Objective: To evaluate feasibility, efficacy, and tolerability of Sudarshan Kriya yoga (SKY) as an adjunctive intervention in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) with inadequate response to antidepressant treatment.Methods: Patients with MDD (defined by DSMIV-TR) who were depressed despite ≥ 8 weeks of antidepressant treatment were randomized to SKY or a waitlist control (delayed yoga) arm for 8 weeks. The primary efficacy end point was change in 17-item Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS-17) total score from baseline to 2 months. The key secondary efficacy end points were change in Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) total scores. Analyses of the intent-to-treat (ITT) and completer sample were performed. The study was conducted at the University of Pennsylvania between October 2014 and December 2015.
Results: In the ITT sample (n = 25), the SKY arm (n = 13) showed a greater improvement in HDRS17 total score compared to waitlist control (n = 12) (−9.77 vs 0.50, P = .0032). SKY also showed greater reduction in BDI total score versus waitlist control (−17.23 vs −1.75, P = .0101). Mean changes in BAI total score from baseline were significantly greater for SKY than waitlist (ITT mean difference: −5.19; 95% CI, −0.93 to −9.34; P = .0097; completer mean difference: −6.23; 95% CI, −1.39 to −11.07; P = .0005). No adverse events were reported.
Conclusions: Results of this randomized, waitlistcontrolled pilot study suggest the feasibility and promise of an adjunctive SKY-based intervention for patients with MDD who have not responded to antidepressants. Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT02616549 J Clin Psychiatry 2017;78(1):e59–e63 dx.doi.org/10.4088/JCP.16m10819 © Copyright 2016 Physicians Postgraduate Press, Inc.
Linda Scheele is certified in cancer yoga, and today we get personal in our interview and we talk about her loss of her two kids, her diagnosis, and how she healed. And with decades of experience, you have to hear what the 76-year-old health revolutionist has to say about how to Heal Better Fast! Please welcome Linda Scheele.
Mindfulness meditation is increasingly used in health interventions and may reduce stress and blood pressure. We aimed to investigate the effectiveness of brief mindfulness meditation in reducing cardiovascular reactivity and recovery during a laboratory stressor. We randomly assigned 62 meditation-naïve participants to a mindfulness meditation group or a matched non-mindful listening exercise control group. There were no differences between groups in blood pressure, demographic, or mood variables at baseline. Mindfulness participants showed lower systolic blood pressure following the mindfulness exercise and decreased systolic and diastolic blood pressure reactivity during a speeded math stressor. Specifically, as the stressor progressed, blood pressure in the mindfulness group began to decrease, whereas in the control group, it continued to increase. There were no group differences during recovery. Overall, brief mindfulness meditation reduced cardiovascular reactivity to stress and may be an effective intervention for reducing stress-related blood pressure reactivity.
<p>Explanations of consciousness from both philosophy and cognitive science are traditionally conceived in terms of how an active self-consciousness relates to the various aspects of the world with which it is faced. This way of framing the problem is intuitive, but it also leads ultimately to an infinite regress. A better approach to consciousness is suggested by Buddhism, which responds to the regress by arguing that consciousness and its apparent relata are, in any given instance, actually simultaneously illuminated isolates of an underlying unity. This response circumvents the regress, but does not offer an explanation of consciousness as such. Nevertheless, insights such as this can be integrated into contemporary scientific theorizing about cognition and the brain with surprisingly fruitful results.</p>
This chapter centers on Tibetan Buddhist patterns and themes of healing and addresses the inter-relationship of medicine and religion in the practice of Tibetan medicine, also called Sowa Rigpa (gso ba rig pa), the “science of healing,” and how Buddhist rituals are employed to enhance the potency of medicines and to protect the pharmacy and the people working in it from accidents and obstacles during difficult manufacturing processes. Examples focus on the refinement of mercury in mercury sulphide ash for use in “precious pills” (rin chen ril bu). The chapter establishes an argument for a parallel between Buddhist ideas of “taming” demons into becoming protectors of the religious teachings and the pharmacological transformation of poisonous substances, especially the pharmacological practices of “taming” mercury into a potent elixir, and what this tells us about Tibetan medical approaches to what is considered “beneficial” and “harmful.”
