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Background: Long COVID syndrome can have a major impact on life organization. Its persistent symptoms may cause a potentially disabling condition that affects the quality of life of those suffering from it. The resulting loss of functional independence hinders the ability to return to normal life. Many research studies carried out on this novel syndrome have focused on describing its extensive symptomatology. Studies on later repercussions, however, such as disability or loss of significant roles, remain scarce. This study examines the loss of socioemotional and occupational roles experienced by individuals suffering from Long COVID, as a result of the disease. A secondary objective is to analyze the sociodemographic and clinical factors associated with this loss of roles., Patients and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted with the participation of 100 patients diagnosed with Long COVID, over the age of 18, and attended by Primary Health Care in the Autonomous Community of Aragon. The main study variable was the loss of significant socioemotional and occupational roles by the participants. Sociodemographic and clinical data were also collected through a structured interview. Subsequently, a descriptive, correlational, and regression-based statistical analysis was performed using the SPSS Statistics program., Results: Based on the 100 study participants, the median number of roles lost was 3 (IQR 2) and the median number of valuable roles lost was 2 (IQR 2). More cognitive impairment and not having an active work role were predictors of a greater loss of valuables roles., Conclusion: Long COVID symptoms hinder the development of socioemotional and occupational roles. Healthcare professionals should consider this when intervening to ensure that their patients may recover their life as it was before the disease., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest., (Copyright: © 2024 León-Herrera et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Background: Long COVID patients suffer a negative impact on their quality of life, as well as their functioning, productivity or socialization. There is a need to better understand the individual experience and circumstances surrounding these patients., Objective: To characterize clinical picture of Long COVID patients and to identify factors associated with quality of life., Methods: A secondary data analysis from a randomized clinical trial (RCT) was carried out with 100 Long COVID patients treated by Primary Health Care and residents in the territory of Aragon (northeast of Spain). The main variable of the study was quality of life, evaluated using the SF-36 Questionnaire, in relation to socio-demographic and clinical variables. In addition, ten validated scales were used that contemplated their cognitive, affective, functional and social status, as well as personal constructs. Correlation statistics and linear regression model were calculated., Results: Long COVID patients suffer a decrease in their levels of physical and mental health. On the one hand, the higher number of persistent symptoms (b = -0.900, p = 0.008), worse physical functioning (b = 1.587, p = 0.002) and sleep quality (b = -0.538, p = 0.035) are predictors of worse quality of life, physical subscale. On the other hand, higher educational level (b = 13.167, p = 0.017), lower number of persistent symptoms (b = -0.621, p = 0.057) and higher affective affectation (b = -1.402, p<0.001) are predictors of worse quality of life, mental subscale., Conclusion: It is necessary to design rehabilitation programs that consider both the physical and mental health of these patients, thus obtaining an improvement in their quality of life., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2023 Samper-Pardo et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Background: Chronic pain is a common complaint having distressing consequences for those that suffer from it. Pain and depression concur within the context of comorbidity, and both share underlying stress conditions. Sense of coherence (SOC) is a factor that determines how well an individual manages stress and stays healthy. Its relationship with depression has been frequently reported in the literature. Our objective was to assess the amount of evidence available regarding the association between SOC and depression in patients suffering from chronic pain., Methods: A systematic review and meta-analysis were performed. Searches were conducted between November 01 and December 31, 2020 in PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, PsycINFO, Psicodoc, ScienceDirect and Dialnet. There were no restrictions regarding the date of publication of the study. Evidence related to the relationship between SOC and depression in patients with chronic pain was summarized and compared., Results: A total of 163 articles were identified. We included 9 papers in the qualitative and quantitative synthesis. The pooled correlation coefficient was -0.55 (95%: -0.70; -0.41) and was not modified after removing any study. The heterogeneity across the studies was considerable (I2 = 94.8%; p < 0.001). The random-effects meta-regression models for the association between SOC and depression showed that age (p = 0.148) and percentage of women (p = 0.307) were not related to heterogeneity across studies. No publication bias was detected (p = 0.720)., Conclusions: At first glance, the included studies give the impression that SOC is an important factor in depression levels of patients with chronic pain. Most of the included studies revealed a moderate association between SOC and depressive symptoms., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2023 Aguilar-Latorre et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Background: Depression is one of the most prevalent health problems, frequently being a medium- and long-term condition, with a high comorbidity rate and with frequent relapses and recurrences. Although numerous studies have compared the effectiveness of specific antidepressant therapy drugs and have assessed relapses, scientific evidence on the relationship between pharmacologic treatments and recurrence is scarce. The objective of this study is to describe depressive episodes in a primary care patient cohort, the percentage of depression recurrences and the administered pharmacologic treatment, from a naturalistic perspective., Methods: Retrospective descriptive study. 