Modern health worries: A systematic review.

OBJECTIVE: Modern health worries (MHWs) refer to people's concerns about possible harmful effects of modern technologies, and are widespread in the developed countries. The aim of the present work was to provide comprehensive, yet integrated understanding for MHWs and associated factors. METHODS: Following the PRISMA guideline, a systematic review was conducted based on 48 empirical articles published between 2001 and 2018 (Prospero registration number: CRD42018103756). All empirical studies were included that (1) were published between 2001 and 2018 in peer-reviewed scientific journals in English, German, or Hungarian, (2) used the Modern Health Worries Scale or any of its sub-scales, and (3) assessed associations between MHWs and other constructs and/or compared criterion groups (i.e. purely psychometric studies were excluded). RESULTS: The results from the review suggest that female gender, age, somatic symptom distress and idiopathic environmental intolerances, holistic thinking, and paranoid beliefs are positively associated with MHWs, whereas educational qualification and the five major dimensions of personality appear not to be. CONCLUSION: Scientific inquiry on the MHWs phenomenon is still in its descriptive-explorative phase; more rigorously designed studies are needed. The presented theoretical framework integrates illness-related and holistic thinking-related aspects of MHWs as a starting point to guide further research in this area.

An Integrative Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Program for Adults With Migraine: A Feasibility Study.

OBJECTIVE: To present a novel cognitive behavioral therapy program that was developed exclusively for adults with migraine, and to assess the feasibility of this program. BACKGROUND: Unlike previous efforts, we combined different approaches of behavioral therapy into one program: relaxation therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, trigger management. METHODS: The treatment program consists of 7 sessions (including psychoeducation, lifestyle counseling, coping with fear of attacks, trigger management, and stress management). The research was conducted in a single-group study with N = 9 completers (age: M = 41.6, SD = 17.6 years; N = 8 female, N = 1 male; N = 5 migraine without aura, N = 2 migraine with aura, N = 2 chronic migraine). After each of the group therapy sessions, evaluation questionnaires were filled out, and individual qualitative interviews were conducted after completion of the program. RESULTS: The treatment program was very well accepted. Every session was rated as comprehensible, and overall satisfaction with the sessions was high. Participants greatly appreciated having access to a specific treatment, exclusively addressing migraine. CONCLUSIONS: The idea of combining several approaches of behavioral therapy into a specific treatment program for migraine seems to be feasible and promising. A randomized controlled trial to determine the efficacy of our program is currently running.

Contingent biofeedback outperforms other methods to enhance the accuracy of cardiac interoception: A comparison of short interventions.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Deviations in interoception might contribute to the development and maintenance of mental disorders. The improvement of interoceptive accuracy (IA) is desirable but assessment and training methods remain controversial. For instance, it was assumed that performance increases in heartbeat counting paradigms after cardiac feedback were due to an improvement of knowledge with regard to heart rate rather than due to an actual improvement in IA. METHODS: Here, we examined effects of contingent cardiac feedback training, non-contingent cardiac feedback, mindfulness practice, and a waiting period with external attentional focus on IA. 100 healthy participants underwent a mental tracking paradigm before and after 20 min of training or waiting. RESULTS: Results revealed a significant increase of IA in the contingent feedback condition (d = 1.21, p ≤ .001) and no significant changes after non-contingent feedback, mindfulness practice or waiting (d ≤ 0.37; p ≥ .06). Furthermore, IA increase was significantly higher after the contingent feedback training compared to all other conditions, including non-contingent feedback. LIMITATIONS: Future studies need to replicate these findings in clinical samples and examine time dependent effects. CONCLUSIONS: The results provide evidence for the trainability of heartbeat perception. IA improvements may reduce the symptom burden in people suffering from mental disorders and psychophysiological conditions that have been linked to lower interoceptive accuracy such as depression, somatic symptom disorder, chronic pain, and functional somatic syndromes. Consequently, exploration of biofeedback training procedures shall be continued with the aim of identifying relevant mediators of beneficial effects and future implementation in clinical practice.

