistent suffering for use by health psychologists, physicians, counselors, health coaches, and other practitioners involved in complementary and integrative medicine, pain medicine, and rehabilitation. "The Pathway Model addresses what clinical researchers in the field have been calling for, a research-based approach to health and wellness that clearly explains important concepts and provides an optimal foundation from which to approach health interventions." Patrick R. Steffen, PhD, BCB, Brigham Young University

The aim of this edited book is to provide health professionals, across a wide variety of specialisms, with a targeted access to evolutionary medicine. Throughout the book, the views of both medical and evolutionary scientists on the latest relevant research is presented with a focus on practical implications. The inclusion of boxes explaining the theoretical background as well as both a glossary for technical terms and a lay summary for non- specialists enable medical researchers, public health professionals, policy makers, physicians, students, scholars and the public alike to quickly and easily access appropriate information. This edited volume is thus relevant to anyone keen on finding out how evolutionary medicine can improve the health and well-being of people.

Sport and Exercise Science can measure many aspects of human performance but the spiritual dimensions of sport experience are less easily quantifiable. The spiritual experience of sport - be it described as 'flow', 'transcendence' or simply deep personal satisfaction - is central both to achieving success and to our basic motivation to take part in sports.

Exploring these human aspects of the sport experience through the perspectives of sport psychology, philosophy, ethics and religious studies, this valuable and broad-ranging text includes:

• introduction to Spirituality in the postmodern era
• spirituality, health and wellbeing
• theistic and atheistic perspectives on sport and the spiritual
• nature and transcendence - the mystical and sublime in outdoor sport
• sport and the Existential - applied sport psychology
• suffering and Destiny - spiritual perspectives on pain and mental toughness
• sport and the Virtues - ethical and moral development in the spirit of the game
• the Olympics - de Coubertin's religion of athletics.

Written by leading authors in the field, this groundbreaking and provocative text is likely to inspire much debate, making it the excellent choice for students of sport studies, sports coaching, sport and health psychology. It is also essential reading for those interested in the preparation, performance and wellbeing of athletes.

This manual provides laboratory-based learning experiences in perceptually and psychosocially linked exercise assessment, prescription, and programming. The primary pedagogic outcome is the ability to use applied theory and practice in perceptual and psychosocial exercise assessment and program design to promote the adoption and maintenance of a physically active lifestyle, enhancing overall health fitness. Perceptual and psychosocial variables are presented in individual, stand-alone laboratory modules that can supplement existing curricula such as exercise and sport psychology, exercise physiology, exercise testing and prescription, and exercise training and conditioning. In addition, the complete modular set has a conceptual flow that allows its presentation as an entire, laboratory-based course. The laboratory modules are divided into three primary units: assessment (theoretical constructs, scales and procedures, tests), prescription (self-regulation, performance), and program evaluation. The manual uses a unique format in which case studies are embedded in the conceptual flow of each lab module facilitating translation of laboratory results to real-world application. The manual concludes with a discussion of perceptually and psychosocially linked exercise prescription and programming applications in public health, such as program monitoring and adherence.

This book, with contributions emanating from the 21st World Congress of Psychosomatic Medicine held in Seoul in August 2011, presents the latest evidence-based information about the mechanisms, assessment, and management of psychosomatic disorders from a biopsychosociocultural perspective. Somatization is a process characterized by excessive or inappropriate focus on physical symptoms that are medically unexplained. It is highly prevalent in primary care medicine, as somatoform (psychosomatic) disorders tend to be chronic and can cause significant personal suffering and social problems as well as financial burden.

Originally published in 1984, the study of psychological aspects of health was a rapidly expanding enterprise. Most of the contributors to this volume were trained as social psychologists or by social psychologists. Some have been more applied in their focus or on the edge of several fields. All, however, share a common approach, focusing on the individual as he or she is buffeted about by social forces and copes with these forces. All consider situational and psychological factors in the determination of behavior, emotion, or cognition and all apply their expertise to the study of health-related issues. The grouping of the chapters in this volume by the authors' subspecialty, social psychology, is a somewhat unconventional method of clustering. Ordinarily, the materials presented here would be published in journals or texts concerned with behavior or psychosocial in health and medicine, or in specialty publications dealing with a particular disease or health issue. That clustering of articles is functional in providing information to those most likely to utilize it, but it diffuses the origin and background of the studies. These chapters speak to the diversity of health issues that are amenable to successful social psychological analysis.

