Bodily Disturbances Research Articles

Network Structure of Childhood Trauma, Bodily Disturbances, and Schizotypy in Schizophrenia and Nonclinical Controls.

Exposure to childhood trauma has been linked to the development of psychosis and bodily self-disturbances, 2 hallmarks of schizophrenia (SZ). Prior work demonstrated that bodily disturbances serve as a bridge between childhood trauma and SZ symptomatology, but the diagnostic specificity of these connections remains unknown. This study uses network analysis to bridge this gap by comparing the interplays between childhood trauma, bodily self-disturbances, and schizotypy in clinical and general populations. Networks were constructed to examine the relationships between schizotypy (Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire; SPQ), bodily self-disturbances (Perceptual Aberration Scale; PAS), and childhood trauma (Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, CTQ) in 152 people with SZ and 162 healthy comparison participants (HC). The Fused Graphical Lasso was used to jointly estimate the networks in the 2 groups and the structure and strength of the networks were compared. Node centrality and shortest paths between CTQ, PAS, and schizotypy were examined. When comparing SZ and HC, the network of bodily self-disturbances, childhood trauma, and schizotypy were similarly structured, but the network was significantly stronger in SZ than HC. In both groups, bodily self-disturbances were on one of the shortest paths between childhood trauma to schizotypal experiences. Our findings revealed reliable associations between childhood trauma, bodily self-disturbance, and schizotypy, with bodily disturbances acting as a bridge from childhood trauma to schizotypy. The elevated strength of the SZ network indicates a more highly interconnected, and therefore reactive network in which exposure to childhood trauma can more easily activate bodily disturbances and schizotypy.

Group-based body psychotherapy improves appreciation of body awareness in post-treatment cancer patients: A non-randomized clinical trial.

Cancer-related impairments often co-occur with bodily disturbances. Body psychotherapy (BPT) can improve bodily wellbeing, yet evidence in cancer survivors is scarce. Hence, we aimed to evaluate whether blended group BPT alleviates bodily disturbances in post-treatment cancer patients. We conducted a bi-center study (registered in ClinicalTrials.gov, under No. NCT03707548), applying a pre-post convergent parallel design of weekly group BPT interspersed with smartphone-based ambulatory interventions using a waiting-period comparator. We included patients with completed curatively intended treatment for malignant neoplasms, suffering from bodily disturbances. The primary outcome was body image disturbances. Secondary outcomes were experiencing and appreciating body awareness, mental wellbeing, and health-related quality of life. Forty patients (mean age 51.7 years) attended group BPT. Mixed-effect linear regression models contrasting intervention with the waiting period did not show statistically significant differences regarding the primary outcome [Pre-post difference contrasts: 1.44, 95% confidence interval (CI): -1.51 to 4.93, p = 0.339]. However, patients showed greater improvements in appreciating body awareness, measured by the "Body Mindfulness Questionnaire" (BMQ), from pre- to post-intervention as compared to the waiting period (pre-post difference contrasts: 7.31 95% CI: 4.15-10.47, Bonferroni-Holm corrected q = 0.0002). We found no evidence that blended group BPT was effective in improving body image disturbances in post-treatment cancer patients, but found indications for an increase in body awareness appreciation. ClinicalTrials.gov, identifier NCT03707548.

Body ownership across schizotypy dimensions: A rubber hand illusion experiment

Bodily self disturbances are core features of schizophrenia. Body ownership, one component of the bodily self, can be assessed with the Rubber Hand Illusion (RHI), which is induced by a synchronous brushing of a visible fake hand and one's own occluded hand. Schizophrenia is associated with increased RHI strength and diminished body ownership. This study examined RHI in relation to schizotypy to extend our understanding of self-disturbances in the schizophrenia-spectrum. Ninety-seven college students completed the RHI task and self-report questionnaires. Regressions were used to assess the RHI strength in relation to the 3 schizotypy factors (positive, negative, disorganized). We also examined the correlations between self-reported bodily self disturbances and RHI strength. Positive schizotypy predicted a stronger subjective experience of the RHI, whereas negative schizotypy predicted weakened RHI susceptibility. Questionnaire measures of self-disturbances correlated with stronger RHI. In sum, we confirmed the link between positive schizotypy and the subjective experience of the RHI, which suggests a weakened sense of body ownership. Interestingly, we also found a relationship between negative schizotypy and reduced RHI, which implies strengthened body ownership. These results also underscore the complexity of the link between the phenomenological experience of bodily disturbances and the experimentally measured sense of body ownership. • Positive schizotypy predicts stronger RHI susceptibility. • Negative schizotypy predicts weaker RHI susceptibility. • Bodily self-disturbances correlate with RHI strength measured both objectively and subjectively.

