Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0011551 (depersonalization)
 1,117 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

This paper reviews the scientific concepts and the clinical aspects of the burn-out syndrome. According to recent studies, up to 25 % of the German working population appear to suffer from what the Amercan physician and psychoanalyst, Herbert Freudenberger, has designated in 1974 as "burn-out syndrome". Characteristic features of this syndrome are emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and low personal accomplishment. People affected by the burn-out syndrome may suffer from depressive or anxious symptoms, from sleep disorders, chronic pain syndromes, or functional disorders of the cardiovascular or gastrointestinal system. Primary causes of the burnout syndrome include high demand combined with low influence, a high level of engagement without sufficient rewards or gratification, and a low level of social support. Preventive measures against burn-out include Balint-like supervision groups. In cases of a fully developed burn-out syndrome, affected persons should undergo either psychotherapy or a multimodal psychosomatic therapy.
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PMID:[The burn-out syndrome and restoring mental health at the working place]. 1270 89

Fibromyalgia is a condition characterized by long term body-wide pain and tender points in joints, muscles and soft tissues. Other symptoms include chronic fatigue, morning stiffness, and depression. It is well known that these symptoms are exacerbated under periods of high stress. When pain becomes severe enough, the mind can enter what is known as a dissociative state, characterized by depersonalization - the feeling of detachment from one's physical body and the illusion of watching one's physical body from outside. In evolutionary terms, dissociative states are thought to be an adaptive mechanism to mentally distance oneself from pain, often during trauma. Similar dissociative experiences are reported by subjects who have used psychoactive drugs such as ketamine. We have previously used non-invasive mirror visual feedback to treat subjects with chronic pain from phantom limbs and suggested its use for complex regional pain syndrome: once considered intractable pain. We wondered whether such methods would work to alleviate the chronic pain of fibromyalgia. We tested mirror visual feedback on one fibromyalgia patient. On 15 trials, the patient's lower limb pain rating (on a scale from 1 to 10) decreased significantly. These preliminary results suggest that non-invasive dissociative anesthetics such as VR goggles, ketamine, and mirror visual feedback could be used to alleviate chronic pain from fibromyalgia. This would furnish us with a better understanding of the mechanism by which external visual feedback interacts with the internal physical manifestation of pain.
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PMID:Using mirror visual feedback and virtual reality to treat fibromyalgia. 2069 6