957 subjects were included. The dependent variable was a depression diagnosis and independent variables were: gender, age at time of data collection; age of onset, first-episode treatment, number of recurrences, age at recurrences, treatment prescribed for recurrences using therapeutic groups categorization., Results: Recurrences are frequent, affecting more than 40% of the population. In the first episode, 13.69% of the patients were not prescribed pharmacological treatment, but this percentage decreased over the following depression episodes. 80.9% of the patients who did not receive drug treatment in the first depression episode did not experience subsequent episodes. Monotherapy, and specifically, SSRIs were the most frequently prescribed treatment option for all depressive episodes. Regards the combined pharmacologic treatment, the most frequent drug combinations were SSRIs and benzodiazepines., Limitations: In order to increase the power of results, the statistical analysis was performed using therapeutic groups categorization, not individually analyzing each drug and dose., Conclusions: Depressive episode recurrence is frequent in primary care patients. Further studies having a prospective design are needed in order to expand on this issue., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Background: The flipped classroom (FC) is a pedagogical approach that means that the activities that have traditionally taken place within the classroom are carried out outside the classroom. Fundamentally it implies the way in which the student studies the subject. This change of perspective in teaching-learning has raised many questions regarding its effectiveness and student satisfaction in the university studies in the degree of Social Work., Objective: The main objective of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a Flipped Classroom methodology in the academic performance of students of the Social Work Degree., Methods: An educational study, with two parallel groups was developed. The randomization was carried out by class groups. Group 1 was assigned an active teaching methodology of Flip Teaching and it was implemented during theoretical teaching hours. The other group of students, Group 2, was assigned a traditional lecturer-based learning (LB) methodology. The participants were all the students of the morning shift who studied the subject Social Work with Groups of the Social Work Degree during the academic year 2017-2018. The sample was composed of 110 subjects, with 60 subjects who developed an active teaching methodology and 50 subjects who received a LB., Results: In terms of the academic performance result variable, the FT group had a mean of 6.56 (SD: 1.58) and the LB group had a mean of 5.42 (SD: 1.97) (p-value: 0.002). The FT group also had a higher percentage of students receiving merit and outstanding scores (34.5% and 6.9% respectively) and a lower percentage of students who failed (19%) as compared to the LB group in which 20.9% and 2.3% of the students received merit or outstanding grades and 46.5% failed (p-value = 0.025). No significant differences were found with regards to satisfaction with the subject and the methodology used, long-term learning and time spent preparing for the exam., Conclusions: The FC teaching methodology in comparison with the LB methodology has shown to be a more effective tool regarding academic performance evaluated in a quantitative and qualitative way with regards to Social Work education at university level., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Background: The predictD study developed and validated a risk algorithm for predicting the onset of major depression in primary care. We aimed to explore the opinion of patients about knowing their risk for depression and the values and criteria upon which these opinions are based., Methods: A maximum variation sample of patients was taken, stratified by city, age, gender, immigrant status, socio-economic status and lifetime depression. The study participants were 52 patients belonging to 13 urban health centres in seven different cities around Spain. Seven Focus Groups (FGs) were given held with primary care patients, one for each of the seven participating cities., Results: The results showed that patients generally welcomed knowing their risk for depression. Furthermore, in light of available evidence several patients proposed potential changes in their lifestyles to prevent depression. Patients generally preferred to ask their General Practitioners (GPs) for advice, though mental health specialists were also mentioned. They suggested that GPs undertake interventions tailored to each patient, from a "patient-centred" approach, with certain communication skills, and giving advice to help patients cope with the knowledge that they are at risk of becoming depressed., Conclusions: Patients are pleased to be informed about their risk for depression. We detected certain beliefs, attitudes, values, expectations and behaviour among the patients that were potentially useful for future primary prevention programmes on depression.