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The article focuses on the significance of skydiving on human anxiety and death based on the views of philosopher Martin Heideggeria. It notes that in a phenomenological focus, skydiving shows the radical disruption of instrumentality and that the loss of earthly concerns is an associated to anxiety. It mentions that disruption of the world and the experience of anxiety have a connection and that it is supported through the illustration of skydiving. Moreover, it states that the said unpleasant emotion opens the way for an experience of being-toward-death. It further notes that skydiving makes the possibility of directing one's own death.

Psychosomatic illness that personality takes place important role in their ethiopathogenesis are common throughout the world. In order to understand the etiology of psychosomatic illness, it is considered that studies with Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) which investigates the personality according to psychobiological model contribution the important data. Therefore, studies carried with TCI were investigated in Pubmed and Turk Psychiatry Archive in the 1991 to 2009. It was investigated that studies about somatization, dermatologic illness, headache, physical medicine, angina, irritable bowel syndrome, and asthma. The most important and common result is that the mean of Harm Avoidance (HA) scores are high. So, the mean of HA scores still remain high despite covariate of effect of depression and anxiety, this dimension of TCI is important construct for impact to psychosomatic pattern. It is also showed that HA have state and trait character. These findings confirmed that serotonergic systems get involved in process of psychosomatic organization. In a lot of studies the mean of Self Direction sub-dimension, which considered for basic dimension to mature personality, in psychosomatics groups was found lower than normal healthy control hence, process of illness affects the personality. Since importance in etiology of dimensions of TCI for understanding of psychosomatic illness, it must be carried with longitudinal study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To investigate the distribution of psychological characteristics and pain reporting among women with vulvar vestibulitis syndrome (VVS).Methods: In this exploratory study, 109 women with VVS completed a battery of questionnaires to assess pain with intercourse and psychological characteristics (e.g. somatization, anxiety, distress). The distribution of these characteristics was compared, first with a conventional binary classification schema (primary and secondary) and subsequently with a 3-category schema (primary, latent primary, secondary).Results: Severity of pain with intercourse did not differ among the subgroups using either classification schema. Women with primary VVS consistently showed higher levels of somatization, anxiety, and distress compared with those with secondary VVS. Using a 3-tiered classification system, we found no difference between latent primary diagnosis and the other 2 groups (primary and secondary).Conclusion: This study highlights the critical need for research on subtype definition and the role of psychological factors in VVS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The expectation that Chinese people present distress somatically is a central prediction of cultural psychopathology and has been the subject of considerable theoretical speculation. At the same time, empirical studies have been infrequent and have yielded mixed results. The authors examined symptom presentation in Chinese (n = 175) and Euro-Canadian (n = 107) outpatients, using spontaneous problem report, structured clinical interview, and symptom questionnaire methods. All 3 methods yielded cross-culturally equivalent somatic and psychological symptom subscales. Chinese outpatients reported more somatic symptoms on spontaneous problem report and structured clinical Interview compared with Euro-Canadians, who in turn reported more psychological symptoms on all 3 methods. The relation between culture and somatic symptom presentation was mediated by a tendency toward externally oriented thinking. Difficulties with identifying emotions or describing them to others did not differ significantly across cultures, supporting a nonpathological interpretation of observed differences. Psychological symptom effects were larger and more consistent than somatic symptom effects; because other studies have confirmed the ubiquity of somatic presentations worldwide, these results suggest that Western psychologization may be more culturally specific than is Chinese somatization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: High suggestibility is widely regarded as an important feature of patients with medically unexplained symptoms (MUS), particularly those with multiple MUS [i.e. somatization disorder (SD)], although there are few empirical data attesting to this assumption. A study was therefore conducted to compare levels of non-hypnotic suggestibility in patients with SD and medical controls. Method: A modified version of the Barber Suggestibility Scale was administered to 19 patients with SD and 17 controls with an established organic dystonia. Results: Patients with SD were no more suggestible than control patients. Dystonia controls were more likely to