Validation of Acromegaly Quality of Life Questionnaire (AcroQol) for the Iranian Population

Background Acromegaly is a chronic disease seriously impacting the patients' quality of life. This study aimed to validate the Acromegaly Quality of Life Questionnaire (AcroQoL) for the Persian-speaking population. Methods This cross-sectional study recruited 73 Iranian patients with a confirmed diagnosis of acromegaly. The content validity of the scales was evaluated by an expert panel of eight endocrinologists. Construct validity was assessed by using confirmatory factor analysis. Internal consistency was assessed on the basis of Cronbach’s alpha, and a goodness-of-fit (GoF) index was calculated to display whether the model fitted the data. Results The content validity index (CVI) and content validity ratio (CVR) yielded values of 0.85 and 0.80, respectively. The average variance extracted (AVE) from physical and psychological dimensions was 0.520 and 0.462, respectively, exceeding the minimum criterion of 0.40. Cronbach’s alpha for physical and psychological dimensions equaled 0.868 and 0.866, respectively, indicating the adequate internal consistency of multiple items for each construct. The subscales’ R square and path coefficient were greater than the recommended threshold (physical dimension: 0.778, psychological dimension: 0.873), demonstrating the suitability of this criterion. Finally, the GoF value of 0.29 indicated the model's moderate fit. Conclusions The findings revealed that the Persian version of AcroQoL is of adequate validity and reliability for evaluating the quality of life of Iranian people with acromegaly.

Is true friendship possible on Facebook? A study from the psychological perspective of Laín Entralgo

The present work aims to analyse the meaning of the concept of friendship through the study of the work of the doctor and philosopher Pedro Laín Entralgo. The initial hypothesis of the study is that the concept of friendship has been used instrumentally by social media networks, and that these do not offer the conditions necessary to fully experience true friendship. To verify this, we focused on the study of the psychological dimensions of friendship proposed by the author, identifying a series of variables and conducting an analysis by means of a survey of university students who are active users of the platform. With these results the descriptive statistics were extracted and a nonparametric analysis was performed of the variables to determine if Facebook does in fact offer the conditions necessary for to experience true friendship in its psychological dimensions. As the results show, to experience true friendship on social networks is difficult, given that the nature of the interactions between users of the platform are not appropriate for this experience. In calling this different type of relationship friendship Facebook benefits from an attractive hook which leads users to generate contacts as a form of currency which benefits the business model of the social media platform. The concept of true friendship is altered, deformed and displaced in favour of other types of relationships.

COMPARISON OF PSYCHOLOGICAL DIMENSIONS IN RURAL POPULATION WITH VARIOUS JOINT DEGENERATIVE ARTHRITIS

Background and Purpose:Osteoarthritis patients often suffer from anxiety which can affect the disease prognosis. This study is aimed at assessing the various psychological dimensions in different joint arthritic subjects of the rural population and finding the most common joint arthritis that can lead to anxiety in the rural population. Materials & methods: A total of 252 subjects satisfied the inclusion criteria and were recruited for the study after written informed consent and were asked to fill in the GPS online through Google forms. The “feelings” subscale assesses the patient’s psychological stress due to pain and disease. The psychological dimensions of sub-section feelings of GPS were analyzed by one-way ANOVA to assess whether there is a difference on average in the scores among the three groups at a [Formula: see text] significant level. Tukey HSD was used for post hoc pairwise comparisons. Results: One-way ANOVA results showed that there was no statistically significant difference between the groups for fear, level of anxiety, depression, stress, and fatigue. Tukey HSD post hoc comparison revealed that the results were statistically significant for fear ([Formula: see text], [Formula: see text]) and fatigue levels ([Formula: see text], [Formula: see text]). The Tukey HSD post hoc comparison for levels of anxiety, depression, and stress was not statistically significant. Conclusion: From this study, we conclude that anxiety, fatigue, and fear are highly prevalent in hip osteoarthritis. Anxiety is associated with all joint osteoarthritis and can result in poor quality of living. We recommend physicians to emphasize psychological dimensions and address them at an early stage in order to achieve a better prognosis in degenerative joint diseases.

Chronic Kidney Disease and Its Relationship with Mental Health: Allostatic Load Perspective for Integrated Care

Background: Chronic renal failure is a chronic medical condition characterized by a progressive and irreversible loss of kidney function. Up to 50% of patients undergoing dialysis experience symptoms of depression and anxiety: what is the impact of individual factors and medical conditions on the mental health issue? The present study was carried out to investigate the individual factors (biomarkers and psychological dimensions) of end-stage renal disease patients dealing with dialysis, analyzing their predictor values for developing negative disease adaptations by an allostatic paradigm. Methods: We conducted an observational study on 35 patients affected by end-stage renal disease; biological and psychological markers have been detected. We conducted descriptive statistical analyses (t-tests) and performed a hierarchical regression analysis to investigate the relationship between pathological medical conditions and psychological dimensions. Results: The findings showed a positive correlation between creatinine levels and psychological distress as well as stress index. No significant effect of “time of dialysis”, “time from diagnosis”, “age” and “personality traits” was found. Conclusion: Our findings showed that personality traits did not represent a protective factor by moderating positive emotional adaptations; conversely, creatinine levels appeared predictive for negative emotional adaptations. High levels of creatinine were found to be positively associated with high stress levels as well psychological distress. According to the allostatic paradigm, end-stage renal disease patients could experience an allostatic load and more overload towards poor health outcomes; integrated biological and psychological measurements could prevent increased negative mental health through a patient-centered approach.