ProAna Worlds: Affectivity and Echo Chambers Online

Anorexia Nervosa (AN) is an eating disorder characterised by self-starvation. Accounts of AN typically frame the disorder in individualistic terms: e.g., genetic predisposition, perceptual disturbances of body size and shape, experiential bodily disturbances. Without disputing the role these factors may play in developing AN, we instead draw attention to the way disordered eating practices in AN are actively supported by others. Specifically, we consider how Pro-Anorexia (ProAna) websites—which provide support and solidarity, tips, motivational content, a sense of community, and understanding to individuals with AN—help drive and maintain AN practices. We use C. Thi Nguyen’s work on epistemic “echo chambers”, along with Maria Lugones’ work on “worlds” and “ease”, to explore the dynamics of these processes. Adopting this broader temporal and intersubjective perspective, we argue, not only helps to further illuminate the experiential character of AN but also has important clinical and therapeutic significance.

Hold your breath: Voluntary breath-holding time predicts defensive activation to approaching internal threat

Bodily disturbances, like dyspnea, elicit responses to regain homeostasis and ensure survival. However, this life-saving function can become hyperreactive, which may lead to the emergence of psychopathology. This study investigated whether maximal voluntary breath-holding time (mvBHT), a biobehavioral marker that characterizes sensitivity to respiratory stimulation, predicts defensive mobilization to cues signaling the proximity of a mild electric shock vs. a respiratory threat (shortness of breath elicited by forced breath-holding) and the opportunity to avoid threat delivery in 60 healthy participants. While the startle reflex, a measure of defensive mobilization, generally increased with the proximity of an inevitable threat, shorter breath-holding time was specifically associated with greater startle potentiation when anticipating a respiratory threat but not an electric shock. In contrast, when both threats were avoidable, the startle reflex was comparably inhibited, irrespective of mvBHT. This study suggests that mvBHT specifically predicts hypersensitive responding to an anticipated inevitable respiratory threat.

Pain priors, polyeidism, and predictive power: a preliminary investigation into individual differences in ordinary thought about pain

According to standard philosophical and clinical understandings, pain is an essentially mental phenomenon (typically, a kind of conscious experience). In a challenge to this standard conception, a recent burst of empirical work in experimental philosophy, such as that by Justin Sytsma and Kevin Reuter, purports to show that people ordinarily conceive of pain as an essentially bodily phenomenon—specifically, a quality of bodily disturbance. In response to this bodily view, other recent experimental studies have provided evidence that the ordinary (‘folk’) concept of pain is more complex than previously assumed: rather than tracking only bodily or only mental aspects of pain, the ordinary concept of pain can actually track either of these aspects. The polyeidic (or ‘many ideas’) analysis of the folk concept of pain, as proposed by Emma Borg et al., captures this complexity. Whereas previous empirical support for the polyeidic view has focused on the context-sensitivity of the folk concept of pain, here we discuss individual differences in people’s ‘pain priors’—namely, their standing tendencies to think of pain in relatively mind-centric or body-centric ways. We describe a preliminary empirical study and present a small number of findings, which will be explored further in future work. The results we discuss are part of a larger programme of work which seeks to integrate philosophical pain research into clinical practice. For example, we hypothesise that variations in how patients with chronic pain are thinking about pain could help predict their responses to treatment.

