Changing beliefs

Changing Belief Systems - Creating new beliefs that empower you to be the person you choose to be... 

The most complex driving forces in the evolution of healthcare delivery are physicians and patients resistance and readiness to accept a "different" way of practicing medicine. On one side the physician, as a patient advocate, is eager to implement various aspects of eHealth however, at the same time, they are reluctant to change beliefs that online services may depersonalize the patient-physician relationship. This coupled with the absence of information usually obtained during clinical evaluation deprives the physician of some important decision-making inputs used in the diagnostic process. There are concerns that if a patient chooses to be consulted by the quickest available physician (online), this will undermine the importance of patient history and will reduce the quality of care. 

The broad approach which provides an example of how we might go about changing beliefs is a wide variety of contexts is cognitive dissonance. This has been defined as A psychologically unpleasant state which arises when an individual holds two beliefs that are in conflict with each other. This dissonance can be reduced by changing one of the beliefs (Festinger, 1957, p. 8). 

A one-factor-at-a-time optimization is consistent with a commonly held belief that to determine the influence of one factor it is necessary to hold constant all other factors. This is an effective, although not necessarily an efficient, experimental design when the factors are independent. Two factors are considered independent when changing the level of one factor does not influence the effect of changing the other factor s level. Table 14.1 provides an example of two independent factors. When factor B is held at level Bi, changing factor A from level Ai to level A2 increases the response from 40 to 80 thus, the change in response, AR, is... 

Maintenance is concerned with retaining something in or restoring something to a state in which it can perform its required function. However, the standard does not require that the maintenance of policy is to be preventive or corrective. In other words it does not require that maintenance of the quality policy should be carried out before or after it is changed. Even so, it is advisable to maintain documented policies in line with your beliefs and to do this ... 

The discovery in 1954 that fluorination of the glucocorticoid hormone cortisol could bring about remarkable changes in the biological properties of the hormone was entirely unexpected and violated the then prevalent belief that synthetic variants could not surpass a naturally occurring hormone in its biological activity. Because of the impact that fluorination of steroids has had on subsequent developments in this area the history of the discovery of fluorocortisol will be briefly recounted. 

Personal computing had already begun in the 1980s with those tiny boxes called (for example) Commodore PETs, Apples, Apricots, Acorns, Dragons and so on. Most of my friends ignored the fact that PET was an acronym, and took one home in the belief that it would somehow change their life for the better and also become a family friend. Very few of them could have written a 1024 word essay describing the uses of a home computer. They probably still can t. 

To summarize, we find that the weight and volume relations that are observed in chemical changes provide an experimental foundation for the atomic theory. All of contemporary chemical thought is based upon the atomic model and, hence, every successful chemical interpretation strengthens our belief in the usefulness of this theory. 

The past fifteen years have seen evidence of great interest in homogeneous catalysis, particularly by transition metal complexes in solution predictions were made that many heterogeneous processes would be replaced by more efficient homogeneous ones. There are two motives in these changes—first, intellectual curiosity and the belief that we can define the active center with... 

Changes in thoughts, beliefs and behaviours related to personal life issues objectives specified by both parties but strongly influenced by counsellor... 

Changes in beliefs, thoughts, behaviours and skills acquisition related to work performance objectives specified by coach... 

Pintrich, P. J., Marx, R. W., Boyle, R. A. (1993). Beyond cold conceptual change The role of motivational beliefs and classroom contextual factors in the process of conceptual change. Review of Educational Research, 63, 167-200. 

First, by indulging his passionate belief in science for the people, he gave students the kind of hands-on education in chemistry that he had wanted as a young man. Before Frankland, students everywhere learned science from books most never even entered a laboratory. Working tirelessly over a period of 15 years, Frankland gradually changed that and dramatically improved the state of science education in Britain. He compiled a list of 109 experiments that students needed to understand firsthand in order to pass his examinations. He wrote a textbook that became a standard for chemistry instruction, in part because it incorporated his ideas on valency and organic structures and his newly developed notation system. 

When Schildkraut introduced the monoamine theory of depression, he admitted that there was little direct evidence for it. Instead, it was based on the supposed effectiveness of antidepressant medication and the mistaken belief that reserpine makes people depressed. Schildkraut acknowledged that Most of this evidence is indirect, deriving from pharmacological studies with drugs such as reserpine, amphetamine and the monoamine oxidase inhibitor antidepressants which produce affective changes. 21 A half-century has passed since his chemical-imbalance theory of depression was introduced, and the presumed effectiveness of antidepressants remains the primary evidence in its support. But as we have seen, the therapeutic effects of antidepressants are largely due to the placebo effect, and this pretty much knocks the legs out from under the biochemical theory. 

In 1976, Aaron Beck, a psychiatrist at the University of Pennsylvania, proposed a cognitive theory of emotions and emotional disorders - a theory that was to become the foundation for cognitive behavioural therapy for depression. According to Beck, fear is produced by the anticipation of harm, joy by the expectancy of positive events, and sadness by the sense that something important has for ever been lost. As a consequence, overcoming fear and depression requires changing the beliefs that have produced them. 

It has now been well established that expectancies play a central role in the production of placebo effects.21 People s expectations of relief are not only correlated with how much benefit they report, but also with changes in the brain activity associated with the therapeutic benefit. These expectancies are formed and altered in many different ways. Our beliefs are influenced by parents, teachers, friends and colleagues, the advertisements we see on television and in newspapers and magazines, news programmes... 

Two rather broad structural classes account for the large majority of drugs that have proven useful in the clinic for treating depression. Each of these has associated with it some clearly recognized side effects the monoamine oxidase inhibitors, most commonly derivatives of hydrazine, tend to have undesirable effects on blood pressure the tricyclic compounds on the other hand may cause undesirable changes in the heart. Considerable effort has thus been expended toward the development of antidepressants that fall outside those structural classes. An unstated assumption in this work is the belief that very different structures will be associated with a novel mechanism of action and a different set of ancillary activities. One such compound, trazodone... 

This belief was further supported by the evidence of a correlation between the clinical response and REM sleep suppression as well as a temporal relationship between the onset of clinical response and REM sleep suppression. However, some of the later studies suggested that REM sleep suppression is not necessary for the antidepressant action (Gillin 1983). For example, some studies show evidence of no change or even an increase in REM sleep with the treatment of depression (Gillin et al. 2001). Recently, Landolt Gillin (Landolt and Gillin 2002) have also demonstrated that the antidepressant response to phenelzine treatment does not depend on elimination of REM sleep or inhibition of slow wave activity in non-REM sleep. However, the generalization of some of these studies is limited because of their small sample size. 

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