ARQ National Psychotrauma Centre

AbstractObjectiveEvaluation of therapeutic touch (TT) in the nursing of burn patients, post hoc evaluation of the research process in a non-academic nursing setting.Methods38 burn patients received either TT or nursing presence. On admission, days 2, 5 and 10 of hospitalization, data were collected on anxiety for pain, salivary cortisol, and pain medication. Interviews with nurses were held concerning research in a non-academic setting.ResultsAnxiety for pain was more reduced on day 10 in the TT-group. The TT-group was prescribed less morphine on day 1 and 2.

There is now ample evidence from the preclinical and clinical fields that early life trauma has both dramatic and long-lasting effects on neurobiological systems and functions that are involved in different forms of psychopathology as well as on health in general. To date, a comprehensive review of the recent research on the effects of early and later life trauma is lacking. This book fills an obvious gap in academic and clinical literature by providing reviews which summarize and synthesize these findings.

BackgroundClinical and neurobiological evidence for a dissociative subtype of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has recently been documented. A dissociative subtype of PTSD is being considered for inclusion in the forthcoming Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-Fifth Edition (DSM-5) to address the symptoms of depersonalization and derealization found among a subset of patients with PTSD.

BACKGROUND: The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) coalition forces remain heavily committed on combat operations overseas. Understanding the prevalence and characteristics of battlefield injury of coalition partners is vital to combat casualty care performance improvement. The aim of this systematic review was to evaluate the prevalence and characteristics of battle casualties from NATO coalition partners in Iraq and Afghanistan.

AbstractBackground: A lack of social support and recognition by the environment is one of the most consistent risk factors for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and PTSD patients will recover faster with proper social support. The oxytocin system has been proposed to underlie beneficial effects of social support as it is implicated in both social bonding behavior and reducing stress responsivity, notably amygdala reactivity (Koch et al., 2014, Olff et al., 2010, Olff, 2012).

Disturbed sleep is one of the key symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and may contribute to the genesis and maintenance of PTSD. Our previously published study*, executed in healthy subjects, suggests that adaptive changes occur in sleep architecture, after emotional experiences, that benefit emotional housekeeping and the attenuation of emotional responses to negative emotional experiences. Little is known, however, about the relation between sleep and emotional memory processing in PTSD.

This is the protocol for a review and there is no abstract. The objectives are as follows: To assess and compare the diagnostic accuracy of different PTSD self-report instruments. (Cochrane)

AbstractBACKGROUND: In chronic sexual abuse victims with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis can be dysregulated. In single rape victims, PTSD symptoms are hypothesized to function as a chronic stressor leading to similar HPA-axis dysregulation.

Background: IBS is a common, painful, potentially disabling GI disorder associated with significant mental and medical (physical) comorbidity. The rate of mental-physical comorbidity is particularly high in more severe IBS patients seen in tertiary care settings. The individual and joint effects of coexisting mental and physical conditions on IBS is unknown but important because of their influence on health outcomes in general. Aim. This study investigated the explanatory value of 2 approaches for modeling mental-physical comorbidity associated with IBS.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a debilitating psychiatric disorder. An important diagnostic feature of PTSD is anhedonia, which may result from deficits in reward functioning. This has however never been studied systematically in PTSD. To determine if PTSD is associated with reward impairments, we conducted a systematic review of studies in which reward functioning was compared between PTSD patients and healthy control participants, or investigated in relation to PTSD symptom severity.