Burnout syndrome in physical therapists - demographic and organizational factors.

Background: Professional burnout results from prolonged exposure to chronic, job-related stressors. According to Christina Maslach, professional burnout is a syndrome of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and reduced personal accomplishment. Literature includes a number of reports on burnout syndrome within health service, but hardly ever do they make any references to physiotherapists.

[Ethical aspects of forensic psychiatry and psychology].

Psychiatry is a discipline which poses particularly sophisticated and subtile requirements from the point of view of professional ethics, as well as general morality, especially when a psychiatrists is a forensic court expert. The necessity of freeing oneself from the temptation to succum to one's distance, and preserve a suitable professional perspectives, with a simultaneous understanding of another human being, often forces the forensic expert to face the toughest and doctor. One also has to bear in mind the specific triple responsibility of the forensic psychiatrists: before the examined person, the confidence in him and whose interests also need to be respected and protected.

[Widows of victims of Nazi concentration camps: their pathology].

The psychosocial situation of widows and orphans of victims of the Nazi concentration camps in Poland are presented. In 1984, 74 widows of victims from the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp were interviewed. This article describes widows' emotional-behavioral reactions when facing the imprisonment and death of their husbands, their difficulties in adapting themselves to widowhood, different adaptative forms of memories of their married life, and consequences relevant to widows' mental health and family, and social consequences of widowhood.

Between life and death: experiences of concentration camp mussulmen during the holocaust.

During the years of 1981 and 1982, 89 former prisoners of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp responded to questionnaires on mussulmen-prisoners in the extreme phase of starvation disease. In this article, I describe the origin of the term "mussulman," mussulmens' somatic and mental state, their behavior and camp customs. Prisoners characterized as mussulmen remain between life and death, without expressing emotional reactions and defense mechanisms apart from a hypersensibility to food-related stimuli.

[The nightmare continues. Life after the occupation time in survivors and their descendants].

In the physical and psychical suffering of former concentrations camp inmates, their families, and descendants Auschwitz is as real as ever. The author reports on his own encounters with victims and on the protracted consequences of the camp experience. The author comments on the difficulty of handling the topic of Auschwitz both in Poland and in the Federal Republic.

Psychopathology in mountaineering--mental disturbances under high-altitude stress.

In the years 1960-1985 psychiatric and psychological research was conducted among a group of 80 Polish alpinists. Experimental research was conducted during the expeditions to the Hindu Kush mountains and to the Andes (1971, 1973-74, 1979, 1985). The aim of the research was to describe the personality of the alpinists, their motivation, as well as mental disturbances caused by staying at high altitudes.