A CONSTITUIÇÃO DO CORPO DO AUTISTA: DO DESAMPARO À INVENÇÃO

Este artigo busca a apreensão dos processos envolvidos na constituição do corpo do autista, para o qual não há o Outro de referência. À luz do testemunho de Daniel Tammet, escritor britânico e autista, será possível elucidar o lugar dos objetos para os autistas e como o interesse da pessoa autista pelo objeto fora do corpo permite a construção de sua borda, atuando como recurso protetor contra perturbações corporais, angústias e isolamento. Assim, o investimento nos objetos externos resulta na redução da incidência no corpo do gozo não interligado, abrindo possibilidade para o campo do Outro. Os objetivos pretendidos são examinar o conceito de corpo na psicanálise com relação ao autismo, investigar a constituição do corpo do autista com base na teoria psicanalítica e, por fim, identificar os efeitos, no corpo, do interesse pelos objetos autísticos.

Awful noises: evaluativism and the affective phenomenology of unpleasant auditory experience

According to the evaluativist theory of bodily pain, the overall phenomenology of a painful experience is explained by attributing to it two types of representational content—an indicative content that represents bodily damage or disturbance, and an evaluative content that represents that condition as bad for the subject. This paper considers whether evaluativism can offer a suitable explanation of aversive auditory phenomenology—the experience of awful noises—and argues that it can only do so by conceding that auditory evaluative content would be guilty of widespread error. Defending such an error-theory, moreover, comes with several explanatory costs.

Behavioral Conceptualization and Treatment of Chronic Pain.

Pain is considered a hardwired signal of bodily disturbance belonging to a basic motivational system that urges the individual to act and to restore the body's integrity, rather than just a sensory and emotional experience. Given its eminent survival value, pain is a strong motivator for learning. Response to repeated pain increases when harm risks are high (sensitization) and decreases in the absence of such risks (habituation). Discovering relations between pain and other events provides the possibility to predict (Pavlovian conditioning) and control (operant conditioning) harmful events. Avoidance is adaptive in the short term but paradoxically may have detrimental long-term effects. Pain and pain-related responses compete with other demands in the environment. Exposure-based treatments share the aim of facilitating or restoring the pursuit of individual valued life goals in the face of persistent pain, and further improvements in pain treatment may require a paradigm shift toward more personalized approaches.

A clinical trial of group-based body psychotherapy to improve bodily disturbances in post-treatment cancer patients in combination with randomized controlled smartphone-triggered bodily interventions (KPTK): study protocol

BackgroundDisturbances in bodily well-being represent one key source of suffering and impairment related to cancer. There is growing evidence that body psychotherapy (BPT) is efficacious for the treatment of various mental disorders. However, with regard to cancer patients, evidence is scarce. The aims of this project are to evaluate whether bodily disturbances in post-treatment cancer patients can be improved by group BPT, and to estimate the efficacy of intermittent smartphone-triggered bodily interventions.MethodsThe project is a bi-center study with two participating centers in Switzerland, applying a pre-post convergent parallel design of a weekly group BPT using a waiting-period comparator, including a nested RCT during the group BPT phase. During the BPT phase, either a smartphone-triggered bodily intervention or a smartphone-triggered control intervention is provided at random over 5 consecutive weeks, on 6 days weekly. Patients who had received curatively intended treatment for any malignant neoplasm (treatment being completed ≥3 months) and are suffering from bodily disturbances are screened to assess eligibility. Sample size estimation is based on an a priori power analysis. We plan to include a total of N = 88 subjects, aiming at at least 52 completers.Patients are surveyed three times (baseline assessment (T0), pre- (T1) and post-intervention assessment (T2)), and on a daily basis along BPT during five consecutive weeks. The primary outcome, bodily disturbances, is assessed using the ‘Body Image Scale‘(BIS). For the secondary outcomes standardized questionnaires are used to assess changes in experience of presence and vitality, mood, body mindfulness, somatic symptoms and somatic symptom disorder, quality of life, anxiety, and depression including suicidal tendency, vitality and mental health, as well as group cohesion. Using semi standardized interviews (at T0 and T2), we aim to explore the relation of BPT with bodily disturbances and body image in post-treatment cancer patients, as well as the acceptance and burden of the intervention.DiscussionThe proposed study has strong potential benefits for cancer patients, as it may pave the way for new therapeutic approaches to treat bodily disturbances, which persist despite curative tumor therapy. These may considerably improve patients’ biopsychosocial well-being and quality of life.Trial registrationClinicalTrials.govNCT03707548 (registered 9 October 2018; retrospectively registered).