This chapter centers on Tibetan Buddhist patterns and themes of healing and addresses the inter-relationship of medicine and religion in the practice of Tibetan medicine, also called Sowa Rigpa (gso ba rig pa), the “science of healing,” and how Buddhist rituals are employed to enhance the potency of medicines and to protect the pharmacy and the people working in it from accidents and obstacles during difficult manufacturing processes. Examples focus on the refinement of mercury in mercury sulphide ash for use in “precious pills” (rin chen ril bu). The chapter establishes an argument for a parallel between Buddhist ideas of “taming” demons into becoming protectors of the religious teachings and the pharmacological transformation of poisonous substances, especially the pharmacological practices of “taming” mercury into a potent elixir, and what this tells us about Tibetan medical approaches to what is considered “beneficial” and “harmful.”
Background:The Canadian Network for Mood and Anxiety Treatments (CANMAT) has revised its 2009 guidelines for the management of major depressive disorder (MDD) in adults by updating the evidence and recommendations. The target audiences for these 2016 guidelines are psychiatrists and other mental health professionals.
Methods:
Using the question-answer format, we conducted a systematic literature search focusing on systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Evidence was graded using CANMAT-defined criteria for level of evidence. Recommendations for lines of treatment were based on the quality of evidence and clinical expert consensus. “Psychological Treatments” is the second of six sections of the 2016 guidelines.
Results:
Evidence-informed responses were developed for 25 questions under 5 broad categories: 1) patient characteristics relevant to using psychological interventions; 2) therapist and health system characteristics associated with optimizing outcomes; 3) descriptions of major psychotherapies and their efficacy; 4) additional psychological interventions, such as peer interventions and computer- and technology-delivered interventions; and 5) combining and/or sequencing psychological and pharmacological interventions.
Conclusions:
First-line psychological treatment recommendations for acute MDD include cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT), interpersonal therapy (IPT), and behavioural activation (BA). Second-line recommendations include computer-based and telephone-delivered psychotherapy. Where feasible, combining psychological treatment (CBT or IPT) with antidepressant treatment is recommended because combined treatment is superior to either treatment alone. First-line psychological treatments for maintenance include CBT and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT). Patient preference, in combination with evidence-based treatments and clinician/system capacity, will yield the optimal treatment strategies for improving individual outcomes in MDD.
Cancer is the uncontrolled growth of cells, which damages healthy tissue and causes disease. The American Cancer Society differentiates more than 100 types of cancers that manifest in diverse ways throughout the human body. Treatment of cancer can vary from local to systemic and from mildly invasive to radical depending on the type of cancer and the extent of disease.
This study investigated the effect of a social and emotional learning skills curriculum, the "You Can Do It! Early Childhood Education Program" (YCDI), on the social-emotional development, well-being, and academic achievement of 99 preparatory and grade 1 students attending a Catholic school in Melbourne, Australia. One preparatory and one grade 1 class were randomly chosen to receive structured lessons in YCDI, delivered by their classroom teachers over a period of 10 weeks, while the remaining preparatory and grade 1 class served as the control group. The lessons were designed to teach young children confidence, persistence, organisation and emotional resilience. The educational program consisted of explicit, direct instruction lessons drawn from the YCDI Early Childhood Curriculum taught three times a week, supported by a variety of additional social and emotional teaching practices. The results indicated that YCDI had a statistically significant positive effect on levels of social-emotional competence and well-being for the preparatory and grade 1 students, a reduction in problem behaviours (externalising, internalising, and hyperactivity problems) for the grade 1 students, and an increase in reading achievement (decoding text) for the lower achieving grade 1 students. These findings are discussed with regard to issues concerning the role of explicit instruction in social and emotional learning for the early years.
Students often “multitask” with electronic media while doing schoolwork. We examined the effects of one form of media often used in such multitasking, instant messaging (IM). We predicted that students who engaged in IMing while reading a typical academic psychology passage online would take longer to read the passage and would perform more poorly on a test of comprehension of the passage. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions (IM before reading, IM during reading, or no IM). We found that students took significantly longer to read the passage when they IMed during reading (not including time taken to IM) than in other conditions. However, test performance did not differ by condition. Students who are managing busy lives may think they are accomplishing more by multitasking, but our findings suggest they will actually need more time to achieve the same level of performance on an academic task.
