PubMed Health⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

M C Angermeyer

Publications and source records attributed to M C Angermeyer.

At least 145 records · Page 8Linked to original sources
PubMed1988

The causes of functional psychoses as seen by patients and their relatives. I. The patients' point of view.

Patients' concepts of the causes of their functional psychoses were investigated by means of an open-ended question and a 30-item checklist. While patients, like professional experts, endorsed a multifactorial aetiological concept, they clearly favoured psychosocial explanations over biological ones. There was some variation according to diagnosis, with schizophrenic patients tending to attribute the development of their illness more often to esoteric influences or to their family environment and patients with affective psychoses assuming biological factors or psychosocial stress to be the cause of their illness. The aetiological concepts did not vary with the duration of illness. Our findings do not support the "psychological mindedness" hypothesis, which postulates that there is a greater inclination to adopt psychological explanations among women, younger people, the better educated or people from urban areas as compared with men, older people, the less educated or people from rural areas.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1988

The causes of functional psychoses as seen by patients and their relatives. II. The relatives' point of view.

The concepts of relatives of patients suffering from functional psychoses regarding the causes of the illness were investigated using the same methodological approach as with the patients. Relatives, like patients, favoured psychosocial over biological explanations. However, when compared pairwise the concordance between relatives and patients was very low. Some methodological refinements recommended for further research are proposed.

Adult↗
PubMed1987

Stigma perceived by patients attending modern treatment settings. Some unanticipated effects of community psychiatry reforms.

In recent years reforms were instituted in the Federal Republic of Germany that were designed to facilitate the integration of psychiatric services and psychiatric patients into community life. One goal of this reform was to reduce patients' feelings of stigmatization. Because such feelings were thought to arise through patients' tenure at large, isolated state hospitals, we hypothesized that patients sent to such hospitals would feel more stigmatized than would patients assigned to a modern, integrated university hospital. Further, we hypothesized that patients in the two settings would adopt different strategies to cope with the stigma they perceived and that staff members in the two settings would share patients' views concerning these matters. Although we found that the staff in both hospitals shared our prediction that state hospital patients would perceive more stigmatization, our findings showed just the opposite. State hospital patients were significantly less likely than university hospital patients to believe that most people would devalue and discriminate against mental patients. Nor did we find strong evidence of different styles of coping with stigma among patients in the two settings. Taken together, our results suggest that in the realm of stigmatization well-intentioned efforts of reforms may have had undesirable unanticipated consequences. Given this, we suggest approaches for intervening more directly with patients in the form of "Daily Living Groups," which are designed to explicitly discuss actual and feared stigmatization.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1987

Birthday and date of death.

The relation between birthday and date of death has so far been studied from two different perspectives: birthdays were either conceived of as emotionally invested deadlines motivating people to ward off their death which causes a 'dip' in death rates before their birthday, or they were considered as stressful events leading to an increase of mortality on or after their birthday. Using a collection of biographies of famous people from the whole world and another of well-known Swiss citizens we tested hypotheses derived from these assumptions. Neither the 'death-dip' hypotheses nor the 'birthday stress' hypothesis was supported by our results.

Anniversaries and Special Events↗
PubMed1986

[Ecologic factors and risk of rehospitalization of psychotic patients].

The present study investigates the relationship between ecological factors and the community tenure patients with functional psychoses. Data were gathered from the records of three psychiatric hospitals in the city of Hamburg. The analysis controls for the effects of sociodemographic variables and variables pertaining to the last impatient treatment. Variations in readmission rates can be explained by the latter to a certain extent, but only poorly by sociodemographic variables and hardly at all by ecological factors. These findings are discussed with respect to the methodological limitations of the study and as substantive results. Two lines of interpretation are offered. Firstly, equal readmission rates may have been caused by different sets of ecological factors; secondly, patients released from mental hospital may be relatively insusceptible to the impact of ecological factors.

Adult↗
PubMed1986

[The social network of schizophrenic patients].

First, the literature is reviewed under three different perspectives: the role of social networks as etiological factor, the impact of the illness on the social relationships of the patients, and the influence of social networks on the course of schizophrenic disorders. Then, results of an empirical study of social relationships of schizophrenic patients, using the 'Interview Schedule for Social Interaction' developed by Henderson et al., are presented. Compared to the ideal norm as well as to normal people and other patient groups the social network of schizophrenic patients showed marked deficits.

Adult↗
PubMed1985

The monthly and weekly distribution of suicide.