Be your product: On youth, multilevel marketing, and nutritional cure-alls in Puerto Princesa, Philippines.

ABSTRACTYoung people in Puerto Princesa, the Philippines, are drawn to working as salespeople for AIM Global, a purveyor of the nutritional supplement C24/7. The company relies on multilevel marketing, in which sellers recruit other sellers, offering youth not only the chance to earn money but also educational discounts, access to bank cards, and an opportunity to develop do‐it‐yourself entrepreneurial skills. Trainers encourage sellers to capitalize on their intimate relations, to tailor the supplements to assuage aging clients’ metabolic‐health anxieties, and to use C24/7 themselves so that they can testify to its benefits. Such “sociometabolic” work is omnipresent in urban settings, where workers in beauty salons and gyms likewise promise to mitigate the material, bodily disturbances caused by toxic environments and precarious living conditions. [multilevel marketing, youth, sociometabolic labor, relational work, aspirations, nutritional supplements, metabolic health, ecology, Philippines]

Sexual function after stoma formation in women with colorectal cancer.

stoma formation is performed on many women with colorectal cancer. The physical effects of this are well known and explained to patients by health professionals. Stoma formation also affects sexual function for a variety of emotional and physical reasons, but this appears to be inadequately discussed. this literature review examined women's experience of sexual function after stoma formation. five electronic databases were searched for peer-reviewed studies in the English language. Ancestry searches were also performed on the reference lists of the literature identified in this search. three themes emerged from the review: bodily disturbance; intimate relationships; and devaluation of sexuality. Body image is significantly disturbed by stoma formation, affecting self-esteem and satisfaction with the self. Altered bodily function, with odour and sounds from the stoma bag, is distressing to women. Women find a stoma difficult to accept, and partners'/husbands' acceptance of it has a large impact on how they feel about themselves. Sexual function is commonly overlooked in clinical settings, with health professionals prioritising physical and mental health over sexuality. stoma formation commonly has negative effects on women's sexual function and these should be more thoroughly addressed in healthcare settings. All the publications the author found examined heterosexual relationships and the experience of homosexual women should be studied.

A case series report of cancer patients undergoing group body psychotherapy.

Background: Disturbances in bodily wellbeing represent a key source of psychosocial suffering and impairment related to cancer. Therefore, interventions to improve bodily wellbeing in post-treatment cancer patients are of paramount importance. Notably, body psychotherapy (BPT) has been shown to improve bodily wellbeing in subjects suffering from a variety of mental disorders. However, how post-treatment cancer patients perceive and subjectively react to group BPT aiming at improving bodily disturbances has, to the best of our knowledge, not yet been described. Methods: We report on six patients undergoing outpatient group BPT that followed oncological treatment for malignant neoplasms. The BPT consisted of six sessions based on a scientific embodiment approach, integrating body-oriented techniques to improve patients' awareness, perception, acceptance, and expression regarding their body. Results: The BPT was well accepted by all patients. Despite having undergone different types of oncological treatment for different cancer types and locations, all subjects reported having appreciated BPT and improved how they perceived their bodies. However, individual descriptions of improvements showed substantial heterogeneity across subjects. Notably, most patients indicated that sensations, perceptions, and other mental activities related to their own body intensified when proceeding through the group BPT sessions. Conclusion: The findings from this case series encourage and inform future studies examining whether group BPT is efficacious in post-treatment cancer patients and investigating the related mechanisms of action. The observed heterogeneity in individual descriptions of perceived treatment effects point to the need for selecting comprehensive indicators of changes in disturbances of bodily wellbeing as the primary patient-reported outcome in future clinical trials. While increases in mental activities related to their own body are commonly interpreted as important mechanisms of therapeutic action in BPT, follow-up assessments are needed to evaluate intended and unintended consequences of these changes in cancer patients.

