The International journal of social psychiatry
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Int J Soc Psychiatry · Mar 2014
Development of metaphors to explain cognitive behavioural principles for patients with medically unexplained symptoms in Sri Lanka.
Medically unexplained symptoms (MUS) are common in primary care across cultures, accounting for high consultations with multiple providers and unnecessary investigations. Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is efficacious for MUS and reduces physical symptoms, psychological distress and disability. Two intervention trials by the author and his group remain the only reported trials from the developing world. ⋯ Metaphor is an effective clinical tool. The author's clinical experience and patients' feedback suggest that these metaphors are helpful in conveying the CBT principles to patients. To develop metaphors appealing to the client and effective clinically, carrying out qualitative research among patients' explanatory model is an important prerequisite. The generic and MUS-specific metaphors reported here should be tried in other cultural and clinical settings and evaluated. Further systematic work including qualitative work for consensus evaluation among CBT experts as well as opinion on user-friendliness of these techniques tested among CBT practitioners will be needed.
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Int J Soc Psychiatry · Mar 2014
Relationship of quality of life with coping and burden in primary caregivers of patients with schizophrenia.
Very few studies have evaluated the quality of life (QOL) of caregivers of schizophrenia patients. The aim of this paper is to study the QOL, including the spirituality, religiousness and personal beliefs (SRPB) facets, of primary caregivers of patients with schizophrenia using the WHOQOL-BREF and WHOQOL-SRPB scales. Additionally an attempt was made to study the relationship between QOL with coping and burden in caregivers. ⋯ Findings of the present study suggest that there is a positive correlation between WHOQOL-BREF domains and WHOQOL-SRPB facets, which indicates that SRPB forms an integral component of the concept of QOL. Further, the QOL of caregivers is influenced by the coping skills used to deal with stress arising due to a patient's illness.