Health expectations influence the result

Andrés Fontalba
 

In search of the perfect woman, Pygmalion fell in love with his Galatea statue. Such was his wish, according to Ovid's account in The Metamorphoses, that the statue became human. When the Pygmalion effect occurs, the expectations we have influence our behaviour and our way of acting is precisely what causes the expected result. Our own beliefs also influence other people and thus we seek that our expectations become true with behaviours that tend to confirm them. This effect is also known as "self-fulfilling prophecy" and it means that we will do everything possible to make what we believe will happen finally come true.

Emotional support to cancer patients regarding psycho-oncology

Andrés Fontalba
 

In my first post, “When it’s our turn?”, I addressed the need to promote shared clinical decision in mental disorders, from now on I will focus my interest in commenting on having emotional support in the diagnosis and cancer treatment.

The clinical dialogue between the doctor and the patient on the prognosis and care of cancer in advanced stages significantly influences how it tests both the benefits and the side effects of the treatment. It also affects how the time in which his life ends and how family members adapt to the patient's illness and death. It’s very important to detect personal differences regarding the need to receive information. Aside from a small percentage of patients who prefer not to be informed, most consider all the information they receive related to their prognosis and treatment to be precious. The exchange of information occurs in a sensitive relationship between the professional and the patient, in which they have to deal with highly emotionally charged communication and in which we must guarantee the information to be fully understandable. It’s clear that the patient, with great frequency, is anxious, among many other factors, because of the doubts about his prognosis, the family burden caused by the disease or the results of the tests. And these top levels of anxiety affect both the interpersonal relationship and the processing of information and the decisions made. It’s for all these reasons that research in psycho-oncology provides us with different tools to favour both the therapeutic link and the understanding of the patient's disease, as this review collects.

Are we all mentally ill? On the subject of Allen Frances

Allen Frances, psychiatrist professor emeritus of Duke University (USA) led the working group that developed the DSM-4 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). I follow the activity of the author, always critical and always documented on Twitter (@AllenFrancesMD) and, unfamiliar with the framework of psychiatry, a question began to run through my mind. How could it be that someone who had led the fourth edition of the DSM, was now the most lucid voice against the excesses of modern psychiatry? If I wanted to know the answer, I had no choice but to read his latest book "Saving Normal. An insider's revolt against out-of-control psychiatric diagnosis, DSM-5, big pharma and the medicalization of ordinary life"

Are we all mentally ill? About Allen Frances

Allen Frances, psychiatrist professor emeritus at Duke University (USA) led the working group that developed the DSM-4 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). I follow the author’s activity, always critical and always documented, on twitter (@AllenFrancesMD) and, unaware of the framework of psychiatry, a question started spinning in my head. How could it be that someone who had led the fourth edition of the DSM was now the most lucid voice against the excesses of modern psychiatry? If I wanted to know the answer, I had no choice, but to read his latest book: "Saving Normal: An Insider's Revolt against Out-of-Control Psychiatric Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, and the Medicalization of Ordinary Life".

Persuasion is not the way to changing behaviours

Don’t Persuade Customers — Just Change Their Behavior http://t.co/K9QVUK7FhS
— Harvard Biz Review (@HarvardBiz) February 10, 2014

Harvard Business Review’s tweet links back to their own blog where you’ll find a post signed by Art Markman, a professor at the University of Texas and author of "Smart Thinking"  a book about traditional topics of marketing on how to change attitudes and ultimately sell more and for this reason the first thing I thought of when reading the promotional post of the book was that these are issues specific to the commercial world, so far from clinical management. But then I gave it another try and suddenly I found an interest in the author’s approach to the topic.