The importance of cultural psychological perspectives in pain research: Towards the palliation of Cartesian anxiety

Despite widespread awareness of the psychological dimensions of pain, researchers often and easily slip into essentializing understandings that treat pain as a purely physiological experience that can be isolated within experimental research. This drive towards scientific objectivity, while at times of tremendous utility, can also limit our understanding of pain to reductionistic conceptualizations that in effect deny the subjective and even the psychological dimensions of pain. In other words, researchers often attempt to understand pain by means of empirical, scientific explanations, while being simultaneously aware that such an approach cannot grasp the phenomenon in its entirety. This yearning for deeper, ontological understanding in a world that admits of only empirical, scientific explanations has been called Cartesian anxiety. In the current study, it is argued that cultural psychology can help to alleviate this Cartesian anxiety by helping us to appreciate the psychological aspects of pain as dynamic processes of meaning making.

Anaclitic-sociotropic and introjective-autonomic personality dimensions and depressive symptoms: a systematic review

Sociotropy (anaclitic) and autonomy (introjective) are conceptualised as two personality dimensions that confer vulnerability to depression. According to Blatt and Beck’s theories, sociotropic individuals exhibit distinctive patterns of symptoms such as prominent anxiety, depressed mood, helplessness, crying and somatic concerns, while self-critical ones seem to exhibit a pattern of symptoms including prominent guilt, hopelessness, feelings of failure and worthlessness and other cognitive symptoms.This systematic review was performed with the aim of investigating whether and to what extent psychological dimensions of anaclitic-sociotropic and introjective-autonomy are related to a specific core of depressive symptoms. The search was conducted in three databases (PubMed, PsycINFO and Scopus) and 27 articles were selected.Results showed a weak association between somatic symptoms and dependent personality traits, while the relationship between self-criticism and cognitive symptomatology was significantly higher. These findings are discussed in the context of future research, necessary to corroborate the existence of a form of depression characterised by somatic features usually ignored by diagnostic criteria, essential to direct psychological treatments to these depressive personality differences.

Not Yet Uhuru: Aspects of Social Realism in Vonani Bila’s Selected Poetry

This article analyses Vonani Bila’s selected poetry for its ability to produce an ‘air of reality’. The central argument of the article is that Bila embraces an aesthetic of realism, which essentially values unsparing, accurate and sordid representations of the psychological, social and material realities of postcolonial (and democratic) South Africa. Undergirded by the Marxist theory of Social Realism, the qualitative approach and descriptive design, this article purposively selected ten poems from some of the anthologies in which Bila published his poetry, namely; Magicstan Fires, Handsome Jita and Sweep of the Violin. Bila’s poetry can best be situated within the historical contexts that shape his texts, namely; the apartheid era, ideas about capitalism in newly democratic South Africa, the emergence of a vibrant immigrant community in South Africa and idealised notions of achieving equality and prosperity through education in South Africa. This article is mainly a critical analysis, and not a historical account of the apartheid era and democratic dispensation of South Africa. In the analysis, it was noted that Bila’s poetry generally manifests the literary categories of social and psychological realism, respectively. As a social realist, Bila explores the problems of economic inequality and captures the experience of both rural and urban life in a post- and neo-colonial context of South Africa. As a psychological realist, on the other extreme, Bila is concerned with delving beneath the surface of social life to probe the complex motivations and (un)conscious desires that shape his literary personae’s perceptions. The article concludes with the notion that, in his commitment to document the realities of everyday life in South Africa, both at social and psychological dimensions, Bila offers a penetrating insight into the repression, alienation, marginalisation, instabilities, and inequalities that structure post- and neo-colonial South Africa.

Relating psychiatric symptoms and self-regulation during the COVID-19 crisis

Disruptions of self-regulation are a hallmark of numerous psychiatric disorders. Here, we examine the relationship between transdiagnostic dimensions of psychopathology and changes in self-regulation in the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. We used data-driven approach on a large number of cognitive tasks and self-reported surveys in training datasets. Then we derived measures of self-regulation and psychiatric functioning in an independent population sample (N = 102) tested both before and after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the restrictions in place represented a threat to mental health and forced people to flexibly adjust to modifications of daily routines. We found independent relationships between transdiagnostic dimensions of psychopathology and longitudinal alterations in specific domains of self-regulation defined using the drift diffusion model. Compared to the period preceding the onset of the pandemic, a symptom dimension related to anxiety and depression was characterized by a more cautious behavior, indexed by the need to accumulate more evidence before making a decision. Instead, social-withdrawal related to faster non-decision processes. Self-reported measures of self-regulation predicted variance in psychiatric symptoms both concurrently and prospectively, revealing the psychological dimensions relevant for separate transdiagnostic dimensions of psychiatry, but tasks did not. Taken together, our study shows that self-regulation can be affected depending on the interaction between external events and trait-like vulnerabilities and suggests that the study of cognition needs to take into account the dynamic nature of real-world events as well as within-subject variability over time.

SOCIO-PSYCHOLOGICAL DIMENSIONS OF TEACHING AND LEARNING

<p>Education is a dynamic social process with its two main components: teaching and learning. As a field of study in social sciences education science / pedagogy has a truly interdisciplinary basis. In this article we will discuss socio-psychological aspects of teaching and learning. As human beings we are all social actors: educational managers, teachers, students, parents, etc. All people have their own social responsibilities and tasks in educational activities. When we analyze and understand comprehensively this social reality it will be much more successful to establish effective strategies and apply them in society. Of course, as individuals, social groups and societies we are facing psychological interactions as well. These are very connected to people’s being social actors. This is why it is more proper to take a “socio-psychological” level of analysis for profoundly understanding educational processes. In this scientific discussion we will refer to Marx’s concepts related to education, theories in sociology of education and educational psychology. Our academic purpose is contributing to the progressive literature in education studies as broadening the discussion.</p><p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0965/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>