A Genealogy of Puberty Science explores the modern invention of puberty as a scientific object. Drawing on Foucault's genealogical analytic, Pinto and Macleod trace the birth of puberty science in the early 1800s and follow its expansion and shifting discursive frameworks over the course of two centuries. Offering a critical inquiry into the epistemological and political roots of our present pubertal complex, this book breaks the almost complete silence concerning puberty in critical theories and research about childhood and adolescence. Most strikingly, the book highlights the failure of ongoing medical debates on early puberty to address young people's sexual and reproductive embodiment and citizenships. A Genealogy of Puberty Science will be of great interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of child and adolescent health research, critical psychology, developmental psychology, health psychology, feminist and gender studies, medical history, science and technology studies, and sexualities and reproduction studies.

This volume brings together two parallel fields of interest. One is the understanding among psychologists and other social scientists of the limits to psychometric measurement, and the challenges in generating information about quality of life and wellbeing that enable comparison across time and place, at both individual and population levels. The second is the interest among anthropologists and others in the lived experience of chronic illness and disability, including the unpredictable fluctuations in perceived health and capability. Chronic conditions and physical impairments are assumed to impact negatively on people's quality of life, affecting them psychologically, socially and economically. While some of these conditions have declined in prevalence, as a result of prenatal diagnosis, early successful interventions, and changes in medical technology and surgery, many of these conditions are on the increase as a consequence of improved life-saving medication and technology, and greater longevity. 'Quality of life' is often used as an indicator for successful and high quality health services, and good access to medical attention and surgery - for hip replacements or laser surgery to improve vision, for instance. But it is also used as an argument against interventions, when such interventions are seen to prolong life for its own sake. Yet we also know that people vary their idea of quality as a result of the context of fluctuations in their own health status, the presence or absence of pain or discomfort, and as a result of variations in social and economic contextual factors. In exploring these questions, this volume contributes to emerging debates related to individual health outcomes, but also to the social and other individual determinants that influence everyday life. Understanding these broader contextual factors will contribute to our knowledge of the kinds of services, support systems, and infrastructure that provide people with good 'quality of life' and a sense of wellbeing, regardless of their physical health, capability and functioning. The volume includes scholars from all continents who have been encouraged to think critically, and to engage with the descriptive, methodological, social, policy and clinical implications of their work.

This book is a guide for psychologists working with substance users in different healthcare settings, from private clinical practice to larger health institutions and community services. It presents a comprehensive overview of the different aspects involved with substance use disorders from a psychological perspective, from prevention to recovery. The volume offers an integrative view about neurobiological, behavioral and psychosocial aspects related to becoming a substance user; shows how psychological assessment tools can be used to diagnose substance use disorders; describes how different kinds of psychotherapy can be applied in the treatment of substance use disorders; and presents a range of evidence-based clinical and social interventions designed for both prevention and treatment of substance use disorders. Apart from covering the whole range of services related to the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of substance use disorders, the volume also shows how these issues can be approached from different theoretical perspectives within psychology, such as: Behavioral and Cognitive Psychology Neuropsychology Existential Psychology Phenomenology Psychoanalysis Analytical Psychology Community and Social Psychology Psychology of Substance Abuse: Psychotherapy, Clinical Management and Social Intervention will be a useful resource for psychologists and other health professionals working with substance users, as well as to undergraduate and graduate students looking for a comprehensive introduction to the psychology of substance abuse.

Traumatic stress caused by violence, terror, natural disasters, political conflicts and poverty a partial list by far is a public health concern of alarming magnitude, affecting all. The long-term effects of exposure to these experiences, especially the concept of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), has been studied extensively and used internationally. The investigation of questions about the universality of PTSD and its applicability across cultural boundaries yielded fascinating work on the ethno-cultural aspects of PTSD as well as its presentation in specific cultural groups. However, a gap in knowledge still remains in regards to the potential differences and variations in the meaning and perception of trauma, the impact of extreme adversity, and its resolution and management. It all falls outside the construct of PTSD and from the point-of view-of other cultures. This edited book addresses theoretical and practical issues central to the field of traumatic stress from diverse cultural perspectives and provides a valuable resource for a broad audience of researchers and clinicians. The purpose of this book is to draw attention to issues concerning trauma and culture that are outside of the current accepted psychiatric conceptualizations, especially PTSD. The chapters included in this volume represent carefully selected examples of topics. Some elucidate the multi-faceted and dynamic resources that cultures bring forth to the perception of trauma, adjustment, coping, and recovery efforts, while others shed light on the essential contribution of cultural factors to the understanding of trauma, needs and treatment. Our hope is that these examples can be generalized and applied to all work on trauma.