Psychiatry
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This paper reviews current understandings of the psychology of suicide terrorism for psychiatrists and other mental health professionals to help them better understand this terrifying phenomenon. After discussing key concepts and definitions, the paper reviews both group and individual models for explaining the development of suicide terrorists, with an emphasis on "collective identity." Stressing the importance of social psychology, it emphasizes the "normality" and absence of individual psychopathology of the suicide bombers. ⋯ The article emphasizes that comprehending suicide terrorism requires a multidisciplinary approach that includes anthropological, economic, historical, and political factors as well as psychological ones. The paper concludes with a discussion of implications for research, policy, and prevention, reviewing the manner in which social psychiatric knowledge and understandings applied to this phenomenon in an interdisciplinary framework can assist in developing approaches to counter this deadly strategy.
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The road to scientific discovery begins with an awareness of what is unknown. Research in science can in some ways be like putting together the pieces of a puzzle without having the benefit of the box-top picture of the completed puzzle. The "picture" in science is an understanding of how nature works in a particular instance, and it takes many separate pieces of the "puzzle" to put this understanding together. ⋯ In this guide, we will explore as many of the domains of the genetic puzzle as we are aware of. We will learn a bit of the language of each and how they fit into the puzzle with at least one anecdote to serve as an example. Mapping unknown territory is always a process, but we hope this guide will increase the reader's awareness of what is unknown.
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Review Practice Guideline Guideline
Guidelines for international training in mental health and psychosocial interventions for trauma exposed populations in clinical and community settings.
To develop consensus-based guidelines for training in mental health and psychosocial interventions for trauma-exposed populations in the international arena. ⋯ The generated guidelines addresses four dimensions: (1) values, (2) contextual challenges in societies during or after conflicts, (3) core curricular elements, and (4) monitoring and evaluation. The guidelines can improve international training.
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Patients with hypochondriasis are usually considered unresponsive to medical reassurance, so that a possible therapeutic use of reassurance in hypochondriasis is too often overlooked. This paper examines medical reassurance as an important aspect of an interaction between the patient and physician, and presents specific features of the relationship between the hypochondriacal patient and his psychiatrist in the light of the patient's reactions to attempted reassurance. Response to medical reassurance may provide important clues for the more precise diagnostic assessment of patients with hypochondriasis; it is particularly important to identify those patients who have a strong underlying need for acceptance, because adequate and repeated reassurance has a therapeutic value for them.