First a review of recent studies of the monthly and weekly distribution of suicide is given. Then the results of an analysis of the mortality figures for Lower Saxony from 1968 to 1977 are presented in which age, sex and means of suicide are taken into consideration. The monthly distribution of all suicides (ICD8 E950-E958) shows a maximum incidence in spring and early summer and a minimum in winter, the weekly distribution a maximum on Monday and minimum at the weekend. In contrast to suicides by hanging, strangulation and suffocation (ICD8 E953) which follow the same pattern, the figures for suicide by poisoning with solid and fluid substances (ICD8 E950) show practically no heterogeneity in both, monthly and weekly distributions. The results are interpreted using Durkheim's concept of 'anomia', drawing an analogy between the days of the week and the months of the year.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1985

Myocardial infarction on various days of the week.

The weekly distribution of deaths for myocardial infarction was studied, using mortality data for Lower Saxony for the years 1968-77. In accordance with hypotheses derived from Holmes & Rahe's stress model, an increase of deaths was found on Saturdays and Mondays only in men aged between 25 and 55 years.

Adult↗
PubMed1983

Sequential patterning of emotional interaction in families with a schizophrenic son.

In 30 families with a schizophrenic son conjoint family discussions which had been generated by Strodtbeck's "Revealed Differences Technique" were analyzed on the strength of the "Relationship-Scale" developed by Riskin and Faunce. All three members of the family triad (two parents and son) proved to be more hostile and rejecting than their parallels in a control group of families whose sons had been admitted because of an acute surgical condition. However, no significant difference could be ascertained in the sequential patterning of interaction assessed by means of time-series analysis. In both family groups Bernoulli processes predominated, i.e. there was no dependence between the sequentially recorded speech units. A 2-year follow-up of the schizophrenic patients showed a contradictory pattern of results. In families with re-hospitalized sons there was only a slight and statistically insignificant tendency towards more negative relationships but the sub-groups of families containing a schizophrenic son differed clearly on the level of sequential data; more families with re-hospitalized sons showed autoregressive (morphogenetic) or moving average (morphostatic) processes.

Adult↗
PubMed1983

[Seasonal variations in the manifestation of psychiatric diseases].

The admission data of the psychiatric unit of the Hannover Medical School for the period 1973 to 1981 were studied by time-series analysis (Box and Jenkins 1970). The total number of admissions as well as subgroups formed according to diagnosis, sex and age did not show any seasonal variations.

Alcoholism↗
PubMed1983

[Can sex differences in the psychiatric institution career of alcoholics be identified?].

All patients residing in the catchment area ("sector") of the Psychiatric Clinic of Hanover Medical School who had been hospitalized due to alcoholism or drug dependence for the first time in their lifes and had been discharged over the period January 1, 1973, to December 31, 1978, were followed through December 31, 1979. Age was the major determinant of rehospitalization. Patients up to age 40 were rehospitalized more frequently than patients 40 and over. Sex differences in the psychiatric institutional career of alcoholics were small and inconsistent. A relatively large probability of rehospitalization was noted for men and women with high occupational status, failed to reach significance, however. This might be due to confounding by age but together with results of other studies also supports the notion that societal role expectations determine the psychiatric institutional careers of alcoholics.

Adult↗
PubMed1982

[The family and schizophrenia. An interactional study].

The analysis of family discussions in which father, mother and schizophrenic son participated revealed marked differences in the interactional styles of both parents. Whereas the fathers of the schizophrenic patients behaved much like fathers of sons with an acute surgical disease, The mothers did show varying emotional reactions, communicational deviances, and changes in role behavior. These results are interpreted in the context of different sex-role related patterns of burden and coping styles.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1982

The association between family atmosphere and hospital career of schizophrenic patients.

The content analysis was made of special thirty minute discussions between each of 30 acute male schizophrenics and their parents to determine features of parental personality. All patients were discharged, but after 2 years 13 of them had been readmitted. Compared with those not readmitted their fathers expressed more outward-directed hostility and hostility projected on to others, and their mothers expressed more inward-directed hostility as well as guilt anxiety and shame anxiety. Both parents were emotionally more unstable during the course of the discussion. The emotional interaction between mothers and sons was of symmetrical type (whereas it was complementary between mothers and sons who had not been readmitted).

Anxiety↗
PubMed1982

[Sex differences in the institutional careers of schizophrenics. A contribution to the socio-epidemiology of mental diseases (author's transl)].

All Patients residing within the area looked after by the Psychiatric Clinic of the Medizinische Hochschule Hannover (Hannover Medical University) who had been initially hospitalized with schizophrenic psychosis (ICD 295) and discharged between 1.1 1973 to 31.12.1978, were followed up until 31.12.1979. Men were rehospitalized significantly earlier and more often than women. This difference between the sexes were independent of age, diagnostic sub-category, school education, professional activities at the time of first hospitalization, marital status and - with men - of the duration of the first period of inpatient treatment. The following points are discussed careers of schizophrenics: sex-determined course of the disease; aspects of the behavioural attitude of the patients in relation to their disease, role obligations and reactions on the part of the social environment; and influences exercised by the medical care system.

Adult↗