logo

dr-james-hawkins

  • icon-cloud
  • icon-facebook
  • icon-feed
  • icon-feed
  • icon-feed

Recent research: articles from early summer journals

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 just over 24,000 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 couple of 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 36 excellent recent research articles (mostly from journals published in the early summer).  So many of these papers are highly relevant to improving our helpfulness as psychotherapists.  These include Armitage's use of implementation intentions to reduce self-harm (I'm a big fan of implementation intentions - do learn about them if you haven't already), Beard's demonstration that a cut-off of ≥13 is probably appropriate when using the PHQ-9 in an outpatient environment, Veale's work on the OCI,  Fornaro's paper on the overlap of bipolar & borderline personality disorder (especially bipolar II), Richards's game-changing findings on CBT v's BT for depression in the COBRA trial, and Pereira's thesis on characteristics of effective psychotherapists (high resilience, high mindfulness, but caution over 'emotional contagion' with forms of 'over-sensitive' empathy).  Click on Depression for an overlapping list of 48 relevant studies (this covers medication too). These include Al-Karawi's intriguing meta-analysis suggesting bright light effectiveness for nonseasonal depression, Bukh's 5 year follow-up study on outcome after first episode depression, Charles's work again showing links between bipolar disorder & diabetes, Davidson's paper highlighting the importance of relationships for those vulnerable to depression (and pretty much everybody else as well), and Fernandes's fascinating meta-analysis on using N-acetylcysteine to treat depression.  The Compassion & Mindfulness link brings 36 recent abstracts including papers by both Charles-Sire's and Lamy (x2) on the influence of associative factors (words & locations) on the likelihood of helping behaviours, both Fava's & Nummenmaa's work on opioids and mood/safety, Lebuda's meta-analysis on mindfulness & creativity, Okonofua's heart-warming study on helping teachers be more empathic & the resultant benefits for pupils (this likely to be relevant for parents, managers, and many others too), and Pepping's work linking parenting quality, attachment security, and offspring mindfulness.  Clicking on Positive Psychology downloads abstracts and links to 42 papers including Buck's Kings Fund research on gardens & health, Chapman's re-analysis of marriage/wellbeing links showing the relevance of marriage quality, Chen's work on the positive mood benefits of smartphone photography, Crede's meta-analytic critique of grit, Donaldson's delightful "Is life longer with a box of chocolates?", and Harzer's very interesting book chapter on character strengths & wellbeing.  Finally, there are 48 abstracts in the Healthy Living & Healthy Aging section including Aune's perceptive further meta-analysis on BMI & mortality, Bayley-Veloso on yoga, Chen on whole grain, Elwood on aspirin & cancer, Gershoff's meta-analysis on the damage produced by child spanking, and Konok on attachment style and attitude to our mobile phones.  

What's not to like?  So much fascinating & helpful information here.  Remember you can always search these & earlier studies using keywords on James's Scoop.it pages.

Share this