Abstract: 95 authors from Australia, Canada, France,Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK and USA have edited their description of 80 psychotherapy procedures, each with clinical case illustrations, to develop a universally agreed common language for psychotherapy procedures.
Notes: It is part of the CLP project at: http://www.commonlanguagepsychotherapy.org
Abstract: Hunger is a poorly defined cognition, assumed to motivate overeating, but
there is no firm evidence that the intensity of a sense of hunger is related to
overweight. Recent research has suggested instead that irregular eating habits, as
deriving from dieting, emotional stressors or other causes may have a role in the
weight gain of obese people. These "borderline eating behaviours" (or BEB),
targeted in cognitive behavioural therapy of obesity, were found associated to the
body mass index both in normal and in overweight subjects in previous studies,
using a specific scale called SENICAL. This study aimed at exploring the role of the
sense of "unbearable hunger" on these eating irregularities, as measured with
SENICAL, which provides an overall measure of BEB. SENICAL has been
administered to a sample of 365 university students, together with other self-report
measures; one item of SENICAL has been used to measure the frequency of the
feeling of "unbearable hunger". An ANCOVA performed on the total SENICAL scores
showed a linear increase of BEB along with the frequency of perceived
"unbearable hunger", independently form age and gender. An item analysis of the
SENICAL scale, performed with Chi square, showed that 15 out of 27 of these
behavioural and emotional responses comprising the scale were associated with the
sense of hunger, such as to diet or try to fast, to eat at irregular times, to eat more
than usual when in emotional state, to eat quickly and not to taste the food, and to
worry about weight increase. The "sense of hunger" may contribute to disrupt the
eating habits, and maintain many of the eating irregularities associated to weight
gain called "borderline eating behaviours". These results suggest that the cognition
of hunger is worth to be targeted in the treatment of obese people.
Abstract: Nineteen obese female subjects with body mass index ranging between 30 and 40 were included in a double-blind crossover study aimed at evaluating the effects of oral 5-hydroxytryptophan administration on feeding behavior, mood state and weight loss. Either 5-hydroxytryptophan (8 mg/kg/day) or placebo was administered for five weeks during which patients were not prescribed any dietary restrictions. Feeding behavior was investigated by means of a questionnaire designed to establish the onset of anorexia and related symptoms. Food intake was evaluated using a three-day diet diary. BDI, SI, STAI-T, and STAI-S were used to assess mood state. The administration of 5-hydroxytryptophan resulted in no changes in mood state but promoted typical anorexia-related symptoms, decreased food intake and weight loss during the period of observation.