Five days of integrative body-mind training (IBMT) improves attention and self-regulation in comparison with the same amount of relaxation training. This paper explores the underlying mechanisms of this finding. We measured the physiological and brain changes at rest before, during, and after 5 days of IBMT and relaxation training. During and after training, the IBMT group showed significantly better physiological reactions in heart rate, respiratory amplitude and rate, and skin conductance response (SCR) than the relaxation control. Differences in heart rate variability (HRV) and EEG power suggested greater involvement of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) in the IBMT group during and after training. Imaging data demonstrated stronger subgenual and adjacent ventral anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) activity in the IBMT group. Frontal midline ACC theta was correlated with highfrequency HRV, suggesting control by the ACC over parasympathetic activity. These results indicate that after 5 days of training, the IBMT group shows better regulation of the ANS by a ventral midfrontal brain system than does the relaxation group. This changed state probably reflects training in the coordination of body and mind given in the IBMT but not in the control group. These results could be useful in the design of further specific interventions.
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Background: An important cognitive marker of clinical depression is a reduced ability to be specific in recalling personal memories, a phenomenon coined ‘overgeneral memory’. Overgeneral memory is considered as a stable cognitive trait that is intrinsically linked with depression and independent of mood state. Previous studies show that autobiographical memory is modifiable. Sampling and Methods: This study investigated whether autobiographical memory is differentially affected by treatment type. Depressed patients were randomly assigned to receive either cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) for depression or pharmacotherapy (PHT). Results: The proportion of categoric memories decreased and the proportion of specific memories increased following both types of treatments, adding support to the view that overgeneral memory is modifiable. CBT also had a greater impact on reducing extended overgeneral memories compared to PHT. Conclusions: The results from the current study are important in that they show that overgeneral memory can be targeted and modified through brief treatment. The clinical significance of the finding that there was a greater decrease in extended memories in the CBT group is unclear.
The frontal lobes are responsible for many of the aspects of cognition that seem uniquely human, including aspects of planning, language, emotional control, and personality. Disorders of the frontal lobes take many forms, but ultimately their impact on our cognition and behavior depends on their location and how they disrupt normal neuronal functioning. This chapter reviews the neuroanatomy of the frontal lobes as relevant to movement, attention, memory, executive functioning, language, emotion, motivation, and social behavior. The disruptive influences of different neurological disorders illustrate the significance of frontal brain regions.
The term cognition refers to unconscious mechanisms in the mind that bring about representations. Social cognition may be defined as any cognitive process that involves other people. These processes can be involved in social interactions at a group level or on a one-to-one basis. This chapter identifies the scope of social cognition and recent research on the mechanisms of social cognition and its component processes in the brain. The study of social cognition uses the same measures as any other area of cognitive science. Some measures are especially helpful in the study of communication and emotion. These include: autonomic responses, brain activity, neuronal activity, scalp electrical impulses, cerebral blood flow, and non-verbal behavior. Mechanisms of social cognition are thought to be crucial for reading faces, detecting eye gaze, recognizing emotional expressions, perceiving biological motion, and detecting goal-directed actions and agents. This chapter further discusses how pathology affects social cognition. It also poses some burning questions from interactions in everyday life.
Individuals with chronic schizophrenia exhibit performance deficits on tasks of social cognition, particularly in the domains of emotion processing, theory of mind, social perception, and attributional style, and these impairments are uniquely associated with poor functional outcome. Researchers have begun to investigate the pattern and magnitude of social cognitive impairment among individuals early in the course of schizophrenia and in people considered to be at elevated risk for psychosis, such as clinical high-risk samples and unaffected relatives of probands. This chapter evaluates the emerging research literature on social cognition in the early phase of schizophrenia. For each of the four social cognitive domains noted above, we provide an overview of common assessment methods and review relevant research comparing first episode/recent-onset schizophrenia patients, clinical high-risk samples (i.e., putatively prodromal), and genetic high-risk (i.e., unaffected relatives) to matched healthy control subjects. Deficits in emotion processing, theory of mind, and social perception are clearly detectable in first-episode/recent-onset patients and are comparable in magnitude to those seen in chronically ill patients. Among clinical high-risk and unaffected relatives, the magnitude of impairment is more variable and, in general, appears to be smaller than impairments seen among those with established illness. Attributional style is the least studied social cognitive domain and consistent patterns have not yet been identified. The implications and limitations of existing studies, and important areas for further research, are discussed.