Childhood trauma and anorexia nervosa: from body image to embodiment

Contemporary understandings of anorexia nervosa are framed by the body-image paradigm. The body-image framework considers that women’s bodily experiences are reflected through distorted mental images of their bodies or disordered thinking and behavior around food and eating. Body image has come to symbolize all that can go wrong with women’s relationships with their bodies, food, and eating. The problem with this approach is its failure to consider the experience of women who have survived childhood abuse. Women’s bodily disturbances are not easily discernible through objective measures because they lie within the inner subjective realm of the embodied ‘self’ and embodied emotional experience. Consideration of the different ways that women inhabit their bodies informs this paper’s examination of the conceptual framework of embodiment as an alternative to the body-image paradigm.

A case series report of cancer patients undergoing group body psychotherapy.

Background: Disturbances in bodily wellbeing represent a key source of psychosocial suffering and impairment related to cancer. Therefore, interventions to improve bodily wellbeing in post-treatment cancer patients are of paramount importance. Notably, body psychotherapy (BPT) has been shown to improve bodily wellbeing in subjects suffering from a variety of mental disorders. However, how post-treatment cancer patients perceive and subjectively react to group BPT aiming at improving bodily disturbances has, to the best of our knowledge, not yet been described. Methods: We report on six patients undergoing outpatient group BPT that followed oncological treatment for malignant neoplasms. The BPT consisted of six sessions based on a scientific embodiment approach, integrating body-oriented techniques to improve patients' awareness, perception, acceptance, and expression regarding their body. Results: The BPT was well accepted by all patients. Despite having undergone different types of oncological treatment for different cancer types and locations, all subjects reported having appreciated BPT and improved how they perceived their bodies. However, individual descriptions of improvements showed substantial heterogeneity across subjects. Notably, most patients indicated that sensations, perceptions, and other mental activities related to their own body intensified when proceeding through the group BPT sessions. Conclusion: The findings from this case series encourage and inform future studies examining whether group BPT is efficacious in post-treatment cancer patients and investigating the related mechanisms of action. The observed heterogeneity in individual descriptions of perceived treatment effects point to the need for selecting comprehensive indicators of changes in disturbances of bodily wellbeing as the primary patient-reported outcome in future clinical trials. While increases in mental activities related to their own body are commonly interpreted as important mechanisms of therapeutic action in BPT, follow-up assessments are needed to evaluate intended and unintended consequences of these changes in cancer patients.

Pain and Touch

When one contrasts pain with the classic five senses, discussions generally focus on vision, which is taken as the paradigmatic example of perception. An intentionalist might argue that if the phenomenal difference between feeling and seeing bodily disturbances cannot be explained at the level of the content, it can be so at the level of the mode of presentation, and more particularly at the level of the structure of the spatial phenomenology of pain. Here I will argue that the spatial phenomenology of pain shares some key features with touch by contrast to sight, but these similarities should not make us neglect major differences between these two types of bodily sensations. I shall then draw the consequences of these differences for the awareness of one’s body as one’s own. In brief, to fix the boundaries of the body that one experiences as one’s own, one must answer two questions: (i) where does the body stop, and the rest of world start? and (ii) what matters for self-preservation? I will suggest that touch primarily answers the first question, whereas pain primarily answers the second question.

Purity of essence in the Cold War: Dr. Strangelove, paranoia, and bodily boundaries

ABSTRACTIn Stanley Kubrick’s 1963 black comedy, Dr. Strangelove, General Ripper narrativises his move towards nuclear apocalypse through an understanding of the (male) body – physical and national – as penetrated and fragmented by the substance most necessary to its survival, water. The film’s satiric description of the water fluoridation controversy, whereby water fluoridation is figured as a Communist plot to transform America’s citizen-soldiers into soft, weak-willed dupes, easy converts to the Red Menace, could have been lifted from many popular periodicals of the time. This article produces a new understanding of ‘Cold War paranoia’ via a psychoanalytic reading of these texts (alongside earlier Cold War films My Son John and The Manchurian Candidate) through which paranoia becomes a peculiarly bodily mental disturbance. The paranoid subject perceives the national and/or physical body as constantly under threat of penetration by dangerous foreign forces and objects. Once these boundaries have been breached, the body in question is feminised – and these feminised bodies (whether of actual women or not) must disappear to make way for newly shored up male bodily boundaries. Dr. Strangelove’s use of satire sets it apart from the earlier films in its diagnosis of the deathly body politics at stake in the Cold War.

