Biomedical subjects

Kasia Kozlowska

Publications and source records attributed to Kasia Kozlowska.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2007

Conversion disorder in Australian pediatric practice.

OBJECTIVES: To describe the incidence and clinical features of children presenting to Australian child health specialists with conversion disorder. METHOD: Active, national surveillance of conversion disorder in children younger than 16 years of age during 2002 and 2003. RESULTS: A total of 194 children were reported on. The average age was 11.8 years; 23% were younger than 10 years of age. Presentations were complex, with 55% presenting with multiple conversion symptoms. The most common presentations were disturbance of voluntary motor function (64%), sensory symptoms (24%), pseudoseizure (23%), and respiratory problems (14%). Hospital admission was required for 70%, with an average stay of 10.2 days. Antecedent stressors were also reported in 62% and a history of mental health concerns in 42%, with 14% of children taking psychotropic medications for comorbid anxiety or depression. The incidence of conversion disorder in Australian specialist child health practice is estimated to be between 2.3 and 4.2/100,000. CONCLUSIONS: Conversion disorder is associated with a significant burden for the child, family, and the health system. This study emphasizes the comorbidity with anxiety, depression, and symptoms of pain and fatigue. It also highlights the potential impact of "commonplace" stressors such as family conflict and children's loss of attachment figures.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2006

Habit cough: assessment and management.

Habit cough is a condition that is often misdiagnosed as asthma. The cough is bizarre in nature, troublesome to those around the person coughing and clearly a waking phenomenon. Often, relatives will have considered the possibility of a habit cough by the time that they present to the respiratory or general paediatrician. In the majority of cases, simple explanation of the nature of likely stressors and reassurance form the basis of effective therapy. In young people with more entrenched symptoms, the provision of coping strategies and increasing the subjective sense of control is an intervention in itself and will improve the likelihood of a good outcome. In more extreme cases, the role of rehabilitation programmes involving negotiation with schools and community organisations may prove useful in remediation of the cough and normalisation of social and peer supports.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2002

Healing traumatized children: creating illustrated storybooks in family therapy.

In this article we describe the therapeutic practice of creating illustrated storybooks in family therapy with traumatized children. Illustrated stories offer a predictable structure to sessions and facilitate engagement and participation of children in therapy. The therapeutic emphasis of storybooks can be adjusted to take into account a child's life story, verbal capacity, level of anxiety, and traumatic hyperarousal. The creation of storybooks is an active process that embraces important aspects of trauma-specific interventions, including expression of trauma-related feelings; clarification of erroneous beliefs about the self, others, or the traumatic event; and externalization of traumatic stimuli into artwork, allowing for exposure and habituation of the arousal response. A focus on visual images together with narrative takes advantage of children's developmental capacities and spontaneous pleasure in the creation of art, thus minimizing anxiety and enhancing feelings of mastery, competence, and hope. The creation of storybooks is compatible with family interventions that foster a safe family context, strengthen attachment relationships, insure appropriate structure and boundaries, and enhance parenting capacity as well as those interactions that facilitate understanding and dialogue between family members.

Art Therapy↗

PubMed2002

The network perspective: an integration of attachment and family systems theories.

In this article we discuss the network paradigm as a useful base from which to integrate attachment and family systems theories. The network perspective refers to the application of general systems theory to living systems, and provides a framework that conceptualizes the dyadic and family systems as simultaneously distinct and interconnected. Network thinking requires that the clinician holds multiple perspectives in mind, considers each system level as both a part and a whole, and shifts the focus of attention between levels as required. Key epistemological issues that have hindered the integration of the theories are discussed. These include inconsistencies within attachment theory itself and confusion surrounding the theoretical conceptualizations of the relationship between attachment and family systems theories. Detailed information about attachment categories is provided using the Dynamic Maturational model. Case vignettes illustrating work with young children and their families explore the clinical implications of integrating attachment data into family therapy practice.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Healing the disembodied mind: contemporary models of conversion disorder.

The cartesian separation of body and mind has underpinned medical conceptualization of conversion symptoms over the last four centuries. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century models explained conversion symptoms on the basis of assumed organic lesions. Subsequent psychological formulations focused on mental phenomena, which were disembodied from underlying neurobiological processes. Contemporary theories challenge this disconnection. They place conversion symptoms within an evolutionary framework, arguing that mind is embodied in physical processes and confers significant survival advantage. Current neurobiological models explain conversation symptoms as part of the human emotional response to threat, reflecting either errors in how information about body state is processes and represented, or the motor component of an automatic emotional response. Patients with conversion disorder experience their body functions in a range of distressing and disturbing ways. In order to understand these phenomena, clinicians require conceptual models that expand the conventional dualistic mind-body paradigm, integrate multiple theoretical perspectives, and take into account environmental factors that shape evolutionary and individual development.

Conversion Disorder↗