Group-Based Metacognitive Reflection and Insight Therapy (MERITg) and Its Relationship to Recovery-Oriented Beliefs in Serious Mental Illness.

Group-based Metacognitive Reflection and Insight Therapy (MERITg) is the group application of Metacognitive Reflection and Insight Therapy (MERIT), an evidence-based, integrative, recovery-oriented intervention to enhance insight and understanding of oneself and others in individuals with serious mental illness (SMI). MERITg may offer therapeutic interactions between participants that uniquely support recovery. The goal of the current study was to examine the relationship between MERITg participation and recovery-oriented beliefs.

Conceptualizing care partners' burden, stress, and support for reintegrating Veterans: a mixed methods study.

Background: People who support Veterans as they transition from their military service into civilian life may be at an increased risk of psychological distress. Existing studies focus primarily on paid family caregivers, but few studies include spouses and informal non-family "care partners." We sought to identify key challenges faced by care partners of Veterans with invisible injuries.

Translating an integrative metacognitive model of psychotherapy for serious mental illness into a group format: A pilot investigation on feasibility.

Metacognitive reflection and insight therapy (MERIT) is an one-on-one intervention that targets insight with the aim to help people with serious mental illness develop more integrated ideas about themselves and others in order to respond to their psychological and social challenges more adaptively. There is a growing body of evidence on MERIT's effectiveness. Considering the clinical demand for more cost-effective group psychotherapies, we modified the original individual MERIT format to a group-based intervention (MERITg) for application in inpatient and outpatient psychiatric settings.

Skeletal muscle blood flow during exercise is reduced in a rat model of pulmonary hypertension.

Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is characterized by exercise intolerance. Muscle blood flow may be reduced during exercise in PAH; however, this has not been directly measured. Therefore, we investigated blood flow during exercise in a rat model of monocrotaline (MCT)-induced pulmonary hypertension (PH).

Metacognitive reflection and insight therapy in an inpatient setting: Transforming messianism to a coherent mission.

Metacognitive reflection and insight therapy (MERIT) is an integrative form of psychotherapy which seeks to help adults with serious mental illness make sense of the psychosocial challenges and possibilities they face and decide how to respond to them and direct their own recovery. In this article, we present an adaptation of MERIT to the context of an inpatient ward with an accompanied case illustration. Specifically, we describe how this approach is supported by a broad intersubjective framework, followed by a presentation of processes and contents of the treatment.

Molecular characterization of the human kidney interstitium in health and disease.

The gene expression signature of the human kidney interstitium is incompletely understood. The cortical interstitium (excluding tubules, glomeruli, and vessels) in reference nephrectomies ( = 9) and diabetic kidney biopsy specimens ( = 6) was laser microdissected (LMD) and sequenced. Samples underwent RNA sequencing.

Distinct Factors Secreted by Adipose Stromal Cells Protect the Endothelium From Barrier Dysfunction and Apoptosis.

We have shown previously that adipose stromal cell (ASC)-derived conditioned media (CM) limited lung injury, endothelial barrier dysfunction, and apoptosis. Here, we used endothelial hyperpermeability and apoptosis assays to investigate how concentration processes affect endothelium-directed bioactivity of ASC-CM and to gain information on the nature of bioactive factors. Comparison of ASC-CM concentrated with differential molecular weight (MW) cutoff filters showed that endothelial barrier protection depended on the species-specific factors in ASC-CM fractionated with MW > 50 kDa.

Schizophrenia, recovery and the self: An introduction to the special issue on metacognition.

In this special issue, work is presented linking metacognition among persons with schizophrenia with a range of psychosocial outcomes including vocational functioning, empathy, motivation, self-evaluation, and other cognitive functions. This overview will highlight how these works allow for the quantitative study of processes which underpin alterations in self-experience in schizophrenia, which in turn allows self-experience to be studied as part of a larger set of brain-based and social phenomena whose interaction influences the trajectory of one's life and illness. We explore the hypothesis that metacognitive capacity, as a node in a larger biopsychosocial network, may be accessible by psychosocial treatment and, if successfully targeted, may disrupt the processes which perpetuate disability.

Metacognitive function and fragmentation in schizophrenia: Relationship to cognition, self-experience and developing treatments.

Bleuler suggested that fragmentation of thought, emotion and volition were the unifying feature of the disorders he termed schizophrenia. In this paper we review research seeking to measure some of the aspects of fragmentation related to the experience of the self and others described by Bleuler. We focus on work which uses the concept of metacognition to characterize and quantify alterations or decrements in the processes by which fragments or pieces of information are integrated into a coherent sense of self and others.

Individuals with psychosis and a lifetime history of cannabis use show greater deficits in emotional experience compared to non-using peers.