Are media reports able to cause somatic symptoms attributed to WiFi radiation? An experimental test of the negative expectation hypothesis.

People suffering from idiopathic environmental intolerance attributed to electromagnetic fields (IEI-EMF) experience numerous non-specific symptoms that they attribute to EMF. The cause of this condition remains vague and evidence shows that psychological rather than bioelectromagnetic mechanisms are at work. We hypothesized a role of media reports in the etiology of IEI-EMF and investigated how somatosensory perception is affected. 65 healthy participants were instructed that EMF exposure can lead to enhanced somatosensory perception. Participants were randomly assigned to watch either a television report on adverse health effects of EMF or a neutral report. During the following experiment, participants rated stimulus intensities of tactile (electric) stimuli while being exposed to a sham WiFi signal in 50% of the trials. Sham WiFi exposure led to increased intensity ratings of tactile stimuli in the WiFi film group, especially in participants with higher levels of somatosensory amplification. Participants of the WiFi group reported more anxiety concerning WiFi exposure than the Control group and tended to perceive themselves as being more sensitive to EMF after the experiment compared to before. Sensational media reports can facilitate enhanced perception of tactile stimuli in healthy participants. People tending to perceive bodily symptoms as intense, disturbing, and noxious seem most vulnerable. Receiving sensational media reports might sensitize people to develop a nocebo effect and thereby contribute to the development of IEI-EMF. By promoting catastrophizing thoughts and increasing symptom-focused attention, perception might more readily be enhanced and misattributed to EMF.

The Role of Mental Imagery in Depression: Negative Mental Imagery Induces Strong Implicit and Explicit Affect in Depression.

Mental imagery, seeing with the mind's eyes, can induce stronger positive as well as negative affect compared to verbal processing. Given this emotion-amplifying effect, it appears likely that mental images play an important role in affective disorders. According to the subcomponents model of depression, depressed mood is maintained by both negative imagery (which amplifies negative mood) and less efficient positive imagery processes. Empirical research on the link between mental imagery and affect in clinical depression, however, is still sparse. This study aimed at testing the role of mental imagery in depression, using a modified version of the affect misattribution procedure (AMP) and the self-assessment manikin (SAM) to assess implicit (AMP) and explicit (SAM) affect elicited by mental images, pictures, and verbal processing in clinically depressed participants (n = 32) compared to healthy controls (n = 32). In individuals with a depressive disorder, compared to healthy controls, negative mental images induced stronger negative affect in the explicit as well as implicit measure. Negative mental imagery did not, however, elicit greater increases in explicitly and implicitly assessed negative affect compared to other processing modalities (verbal processing, pictures) in the depressed group. Additionally, a positive imagery deficit in depression was observed in the explicit measure. Interestingly, the two groups did not differ in implicitly assessed affect after positive imagery, indicating that depressed individuals might benefit from positive imagery on an implicit or automatic level. Overall, our findings suggest that mental imagery also plays an important role in depression and confirm the potential of novel treatment approaches for depression, such as the promotion of positive imagery.

[Validation of a screening instrument for multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS): the chemical odor sensitivity scale (COSS)]. / Validierung eines Screeninginstruments zur Identifizierung von Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS): Die Chemische Geruchssensitivitätsskala (CGSS).

Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS) -- also known as Idiopathic Environmental Intolerances (IEI) -- is defined as a disorder with multiple somatic and psychological symptoms attributed to low levels of various, chemically unrelated substances in the environment. Self-reported chemical odor sensitivity is an important feature of MCS. We describe the construction and the reliability and validity properties of a short questionnaire for the assessment of chemical odor sensitivity (COSS). The 11 items of the COSS were factor analytically derived from the Questionnaire of Chemical and General Environmental Sensitivity (CGES). Test statistical properties of the COSS were examined in college students, unselected community members, environmental medicine outpatients and chemically sensitive subjects. The COSS achieved good internal consistency in all samples (Cronbach's alpha = 0.89 - 0.93). Women and subjects from samples with higher MCS risk showed elevated COSS scores. The scale showed adequate construct validity and proved useful as an economic screening instrument for persons at risk for MCS.