Secondary traumatic stress in Norwegian SUD-therapists: Symptoms and related factors.

Unlabelled: This study examined the prevalence of secondary traumatic stress (STS) among substance-abuse therapists in relation to burnout, work-related stressors, as well as peer and leader support.

Methods: A quantitative cross-sectional design examining 383 Norwegian substance-abuse therapists. Electronic surveys were distributed to practitioners in Norway via email and social media.

Making Come-Alive and Keeping Un-Alive: How People Relate to Self-Guided Web-Based Health Interventions.

Health interventions delivered online (self-guided web-based interventions) may become more helpful through a person-to-program "working alliance." In psychotherapy, the working alliance signifies a therapeutically useful client-therapist relationship and includes an emotional bond. However, there exist no theories of how program users relate to online programs, or that explain a person-to-program bond theoretically.

Exploring online problem gamblers' motivation to change.

Background: In order to improve interventions for problem gambling, there is a need for studies that can highlight psychological factors that support the desire to reduce gambling.

Objective: To explore online problem gamblers' motivation for change by studying participants' reactions to an online treatment referral website designed to motivate at-risk gamblers to seek help.

Design: A qualitative evaluation study, combining focus groups and in-depth interviews.

Qualitative Interview Studies of Working Mechanisms in Electronic Health: Tools to Enhance Study Quality.

Future development of electronic health (eHealth) programs (automated Web-based health interventions) will be furthered if program design can be based on the knowledge of eHealth's working mechanisms. A promising and pragmatic method for exploring potential working mechanisms is qualitative interview studies, in which eHealth working mechanisms can be explored through the perspective of the program user. Qualitative interview studies are promising as they are suited for exploring what is yet unknown, building new knowledge, and constructing theory.

Key Intervention Characteristics in e-Health: Steps Towards Standardized Communication.

Purpose: This paper reports expert opinion on e-health intervention characteristics that enable effective communication of characteristics across the diverse field of e-health interventions. The paper presents a visualization tool to support communication of the defining characteristics.

Methods: An initial list of e-health intervention characteristics was developed through an iterative process of item generation and discussion among the 12 authors.

Constructivist Simultaneous Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder, Trauma, and Addiction Comorbidity: A Qualitative Case Study.

This qualitative case study explored one client's recovery from borderline personality disorder, trauma, and problem gambling. The client attended 18 months of integrative treatment and was followed for 5 years. The study included 106 data points of both client and therapist data.

Balance--a pragmatic randomized controlled trial of an online intensive self-help alcohol intervention.

Aims: To compare a brief versus a brief plus intensive self-help version of 'Balance', a fully automated online alcohol intervention, on self-reported alcohol consumption.

Design: A pragmatic randomized controlled trial. Participants in both conditions received an online single session screening procedure including personalized normative feedback.

Practical support aids addiction recovery: the positive identity model of change.

Background: There is a need for studies that can highlight principles of addiction recovery. Because social relationships are involved in all change processes, understanding how social motivations affect the recovery process is vital to guide support programs.

Methods: The objective was to develop a model of recovery by examining addicted individuals' social motivations through longitudinal assessment of non-professional support dyads.

Sequential and base rate analysis of emotional validation and invalidation in chronic pain couples: patient gender matters.

Unlabelled: The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which communication patterns that foster or hinder intimacy and emotion regulation in couples were related to pain, marital satisfaction, and depression in 78 chronic pain couples attempting to problem-solve an area of disagreement in their marriage. Sequences and base rates of validation and invalidation communication patterns were almost uniformly unrelated to adjustment variables unless patient gender was taken into account. Male patient couples' reciprocal invalidation was related to worse pain, but this was not found in female patient couples.

Effects of video-based therapy preparation targeting experiential acceptance or the therapeutic alliance.

Preparation for psychotherapy may enhance the psychotherapeutic process, reduce drop-outs, and improve outcomes, but the effective mechanisms of such preparation are poorly understood. Previous studies have rarely targeted specific processes that are associated with positive therapy outcomes. This randomized experiment compared the effects of preparatory videos that targeted either the Therapeutic Alliance, Experiential Acceptance, or a Control video on early therapeutic process variables in 105 patients seen in individual therapy.

A preliminary investigation of affective interaction in chronic pain couples.

The objective of this preliminary study was to examine the extent to which affective marital interaction related to depressive symptoms in persons with chronic pain and their spouses and to pain severity in persons with pain. Couples from the community completed self-report surveys and engaged in a videotaped conversation on a topic of mutual disagreement that was coded for three affect types (i.e.

Chronic pain in a couples context: a review and integration of theoretical models and empirical evidence.

Unlabelled: Researchers have become increasingly interested in the social context of chronic pain conditions. The purpose of this article is to provide an integrated review of the evidence linking marital functioning with chronic pain outcomes including pain severity, physical disability, pain behaviors, and psychological distress. We first present an overview of existing models that identify an association between marital functioning and pain variables.

Multilevel analysis of couple congruence on pain, interference, and disability.

Couple congruence on ratings of pain severity and disability were examined using hierarchical linear modeling. Older community Individuals with Chronic Pain (ICPs) and their spouses completed the Multidimensional Pain Inventory (pain severity, interference, negative spouse responses to pain), Sickness Impact Profile (physical disability, psychosocial disability), and the Mood and Anxiety Symptom Questionnaire (psychological distress). Both spouses reported on ICPs' pain and disability as well as their own psychological distress.

What are the marital problems of patients with chronic pain?

Throughout the past two decades, researchers have studied the close relationships of patients to understand the role that these relationships play in the maintenance and alleviation of pain and the role that pain plays in affecting relationships. In this article, a brief review of the evidence is provided, showing a link between marital functioning and pain, and the marital problems reported by patients with chronic pain in our studies also are described. We provide information about several promising couples pain management and couples therapy approaches that appear to help couples manage pain together.

Spousal congruence on disability, pain, and spouse responses to pain.

We examined congruence between chronic pain patients and their spouses on their reports of patient pain severity, patient disability, and spouse responses to pain. Patients reported that they were more physically and psychosocially disabled than their spouses reported them to be. However, spouses reported that the patients' pain was more severe than patients reported.