Women, Stress and Heart Health: Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction and Cardiovascular Disease

Psychosomatic Approach to Fibromyalgia Syndrome: Concept, Diagnosis and Treatment

Fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) has chronic widespread pain (CWP) as a core symptom and a variety of associated somatic and psychological symptoms such as fatigue, sleep problems, cognitive disturbances, multiple somatic pain, and depression. FMS is the subject of considerable controversy in the realm of nosology, diagnosis, pathophysiology, and treatment.Moreover, the fact that FMS and mental illness are closely associated with each other might intensify the confusion for the distinction between FMS and mental disorders. This narrative literature review aims to provide the concept, diagnosis, and treatment of FMS from the integrative biopsychosocial and psychosomatic perspective. This article first explains the concepts of FMS as a disease entity of biopsychosocial model, and then summarizes the changes of diagnostic criteria over past three decades, differential diagnosis and comorbidity issue focused on mental illnesses. In addition, an overview of treatment of FMS is presented mainly by arranging the recommendations from the international guidelines which have been developed by four official academic associations.

Investigating the effect of transcendental meditation on spiritual wellbeing of Type-2 diabetic amputees: A clinical trial study

Objectives

Diabetes is a chronic, progressive and life-threatening metabolic syndrome that causes physical complications such as amputation, psychological complications and crisis in one's life, which leads to increased expression of spirituality and increased use of spiritual support as a coping mechanism. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of spiritual care on the spiritual wellbeing of type-2 diabetic amputees.

Materials and methods

In the present clinical trial study, 54 type-2 diabetic amputees were randomly divided into two groups; namely, experimental and control in 2014 and underwent meditation in three sessions. The 20-item spiritual well-being scale (SWBS) (Paloutzian and Ellision), which measures the spiritual well-being dimensions, was completed by patients before and after the intervention. Data analysis was performed using descriptive and inferential methods (paired T-test, independent t-test, Fisher's exact test, mann-whitney test, and chi-square) in SPSS ver. 16.

Results

The results showed no statistically significant difference between the experimental and control groups in terms of mean spiritual wellbeing before the intervention, but, the post-intervention mean spiritual wellbeing score in the control and experimental groups was 97.82 ± 9.25 and 88.40 ± 9.47, respectively. (α = 0.05) (P = 0.001).

Conclusion

According to the results of the present study, it seems that spiritual care is able to improve the spiritual wellbeing status of individuals.