TSW Holistic Health via MedWorm.com

Self-Reported Low Self-Esteem. Intervention and Follow-Up in a Clinical Setting

TSW Holistic Health — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0100

At the Research Clinic for Holistic Medicine in Copenhagen, 43 patients who presented with low or very low self-esteem were treated with psychodynamic short-term therapy complemented with bodywork. They received an average of 20 sessions at a cost of 1,600 EURO. The bodywork helped the patients to confront old emotional pain from childhood trauma repressed to the body-mind. Results showed that 60.5% recovered from low self-esteem (95% CI: 44.41–75.02%). Calculated from this, we have NNT = 1.33–2.25. Almost all aspects of life improved at the same time (p < 0.01): physical health, mental health, quality of life, and ability to function in a number of important areas (partner, friends, sexually, and socially). This indicated that we had successfully induced existential healing (Antonovsk...

Quali-Quantitative Analysis (QQA): Why It Could Open New Frontiers for Holistic Health Practice

TSW Holistic Health — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 00:00:00 +0100

Holistic health practice is often described as being about understanding the larger contexts of patients, their health services, and their communities. Yet do traditional quantitative and qualitative health research methods produce the best possible evidence for the holistic practices of doctors, nurses, and allied health professionals? This paper argues “no”, and examines the potential of a cutting-edge, social science research method — Quali-Quantitative Research (QQA) — for providing better evidence for holistic practice, particularly in small-N populations, such as rural and remote communities. It does so with reference to the international literature on holistic medicine, as well as three holistic health projects conducted in Tasmania: about prevention of falls in older people...

Neuroscience of Meditation

TSW Holistic Health — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 19:37:02 +0100

This article discusses topics including brain-mind-reality, consciousness, attention, emotional intelligence, sense of self, meditative mind, and meditative brain. A new hypothesis is proposed for a better understanding of the meditative mind. Meditation is an art of being serene and alert in the present moment, instead of constantly struggling to change or to become. It is an art of efficient management of attentional energy with total engagement (poornata, presence, mindfulness) or disengagement (shunyata, silence, emptiness). In both states, there is an experience of spontaneous unity with no sense of situational interactive self or personal time. It is a simultaneous, participatory consciousness rather than a dualistic, sequential attentiveness. There is a natural sense of well being w...

Qualitative Evaluation of the Project P.A.T.H.S. Based on the Perceptions of the Program Participants

TSW Holistic Health — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 19:37:02 +0100

Qualitative evaluation was carried out to understand the perceptions of the students participating in the Tier 1 Program of the P.A.T.H.S. Project. Five focus groups based on 43 students recruited from four schools were conducted to generate qualitative data to evaluate the program. With specific focus on how the informants described the program, results showed that the descriptors used were mainly positive in nature. When the informants were invited to name three metaphors that could stand for the program, the related metaphors were basically positive in nature. Finally, the program participants perceived many beneficial effects of the program in different psychosocial domains. Intra- and inter-rater reliability analyses revealed that the coding of the positive or negative nature of the r...

Process Evaluation of the Tier 1 Program of the Project P.A.T.H.S.

TSW Holistic Health — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 19:37:02 +0100

To understand the implementation quality of the Tier 1 Program of the Project P.A.T.H.S., two observers carried out process evaluation in six schools randomly selected from the participating schools in the form of systematic observations of 12 units. Results showed that the overall level of program adherence was generally high, ranging from 50% to 95%, with an average of 84.5%. High implementation quality of the program in the areas of student interest, student participation and involvement, classroom control, use of interactive delivery method, use of strategies to enhance student motivation, instructors’ familiarity with the students, opportunity for reflection, degree of achievement of the objectives, quality of preparation, overall implementation quality, and success of implementatio...

Implementation of the Tier 1 Program of the Project P.A.T.H.S.: Interim Evaluation Findings

TSW Holistic Health — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0100

To understand the implementation quality of the Tier 1 Program of the Project P.A.T.H.S., 25 schools and three school social service units were randomly selected to participate in telephone interviews regarding the quality of the implementation process of the Tier 1 Program of the P.A.T.H.S. Project. In the telephone interviews, the participants described the responses of the students and the workers to the program, the perceived benefits of the program, their assessment of the positive and negative features of the program, as well as difficulties involved in the implementation process. Results showed that most workers perceived that the students had positive responses to the program and half of the workers had positive experiences about the program, although negative comments on the progr...

Clinical Holistic Medicine: Psychodynamic Short-Time Therapy Complemented with Bodywork. A Clinical Follow-Up Study of 109 Patients

TSW Holistic Health — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0100

This is a study of 109 patients who attended the Research Clinic for Holistic Medicine in Copenhagen during the 2004–2006 period, grouped according to the symptoms they presented with. Every new patient was asked to answer a 10-question composite questionnaire containing QOL1, QOL5, and four questions on ability to function socially, ability to function sexually, ability to love, and ability to work, rated on a 5-point Likert scale, on initial contact and after 1–3 months, when the patient had received about five treatments, the patient was asked to complete the questionnaire again, and finally again after 1 year. All had been to their general practitioner first with their problems and 30% had been in psychological/psychiatric treatment before. The patients were treated with short-time...

Sense of Coherence and Physical Health. A Cross-Sectional Study Using a New Scale (SOC II)

TSW Holistic Health — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 22:27:02 +0100

In this study, we constructed a new sense of coherence scale (SOC II), where we eliminated the notion of predictability (that life is meant to be predictable), which was present in the original SOC scale developed by Aaron Antonovsky (1923–1994) (SOC-29 and SOC-13). Our hypothesis was that SOC II would show a higher degree of association with physical health than the original SOC scale. In order to test this idea, we used a cross-sectional study including 4,648 Danes and used the three different health measures: self-evaluated physical health, physical symptoms, and self-evaluated psychological health. We found that SOC II was positively associated with all three health measures with the correlation coefficients 0.338, 0.282, and 0.578, respectively. Furthermore, we found dose response t...

Sense of Coherence and Physical Health. Testing Antonovsky’s Theory

TSW Holistic Health — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0100

In a previous paper, we argued that the original 29-item sense of coherence (SOC) scale developed by Aaron Antonovsky (1923–1994) was insufficient according to its reflection of SOC. The purpose of this study was to create a new version of the original 29-item SOC scale in order to test his hypothesis of a causal link between SOC and physical health. This shorter version was built on the exact same idea, theory, and conceptualization used by Antonovsky, which resulted in a SOC scale containing only 9 abstract questions. These nine questions, in addition to two questions about physical and psychological health, made up a questionnaire answered by 100 people at the entrance hall of the University Medical Center (Rigshospitalet) in Copenhagen. According to Antonovsky’s famous hypothesis, ...

Sense of Coherence (SOC) Among Psychotherapists in Austria, Differentiated According to Number of Individually Completed Training Therapy Sessions

TSW Holistic Health — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0100

The sense of coherence (according Aaron Antonovsky, 1923–1994, when a person’s sense that his/her own life and the world are sufficiently comprehensible, manageable, and meaningful) of Austrian psychotherapists was assessed and compared with a standard sample, as well as with the sense of coherence (SOC) of members of other professions. In addition, the question as to whether psychotherapists who had completed more extensive individual training therapy/self-awareness sessions had a higher SOC than do those with fewer, was addressed. Forty psychotherapists who worked in private practices and various psychosocial health care institutions in Styria, Austria took part in the study. The investigation was conducted in the form of a questionnaire assessment. The evaluation showed that the ove...

Clinical Holistic Medicine: The Case Story of Anna. II. Patient Diary as a Tool in Treatment