deliberately comply with suggestions than the SD patients. Conclusion: Contrary to popular belief, high suggestibility is not necessarily a feature of SD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper stems from a research project, "Depression and Somatization in Korean Elderly Immigrants," funded by the National Institute of Aging from 1991-1996. Thirty-five informants in the Washington metropolitan area with a lifetime history of major depression were identified with the Korean version of the Diagnostic Interview Schedule (KDIS). Thirty-five separate informants who did not have a diagnosis of depression were randomly drawn from a community pool of 639 informants. Experiences of depression were elicited and recorded using the Semi-Structured Interview Guide for Depression (SKIGD). Generally, informants who described themselves as religious, spiritual, virtuous, and compassionate tended to be free from depression or heart-related symptoms. Thus, participation in religious or spiritual activities or altruistically caring for others seems to generate a healthy, holistic life, free from depression and heart disease. Depressed informants may not have the energy to positively express religious, spiritual, and altruistic feelings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Multiple clinical trials have shown that a properly functioning implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) is capable of interrupting sudden death caused by ventricular tachyarrhythmias. However, ICDs are complex medical devices, and they do not always perform as expected or they may fail completely. Exposure of ICD recipients to professional or media reports that their specific device type is potentially malfunctioning could negatively influence their psychological status. Methods: This study aimed to evaluate and quantify psychological distress in patients implanted with an ICD-recall device. Thirty patients implanted with ICD-recall devices (ICD-recall group) and 25 patients with unaffected ICD devices (ICD-control group) were interviewed using the Brief Symptom Inventory (a psychological self-report symptom scale). Results: Mean values of all primary psychiatric distress symptom dimensions and global indices were within the normal range for both the ICD-recall and the ICD-control group. New York Heart Association (NYHA) class was a predictor of higher distress symptoms in all categories, independently of the ICD group. NYHA II group patients tended toward higher stress levels than the NYHA I group, but only somatization was significantly different. An upward, but not significant, trend in 7 of the 12 scales was associated with symptomatic shock experience. Conclusion: This study demonstrates that psychological distress was not significantly increased in patients recently informed about a potential malfunction of their device. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of European psychotraumatology shows that opposing cultural, social, economic, and political forces have influenced scientific development. Inevitably, the theories of traumatic stress reflect the spirit of the age. Several of today's controversies were already evident during World War I: the risk of reinforcing evacuation and compensation syndromes by legitimising diagnostic labels, increased somatization when the psychological nature of the trauma or symptom is not understood, and the deleterious effect of treating the individual removed from his primary group setting. Towards the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century the study of psychic trauma identified important intrapsychic phenomena, and, consequently, there was a neglect of the external stressor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interprets and reviews original studies and literature of depression among Chinese subjects. Factors affecting collection of data; Clinical detection of depression; Alternative patterning or presentation of depression; Influence of coping factors; Sanctioned expression of emotional distress; Somatization; Processes that have contributed to the tendency of Chinese to express depression somatically.

A self-report questionnaire completed by 177 out-patients showed that hypochondriasis and amplification had a zero-order correlation of 0.56, and in stepwise multiple regression amplification accounted for 31% of the variance in hypochondriasis, after sociodemographic variables had been accounted for. Fears of ageing and death, and a childhood history of illness in the family, increased the R2 to 0.50. Amplification was more powerful in women than in men and was also a significant (although weaker) correlate of somatisation, explaining 12% of the variance. Somatisation also correlated with being female, the propensity to seek medical care, and a diminished sense of efficacy over one's health. Our findings are consistent with the possibility that somatosensory amplification occurs in hypochondriasis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We describe the patterns of illness attributed to sorcery among 209 patients who attended a special clinic in south India. Somatisation and conversion disorders accounted for the majority of patients, although several other psychiatric and medical disorders were also seen. Aspects of treatment of such patients in the sociocultural context are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]