Aged Population Disability Processes Analysis In The Republic Of Kazakhstan

Background:We have analyzed the aged population disability processes to establish specifics and regularities of the causal structure of disability among the working and non-working aged population.Methods:In total, 1208 examination reports of the Medical & SocialExpert Commission have been subjected to excerption in Almaty. Results:Persons having the second disability status prevail in the working aged contingent – 4,4%, which is much higher than the ratios for the first and second disability statuses (0,4%and 0,6%, respectively). Among the non-working population, persons having the second disability status largely prevail too - 8,1% (3,1%and 1,1%, respectively). The casual structure of disability among the non-working disabled persons includes as follows: blood circulatory system diseases (40%), malignant neoplasms (27,2%), and diseases of the eye and its appendages (10,2%). They are followed by endocrine diseases, nutritional and metabolic disturbances (7,6%), bodily injuries (3%),and urogenital system diseases with musculoskeletal system ones - 2,3% each.The data collection for the working aged populationcontingent has found out blood circulatory system diseases (47%) and malignant neoplasms (34,4%). Alongside with that, the distinctive feature among the said aged populationcohort is a substantial predominance of bodily injuries (7,4%), endocrine diseases, nutritional and metabolic disturbances (2,3%), and only 1,4% is accounted for diseases of the eye and its appendages.

Examining the dimensionality of combat-related posttraumatic stress and depressive symptoms in treatment-seeking OEF/OIF/OND veterans

This study examined the factor structure of two of the most commonly used screening measures of posttraumatic stress disorder and depression in 164 treatment-seeking veterans who served in Operations Enduring Freedom/Iraqi Freedom/New Dawn (OEF/OIF/OND). Exploratory factor analysis was used to assess the dimensionality of items from the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Checklist-Military Version (PCL-M) and the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9). Regression analyses were then conducted to examine associations between factor scores of the resulting factor solution and measures of alcohol use, cognitive coping, psychological resilience, social support, and healthcare utilization. A four-factor solution was found that consisted of clusters of symptoms reflecting reexperiencing/avoidance, detachment/numbing, hopelessness/depression, and bodily disturbance. Scores on the detachment/numbing factor were uniquely related to alcohol use, whereas scores on the hopelessness/depression factor was uniquely associated with emergency room visits. Compared to conventional PCL-M and PHQ-9 total scores, the four-factor solution explained 2 to 10% more variance in scores on measures of alcohol use, cognitive coping, psychological resilience, social support, and healthcare utilization. This study was limited by a small sample size and cross-sectional design. Combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder and depressive symptoms in treatment-seeking OEF/OIF/OND veterans may be better conceptualized by four dimensions of reexperiencing/avoidance, detachment/numbing, hopelessness/depression, and bodily disturbance symptoms. This symptom structure may provide greater utility when examining other outcomes of interest in this population.

Fear of negative evaluation augments negative affect and somatic symptoms in social-evaluative situations

The aim of this study was to determine whether fear of negative evaluation (FNE) moderates effects of eye contact on mood, bodily symptoms and physiological activity during social-evaluative situations. Facial blood flow, skin conductance, heart rate and respiration rate were recorded in 42 participants while they sang a children's song, while they were observed or made direct eye contact with the experimenter, and while they listened to an audiotape of themselves singing. Physiological responses were similar in high and low FNE groups. However, differences lay in the perception of bodily symptoms and ratings of negative affect, with the high FNE group reporting greater ratings. In addition, prior eye contact enhanced the perception of bodily symptoms in the high FNE group when they listened to the audiotape. Concern about the social consequences of displaying bodily disturbances such as trembling, blushing and sweating may explain these findings.