1,721,191 research outputs found

    Constraints perceived by psychiatrists working in community mental health services. Development and pilot study of a novel instrument

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    An inventory of institutional constraints perceived as limiting therapeutic choices was developed and completed by psychiatrists working in Italian public mental health services. Constraints considered most limiting were social and institutional pressures toward social control, violence risk assessment and prevention, and lack of control over workload. The total mean score of the perceived constraints instrument was significantly negatively correlated with ratings of perceived freedom in therapeutic choices and with overall job satisfaction. Reliability was good (alpha = 0.85). Addressing perceived constraints may result in more choice options to reach therapeutic goals in a collaborative framework with patients, and improve job satisfaction

    Frequent attenders in primary care: impact of medical, psychiatric and psychosomatic diagnoses

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    Background: Anxiety, mild depression and somatization are common in Primary Care (PC). Several studies have suggested that they may play a role in causing an excessive use of health care services, especially when combined to medical morbidity. The present case-control study explored how psychiatric and psychosomatic diagnoses and perceived quality of life are associated to the phenomenon of frequent attendance.Methods: The 50 most frequent attenders (FAs) in a one-year period at a PC clinic in Italy were compared to 50 randomly selected average frequency attenders at the same clinic. Socio-demographic and medical data were collected from PC files. The SCID-brief version for research and the Structured Interview for Diagnostic Criteria for use in Psychosomatic Research (DCPR) were administered to both patient groups. Quality of life was also assessed.Results: FA status was associated with being female, older, less well educated, and living with their spouse and/or children. Medical-psychiatric comorbidity was more frequent in the FA group than in the control group. The median number of psychosomatic-DCPR syndromes per patient was 4 among FAs compared to only 1 in controls. Functional somatic symptoms secondary to a psychiatric disorder, type A behaviour, irritable mood, and demoralization were significantly associated with being an FA. Perceived quality of life was significantly lower among FAs, although this was no longer significant after adjusting for socio-demographic variables. Conclusions: The present study confirms the association between medical-psychiatric comorbidity and frequent utilization of PC resources. It suggests a role for DCPR criteria in revealing sub-threshold psychiatric comorbidity predicting a pattern of frequent attendance

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed

    Variations on the Author

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    “Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship

    Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis

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    We provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis

    Psychiatric disorders and depression in multiple sclerosis outpatients: Impact of disability and interferon beta therapy

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    Associations between psychopathology and gender, duration of MS, disability and therapy with beta-interferons were studied in multiple sclerosis (MS) outpatients. A controlled descriptive epidemiological study was carried out in two Italian outpatient MS centres on 50 outpatients with clinically definite relapsing-remitting MS presenting for regular follow-up and 50 healthy controls matched for sex, age and educational level. Subjects were assessed with the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID I), the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and the State Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI). MS patients reported a higher prevalence of psychiatric disorders (odds ratio 3.17), with 46\% (n=23) suffering from major depressive disorder. The risk of suffering from any non-mood psychiatric disorder was also higher in MS patients than in controls (odds ratio 2.67). Risk factors for depression were female sex and severity of disability, but not therapy with interferon beta or longer duration of illness. Disability level, but not therapy with beta-interferons, is a risk factor for depression in MS outpatients. Regular screening for depression in this population is appropriate

    Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts

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    We conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more sophisticated methods

    Author Index

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