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<p>This article criticizes conventional economic policy claiming that it disadvantages smaller nations and ignores important economic considerations. The author examines Bhutan's policy of Gross National Happiness as an alternative to conventional economic policies. (Ben Deitle 2006-02-21)</p>
Previous research indicates that lower-class individuals experience elevated negative emotions as compared with their upper-class counterparts. We examine how the environments of lower-class individuals can also promote greater compassionate responding-that is, concern for the suffering or well-being of others. In the present research, we investigate class-based differences in dispositional compassion and its activation in situations wherein others are suffering. Across studies, relative to their upper-class counterparts, lower-class individuals reported elevated dispositional compassion (Study 1), as well as greater self-reported compassion during a compassion-inducing video (Study 2) and for another person during a social interaction (Study 3). Lower-class individuals also exhibited heart rate deceleration-a physiological response associated with orienting to the social environment and engaging with others-during the compassion-inducing video (Study 2). We discuss a potential mechanism of class-based influences on compassion, whereby lower-class individuals' are more attuned to others' distress, relative to their upper-class counterparts.
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Chaotic conditions are a prevalent and threatening feature of social life. Five studies examined whether social class underlies divergent responses to perceptions of chaos in one's social environments and outcomes. The authors hypothesized that when coping with perceptions of chaos, lower class individuals tend to prioritize community, relative to upper class individuals, who instead tend to prioritize material wealth. Consistent with these predictions, when personally confronting chaos, lower class individuals were more communally oriented (Study 1), more connected with their community (Study 2), and more likely to volunteer for a community-building project (Study 3), compared to upper class individuals. In contrast, perceptions of chaos caused upper class individuals to express greater reliance on wealth (Study 4) and prefer financial gain over membership in a close-knit community (Study 5), relative to lower class individuals. These findings suggest that social class shapes how people respond to perceptions of chaos and cope with its threatening consequences.
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From Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former head of the Sierra Club Carl Pope comes a manifesto on how the benefits of taking action on climate change are concrete, immediate, and immense. They explore climate change solutions that will make the world healthier and more prosperous, aiming to begin a new type of conversation on the issue that will spur bolder action by cities, businesses, and citizens—and even, someday, by Washington."Climate of Hope is an inspiring must read." —Former Vice President Al Gore, Chairman of The Climate Reality Project“Climate change threatens to reshape the future of our world's population centers. Bloomberg and Pope have been leaders on fortifying our cities against this threat, and their book proves that victory is possible—and imperative.” —Leonardo DiCaprio"If Trump is looking for a blueprint, he could not do better than to read a smart new book, Climate of Hope." —Thomas Friedman in The New York Times~The 2016 election left many people who are concerned about the environment fearful that progress on climate change would come screeching to a halt. But not Michael Bloomberg and Carl Pope. Bloomberg, an entrepreneur and former mayor of New York City, and Pope, a lifelong environmental leader, approach climate change from different perspectives, yet they arrive at similar conclusions. Without agreeing on every point, they share a belief that cities, businesses, and citizens can lead—and win—the battle against climate change, no matter which way the political winds in Washington may shift. In Climate of Hope, Bloomberg and Pope offer an optimistic look at the challenge of climate change, the solutions they believe hold the greatest promise, and the practical steps that are necessary to achieve them. Writing from their own experiences, and sharing their own stories from government, business, and advocacy, Bloomberg and Pope provide a road map for tackling the most complicated challenge the world has ever faced. Along the way, they turn the usual way of thinking about climate change on its head: from top down to bottom up, from partisan to pragmatic, from costs to benefits, from tomorrow to today, and from fear to hope.
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