Randomized controlled evaluation of the psychophysiological effects of social support stress management in healthy women.

Considering the high and increasing prevalence of stress, approaches to mitigate stress-related biological processes become a matter of public health. Since supportive social interactions contribute substantially to mental and physical health, we set out to develop a social support stress management intervention and examined its effects on psychophysiological stress responses as well as self-reported stress in healthy women. In a parallel-group randomized controlled trial, registered in the DSRK (DRKS00017427), 53 healthy women were randomly assigned to a social support stress management or a waitlist control condition.

Psychotherapy: A World of Meanings.

Despite a wealth of findings that psychotherapy is an effective psychological intervention, the principal mechanisms of psychotherapy change are still in debate. It has been suggested that all forms of psychotherapy provide a context which enables clients to transform the meaning of their experiences and symptoms in such a way as to help clients feel better, and function more adaptively. However, psychotherapy is not the only health care intervention that has been associated with "meaning": the reason why placebo has effects has also been proposed to be a "meaning response.

Effects of a fixed herbal drug combination (Ze 185) to an experimental acute stress setting in healthy men - An explorative randomized placebo-controlled double-blind study.

Background: Considering the negative effects of stress on health, there is a growing interest in stress-reducing interventions. The present study examines the effects of a fixed combination of valerian, passion flower, lemon balm, and butterbur extracts (Ze 185) on biological and affective responses to a standardized psychosocial stress paradigm.

Purpose: The aim of the present study was to investigate the efficacy of Ze 185 on cortisol and anxiety stress responses to acute psychosocial stress in healthy subjects.

Standard and experimental therapy in cutaneous T-cell lymphomas.

Cutaneous T-cell lymphomas are a heterogeneous group of lymphoproliferative disorders, characterized by the accumulation of clonal lymphocytes in the skin. Skin-directed therapies are the preferred first-line modalities. There are interesting new developments in topical therapy using retinoids and gene-therapy products such as adenovirus- interferon (IFN)-gamma.