Recent research: articles from spring journals
Last updated on 13th November 2018
I read a lot of research. When I find an article of particular interest I download it to my bibliographic database - Endnote - which currently contains well over 26,000 abstracts. I also regularly tweet about emerging research, so following me on Twitter, Facebook or Google+ (click on the relevant icon at the top of this web page) will keep you up to speed with some of what I'm finding interesting. Additionally you can view this highlighted research by visiting Scoop.it (click on the "it!" icon at the top of the page). At Scoop.it, I stream publications into five overlapping topic areas: Cognitive & General Psychotherapy, Depression, Compassion & Mindfulness, Healthy Living & Healthy Aging, and Positive Psychology. Here you can scan through abstracts, follow hyperlinks to the original research papers, and search by keyword (click on the funnel icon or in the tag cloud on the relevant Scoop.it topic pages).
Every few months or so, I also provide overviews of this research - sign up for the newsletter to receive this information regularly (see the link at the bottom of this page). Clicking on the topic heading Cognitive & General Psychotherapy downloads a hyperlinked PDF list of 48 excellent recent research articles (mostly from journals published between December & March). So many of these papers are highly relevant for improving our helpfulness as psychotherapists. If you're a therapist do take a look, for example see the PTSD research on mechanisms (both Bedard-Gilligan & Cooper) and effectiveness of treatments (both Kline & Sloan) and the often poor detection rates (Zammit), how to make therapy more 'efficient' (both Janse & Michael), the relevance of sleep (various authors - Espie, Gasperi, Lewis, Lichstein, & Sun), and Schleider's startling one-session mindset intervention for preventing adolescent depression.
Click on Depression for an overlapping list of 20 relevant studies (this covers medication too). These include Ng on probiotics, Parikh on which antidepressants are more effective, Rosenblat on minocycline, Shaffiee on saffron, and exciting new results on light therapy for bipolar depression (both Sit & Zhou). The Compassion & Mindfulness download brings 34 recent abstracts including the 'reality check' of Farb's mindfulness v's cognitive therapy comparison, Sommers-Spijkerman's encouraging results with compassion as guided self-help, a whole cluster of fascinating work on empathy as both embodied simulation & as mentalizing (with parenting & couples, and probably with friends & with therapy too), and the deeply interesting comment in this year's World Happiness Report that "Perhaps the most striking finding of the whole report is that a ranking of countries according to the happiness of their immigrant populations is almost exactly the same as for the rest of the population."
Clicking on Positive Psychology downloads abstracts & links to a further 48 papers including 9 on wisdom (an understudied resource for individuals & organizations), both Burd & George write about the resilience boost achievable through values/meaning, Gan discusses the intriguing finding that we feel more authentic in relationship when we're closer to our ideal-self rather than our actual/habitual-self, and there's the important Headey 25-year life-trajectory study looking at how life satisfaction can be improved. Finally there are another (partly overlapping) 48 abstracts in the Healthy Living & Healthy Aging section including a series of great & somewhat surprising diet studies (wellbeing, both Arvidsson & Parletta; arthritis, Dyer; beneficial fats, Dehghan; and fruit & especially raw veg, Miller). Note too Fu on reducing urinary tract infections with cranberry, and McGeer and Small on reducing dementia risk with NSAID and curcumin respectively. There are a whole cluster of studies on exercise benefits (Condliffe, Harvey, Stephan, Stubbs & Wiese), including the intriguing both/and work on aerobic exericise & yoga by Tanwar. Friendship, supplements, social media, leadership, love-at-first-sight ... so much here. What's not to like! Remember you can always search these & earlier studies using keywords on James's Scoop.it pages.
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