Medication beliefs

It is also important to improve patients knowledge about their medicines since medication beliefs is a strong predictor of adherence (Horne and Weinman 1999). Thus if the patient knows what medication is used, the reason for pharmacotherapy, and believe in the benefit then adherence will be improved. 

In general, however, very little is permanently remembered for more than a few hours after recovery, which no doubt accounts for the commonly held medical belief that delirium is characterized by subsequent amnesia... ... 

Lin K-M Traditional Chinese medical beliefs and their relevance for mental illness and psychiatry, in Normal and Abnormal Behavior in Chinese Culture. Edited by Kleinman S, Lin TY. Boston, Reidel, 1981,... 

Sturtevant, W. The Mikasuki Seminole Medical Beliefs and Practices. Yale University Ph.D. Thesis, 1954. 

Hippocrates, Diseases of Women i, trans. Anne Hanson, Signs i (1975), 572 and Edward Jorden, A Briefe Discourse of a Disease Called the Suffocation of the Mother (London, 1603), Bi. On general medical beliefs about the female body in the early modern period, see Ian Maclean, The Renaissance Notion of Woman (Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 1980). 

The relationship between the main subsystems and other minor systems is illustrated schematically in Figure 12.4. This places management at the core of the quality system, with the other systems arranged as major and minor satellites that revolve around it. This perspective provides the basis for the Quality System Inspection Technique (QSIT), which the FDA uses for auditing medical device facilities. This is based on a top-down approach, which starts with management controls and then looks at three other key subsystems of Design Controls, Corrective and Preventative Actions (CAPA) and Production and Process Controls. The belief is that by focussing on just these four subsystems, you will actually touch on all the other subsystems and obtain a sufficiently satisfactory overview of the state of compliance of the facility. 

A common belief is that AA discourages use of treatment medications, which are considered crutches However, in a survey of a large sample of AA members, more then one-half of respondents reported that the use of relapse-preventing... 

Insight and judgment Mixed, as he can at times question his thinking, but at other times has full conviction of his beliefs. He is currently taking his medication and cooperating with the evaluation appointments. 

Although there is a common belief that natural herbs do no harm, emergent cases reported that renal failure was associated with chronic use of certain herbal preparations. Another important issue is the interaction between herbs and Western medication. There is a tendency, from that assumption, to neglect the possible side effects induced by the combination of both medications. Drug-drug interactions are listed in the following examples. 

Sociocultural, illness, and biological factors affect individual attitudes towards psychotropic medications. Health beliefs or explanatory models, particularly causal attributions regarding the illness and the treatment options afforded within such models, exert a profound influence on patients attitudes and behavior regarding medications (Smith, Lin Mendoza, 1993). Such effects can be subtle and can occur during the course of treatment even if there has been initial successful negotiation about the nature of the illness and treatment. In psychiatric illness little research has been leveled at the personal meaning that patients bring to treatment practices such as electro-convulsive therapy (ECT), oral medications, and depot injections, or to the transition between different administrative routes and types of medications. 

Psychological Insight into illness Illness explanatory models Beliefs about treatment models Subjective responses to medication effects Lack of medical information Personal meaning of accepting psychiatric treatments... 

Negative attitudes or false beliefs about medications... 

Horne, R., Graupner, L., Frost, S. et al (2004). Medicine in a multi-cultural society the effect of cultural background on beliefs about medications. Soc. Sci. Med., 59, 1307-13. 

The conventional view of depression is that it is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain. The basis for this idea was the belief that antidepressant drugs were effective treatments. Our analyses showing that most - if not all - of the effects of these medications are really placebo effects challenges this widespread view of depression. In Chapter 41 examine the chemical-imbalance theory. You may be surprised to leam that it is actually a rather controversial theory and that there is not much scientific evidence to support it. While writing this chapter I came to an even stronger conclusion. It is not just that there is not much supportive evidence rather, there is a ton of data indicating that the chem-... 

These continuation trials tell a very different story from that told by relapse-prevention trials. They show that there is little difference between antidepressant and placebo even when the clinical trial is extended over a longer period of time. Across the eight continuation trials that have been published, 79 per cent of patients on placebo and 93 per cent of patients on active medication remained well throughout the treatment period. In these long-term studies, placebo treatment was 95 per cent as effective as drug treatment. The authors of a meta-analysis of these trials concluded that the widely held - and probably erroneous - belief that the placebo response in depression is short-lived appears to be based largely on intuition and perhaps wishful thinking .17... 

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. 

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