Posted: 02 Aug 2010 10:45 AM PDT

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Mind over matter? The psychology of healing

Posted: 02 Aug 2010 08:19 AM PDT

ScienceDaily (Aug. 2, 2010) — People suffering from diabetes-related foot ulcers show different rates of healing according to the way they cope and their psychological state of mind, according to new research by a health psychologist at The University of Nottingham.

The large study published in the journal Diabetologia this month has shown that the way patients cope with the condition and their levels of depression, affect how the wound heals or worsens.

The work by Professor Kavita Vedhara from the University's Institute of Work, Health and Organisations, has sparked a follow-on project to develop psychological treatments to reduce depression in sufferers and help them cope more effectively with this debilitating and potentially life-threatening condition.

Foot ulcers are open sores which form when a minor skin injury fails to heal because of microvascular and metabolic dysfunction caused by diabetes. Up to fifteen per cent of people with diabetes, both Type 1 and Type 2, develop foot or leg ulcers with many suffering depression and poorer quality of life as a result.

The increased morbidity and mortality caused by the condition are estimated to cost UK health services £220 million per year. The costs are exacerbated by slow healing rates with two thirds of ulcers remaining unhealed after 20 weeks of treatment. The five year amputation and death rates among patients are 19 per cent and 44 per cent respectively. Ulcers account for around four out of five lower leg amputations and half of diabetes-related hospital admissions.

During the five-year study 93 patients (68 men and 25 women) with diabetic foot ulcers were recruited from specialist podiatry clinics across the UK. Clinical and demographic determinants of healing; psychological distress, coping style and levels of cortisol (a stress hormone) in saliva were assessed and recorded at the start of a 24 week monitoring period. The size of each patient's ulcer was also measured at the start, and then at 6, 12 and 24 weeks to record the extent of healing or otherwise of the ulcer.

The results of the research showed that the likelihood of the ulcer healing over a 24 week period was predicted by how individual's coped. Surprisingly perhaps, patients who showed a 'confrontational' way of coping (a style characterised by a desire to take control) with the ulcer and its treatment were less likely to have a healed ulcer at the end of the 24 week period.

Professor Vedhara said: "My colleagues and I believe that this confrontational approach may, inadvertently, be unhelpful in this context because these ulcers take a long time to heal. As a result, individuals with confrontational coping may experience distress and frustration because their attempts to take control do not result in rapid improvements."

A secondary analysis of each patient examined the relationship of psycho-social factors with the change in the size of the ulcer over the observation period. Whereas the first analysis showed that only confrontation coping, not anxiety or depression, was a significant predictor of healing, the second showed that depression was a significant predictor in how the size of the ulcer changed over time, with patients with clinical depression showing smaller changes in ulcer size over time i.e., they showed less improvement or healing.

The £500,000 research project was funded by the Medical Research Council. A second project is under way thanks to a £230,000 grant from the National Institute for Health Research. This will develop and pilot a psychological intervention to reduce the risk of ulcers recurring in patients with a history of diabetic ulcers.

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The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by University of Nottingham.

Journal Reference:

K. Vedhara, J. N. V. Miles, M. A. Wetherell, K. Dawe, A. Searle, D. Tallon, N. Cullum, A. Day, C. Dayan, N. Drake, P. Price, J. Tarlton, J. Weinman, R. Campbell. Coping style and depression influence the healing of diabetic foot ulcers: observational and mechanistic evidence. Diabetologia, 2010; 53 (8): 1590 DOI: 10.1007/s00125-010-1743-7

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

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Research shows what you say about others says a lot about you

Posted: 02 Aug 2010 12:32 PM PDT

Public release date: 2-Aug-2010
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Contact: Cheryl V. Walker
walkercv@wfu.edu
336-758-6073
Wake Forest University

How positively you see others is linked to how happy, kind-hearted and emotionally stable you are, according to new research by a Wake Forest University psychology professor.

"Your perceptions of others reveal so much about your own personality," says Dustin Wood, assistant professor of psychology at Wake Forest and lead author of the study, about his findings. By asking study participants to each rate positive and negative characteristics of just three people, the researchers were able to find out important information about the rater's well-being, mental health, social attitudes and how they were judged by others.

The study appears in the July issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Peter Harms at the University of Nebraska and Simine Vazire of Washington University in St. Louis co-authored the study.

The researchers found a person's tendency to describe others in positive terms is an important indicator of the positivity of the person's own personality traits. They discovered particularly strong associations between positively judging others and how enthusiastic, happy, kind-hearted, courteous, emotionally stable and capable the person describes oneself and is described by others.

"Seeing others positively reveals our own positive traits," Wood says.

The study also found that how positively you see other people shows how satisfied you are with your own life, and how much you are liked by others.

In contrast, negative perceptions of others are linked to higher levels of narcissism and antisocial behavior. "A huge suite of negative personality traits are associated with viewing others negatively," Wood says. "The simple tendency to see people negatively indicates a greater likelihood of depression and various personality disorders." Given that negative perceptions of others may underlie several personality disorders, finding techniques to get people to see others more positively could promote the cessation of behavior patterns associated with several different personality disorders simultaneously, Wood says.

This research suggests that when you ask someone to rate the personality of a particular coworker or acquaintance, you may learn as much about the rater providing the personality description as the person they are describing. The level of negativity the rater uses in describing the other person may indeed indicate that the other person has negative characteristics, but may also be a tip off that the rater is unhappy, disagreeable, neurotic�or has other negative personality traits.

Raters in the study consisted of friends rating one another, college freshmen rating others they knew in their dormitories, and fraternity and sorority members rating others in their organization. In all samples, participants rated real people and the positivity of their ratings were found to be associated with the participant's own characteristics.

By evaluating the raters and how they evaluated their peers again one year later, Wood found compelling evidence that how positively we tend to perceive others in our social environment is a highly stable trait that does not change substantially over time.

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