While previous research suggests that active cannabis use is a barrier to the emotional experiences of anticipating pleasure and expressing emotion in early psychosis, the relationship between lifetime cannabis use, emotional experience and social function over time has been understudied. This study sought to characterize the influence of lifetime cannabis use on emotional experience in prolonged psychosis and the influence of the interaction of cannabis use and emotional expression on social function. Emotional expression, experience of pleasure in the moment, anticipatory anhedonia and social functioning were measured concurrently using the Emotional Expressivity Scale (EES), Temporal Experience of Pleasure Scale (TEPS) and Social Functioning Scale (SFS), respectively.

Drug-gene and drug-drug interactions associated with tramadol and codeine therapy in the INGENIOUS trial.

Tramadol and codeine are metabolized by CYP2D6 and are subject to drug-gene and drug-drug interactions. This interim analysis examined prescribing behavior and efficacy in 102 individuals prescribed tramadol or codeine while receiving pharmaco-genotyping as part of the INGENIOUS trial (NCT02297126). Within 60 days of receiving tramadol or codeine, clinicians more frequently prescribed an alternative opioid in ultrarapid and poor metabolizers (odds ratio: 19.

Reshapable hydrogel tissue expander for ridge augmentation: Results of a series of successive insertions at the same intraoral site.

Background: Oral mucosa expansion before ridge augmentation is a procedure to reduce soft tissue exposure and to improve bone graft density and volume after augmentation. This study explored a novel, shapeable hydrogel tissue expander (HTE) in intraoral sites that had undergone previous expansion and surgery.

Methods: Nine beagle dogs had all premolar teeth extracted and adjacent alveolar bone reduced.

The experience and expression of anger in posttraumatic stress disorder: the relationship with metacognition.

Background: Anger experience and expression are a common issue in those experiencing PTSD. However, it remains unclear what variables affect anger and its expression in PTSD.

Aims: To explore the relationships of synthetic forms of metacognition and metacognitive beliefs with anger experience and expression in PTSD, independent of the effects hyperarousal and depression symptoms.

Association of Mental Health Conditions and Treatments With Long-term Opioid Analgesic Receipt Among Adolescents.

Importance: Adults with mental health conditions are more likely than those without to receive long-term opioid therapy. Less is known about opioid therapy among adolescents, especially those with mental health conditions.

Objective: To examine associations between preexisting mental health conditions and treatments and initiation of any opioid and long-term opioid therapy among adolescents.

TSG-6 is highly expressed in human abdominal aortic aneurysms.

Background: The formation of abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAA) is characterized by a dominance of proinflammatory forces that result in smooth muscle cell apoptosis, extracellular matrix degradation, and progressive diameter expansion. Additional defects in the antiinflammatory response may also play a role but have yet to be fully characterized. TSG-6 (TNF-stimulated gene-6) is a potent antiinflammatory protein involved in extracellular matrix stabilization and cell migration active in many pathological conditions.

Mucosal Perfusion Preservation by a Novel Shapeable Tissue Expander for Oral Reconstruction.

Background: There are few methods for expanding oral mucosa, and these often cause complications such as tissue necrosis and expander eruption. This study examines mucosal blood perfusion following insertion of a novel shapeable hydrogel tissue expander (HTE). The canine model used subgingival insertion of HTE following tooth extraction and alveolar bone reduction.

Recovery and serious mental illness: a review of current clinical and research paradigms and future directions.

Recovery from serious mental illness has historically not been considered a likely or even possible outcome. However, a range of evidence suggests the courses of SMI are heterogeneous with recovery being the most likely outcome. One barrier to studying recovery in SMI is that recovery has been operationalized in divergent and seemingly incompatible ways: as an objective outcome versus a subjective process.

Erratum to: Methods for evaluating medical tests and biomarkers.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1186/s41512-016-0001-y.].

The positive link between executive function and lifetime cannabis use in schizophrenia is not explained by current levels of superior social cognition.

There has been a growing link between a history of cannabis use and neurocognitive performance in patients with schizophrenia. Fewer neurocognitive deficits may be a marker of the superior social cognition needed to obtain illicit substances, or cannabis use may indicate a distinct path to schizophrenia with less neurocognitive vulnerability. This study sought to determine whether the relationship of cannabis use and executive function exists independently of social cognition.

Structural and functional characterization of endothelial microparticles released by cigarette smoke.

Circulating endothelial microparticles (EMPs) are emerging as biomarkers of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in individuals exposed to cigarette smoke (CS), but their mechanism of release and function remain unknown. We assessed biochemical and functional characteristics of EMPs and circulating microparticles (cMPs) released by CS. CS exposure was sufficient to increase microparticle levels in plasma of humans and mice, and in supernatants of primary human lung microvascular endothelial cells.

Relationships over time of subjective and objective elements of recovery in persons with schizophreni.

Recovery from schizophrenia involves both subjective elements such as self-appraised wellness and objective elements such as symptom remission. Less is known about how they interact. To explore this issue, this study examined the relationship over the course of 1 year of four assessments of symptoms with four assessments of self-reports of subjective aspects of recovery.