Elements of Suffering in Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: The Experience of Loss, Grief, Stigma, and Trauma in the Severely and Very Severely Affected.

People who are severely and very severely affected by Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) experience profound suffering. This suffering comes from the myriad of losses these patients experience, the grief that comes from these losses, the ongoing stigma that is often experienced as a person with a poorly understood, controversial chronic illness, and the trauma that can result from how other people and the health care community respond to this illness. This review article examines the suffering of patients with ME/CFS through the lens of the Fennell Four-Phase Model of chronic illness. Using a systems approach, this phase framework illustrates the effects of suffering on the patient and can be utilized to help the clinician, patient, family, and caregivers understand and respond to the patient's experiences. We highlight the constructs of severity, uncertainty, ambiguity, and chronicity and their role in the suffering endured by patients with ME/CFS. A composite case example is used to illustrate the lives of severely and very severely affected patients. Recommendations for health care providers treating patients with ME/CFS are given and underscore the importance of providers understanding the intense suffering that the severely and very severely affected patients experience.

Social neuroscience at the college of saint rose: the art of team teaching in emerging areas of psychological science.

Social neuroscience is a relatively new multidisciplinary field which merges the more reductionistic approaches of neuroscience with the more molar perspectives of social psychology. In this article we report the joint efforts of the authors to develop an effective team-taught course in social neuroscience at the undergraduate level. We review our experiences in developing this course, detail many of the sources currently available for social neuroscience, and provide the results of a detailed student survey of the course. In addition to providing a foundation for others interested in developing a social neuroscience course, it is our opinion that many of the experiences we describe here are applicable to any novel multidisciplinary team teaching endeavor, especially those merging psychological disciplines with neuroscience.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't: the differential effect of expression and inhibition of anger on cardiovascular recovery in black and white males.

Appropriate regulation of emotions is an important component of health. The physiological effects of coping with anger are a topic of particular interest. In a pioneering series of studies Hokanson found that the mode of anger expression following anger instigation had differential effects on vascular recovery. These differential effects were thought to be a result of social learning of avoidance responses. The present study examined this hypothesis in the context of ethnic differences in cardiovascular recovery responses to anger instigation. Twenty-four African American (AA) and 26 European American (EA) males engaged in two debates, one racially themed and one non-racially themed, with an EA confederate. Cardiovascular measures were recorded at baseline, during the debates and during 10-minute recovery periods following each debate. Anger expression preceding the recovery period was manipulated such that half the participants could express their anger toward the confederate and half had to inhibit their anger toward the confederate. Results showed that both AA and EA participants that inhibited their anger had delayed total peripheral resistance recovery. Importantly, for the other dependent variables differential recovery responses were observed such that EA participants that expressed their anger recovered more quickly whereas AA participants that expressed their anger recovered more slowly. These results are consistent with Hokanson's social learning theory of recovery from anger instigation and have important implications for research on emotion regulation and health.

Effects of aging and D-glucose on locomotor activity, spontaneous alternation, and plasma glucose levels in preweanling Sprague-Dawley rats.

Previous research has shown that developmentally related memory impairments in immature rodents are malleable and may be attenuated using a variety of pharmacological and behavioral treatments. This experiment examined the effects of glucose (10, 100, 250 or 500 mg/kg) or saline on blood glucose level, locomotor activity, and spontaneous alternation (SA) in the T-maze. Studies were conducted with 20-, 22-, and 24-day-old preweanling Sprague-Dawley rats. Results indicated a general decline in blood glucose level with age and size of glucose injection. The largest overall decline in blood glucose was found following the 500 mg/kg dose in 24-day-old animals. An increase in T-maze arm entries with age indicated increased exploratory activity. SA generally improved with age, but glucose had no reliable effect on behavior. The ontogenetic state of the nervous system, including changes in cholinergic system activity, glucoregulation, and proliferation of glucose transporters, is discussed.

Collective Self-Esteem as a Mediator of the Relationship between Allocentrism and Subjective Well-Being.

The present studies examined the relationship between allocentrism and subjective well-being. In addition, the mediational role of collective self-esteem for ascribed and acquired groups was tested. Study 1 showed that the reliable relation between allocentrism and life satisfaction was mediated by private, public, and membership collective self-esteem. Study 2 showed that once personal self-esteem was controlled, only private and public collective self-esteem mediated the relation between allocentrism and subjective well-being.