regarding the utilization of cultural and religious beliefs in the treatment of physical and mental disorders, this article presents the cases of 3 iranian psychiatric patients with severe physical and mental symptoms, preceded by a long history of different psychiatric treatments. these cases illustrate that bu relying on patients religious beliefs and faith, the therapist can increase his / h...

Topics identification (TI) is the process that consists in determining the main themes present in natural language documents. The current TI modeling paradigm aims at acquiring semantic information from statistic properties of large text datasets. We investigate the mental mechanisms responsible for the identification of topics in a single document given existing knowledge. Our main hypothesis ...

There is much evidence demonstrating that psychosocial interventions in caregivers and oncological staff produce an improvement in their patients' quality of life. The aim of this explorative study was to evaluate the effect of a new approach in promoting more functional ways to face stressful situations in the constellation of people around patients: caregivers, physicians and nurses. Thirty-f...

The aim was to assess the prevalent defense mechanisms in a sample of obese subjects; since specific defensive styles may interfere with the management of stressors and emotions, they may also influence the onset, the severity, and the maintenance of obesity. 70 obese subjects and 70 healthy normal-weight volunteers were assessed using the Defense Mechanisms Inventory -- DMI. Significant differ...

Different models have been developed to capture an individual’s defensive functioning, including the DSM-IV Defensive Functioning Scale (DFS). These different models are often used to distinguish between psychologically healthy individuals and individuals presenting with a mental disorder, or to demonstrate change in patients over the course of and following treatment. Yet, despite evidence tha...

According to Antonovsky's (Aaron Antonovsky, 1923-1994) sense of coherence (SOC) model, persons with a high SOC have the ability to benefit from their general defense mechanisms in order to overcome stressful situations. In a health-disease continuum, this leads to the development towards health. However, Antonovsky's global hypothesis that the strength of the SOC may influence the physical hea...

Psychoanalysis has benefitted from the application of empirical research efforts to psychodynamic concepts and clinical interventions. One of the most striking examples of research into psychoanalytic concepts is the widespread integration of Bowlby’s attachment theory in developmental and social psychology research (e.g. Cassidy & Shaver, 2008). Other examples include research concerning defen...