(Press-News.org) Previously, there had been a lack of reliable data in Germany on the long-term psychological consequences of political imprisonment in the GDR. Professor Andreas Maercker, Head of the Department of Psychopathology and Clinical Intervention at the University of Zurich, and private lecturer Dr. Matthias Schützwohl, Group Leader at the Clinic and Polyclinic of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at Dresden University of Technology, interviewed 146 former political prisoners in the mid-1990s. 15 years later, they studied the majority of those concerned (78 men and 15 women) again.
"To our surprise, post-traumatic stress disorder is still present in a third of the people studied," says Professor Maercker, summing up the results. "While some have recovered compared to 15 years ago, in others the stress disorder has only manifested itself in recent years." In all, such a delayed or recurrent post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was apparent in 15 percent. We know from studies from other countries – mostly on prisoners of war or other victims of violence – that delayed or recurrent PTSD exists, albeit to a lesser extent. Maercker and Schützwohl's study is the first to demonstrate this for former political prisoners. It appears in the journal Nervenarzt and additional analyses are to be published in the English-language journal Torture.
Decline in dependency on addictive substances
Other psychological disorders that former GDR prisoners suffered from decreased during the 15 years. Specific phobias such as claustrophobia were less common, for instance. The number of people addicted to alcohol and medication also fell. However, the number with acute depression quadrupled to 41 percent of those studied last year. At both time points, a more or less equal number suffered from anxiety disorders such as panic disorder (24 percent last year).
"We made another key discovery: Those affected tend to rate their own psychological condition after their release too poorly in retrospect but their current state more realistically," says PD Schützwohl. From this, the authors conclude that there is no distortion of memory for the purposes of a current desire for compensation, for instance, but rather that psychological factors play a role in the tendency towards a negative life evaluation.
###Further reading:
Maercker et al. Verläufe von Traumafolgen bei ehemaligen politisch Inhaftierten der DDR: Ein 15-Jahres-Follow-up. Nervenarzt. Doi:10.1007/s00115-012-3646-y
Contact:
Professor Andreas Maercker
Psychopathology and Clinical Intervention
University of Zurich
Tel.: +41 44 635 7310
Email: maercker@psychologie.uzh.ch
PD Dr. Matthias Schützwohl
Clinic and Policlinic of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy
Dresden University of Technology
Tel.: +49 351 449 210 276
Email: matthias.schuetzwohl@uniklinikum-dresden.de
Traumatic consequences long after fall of the Berlin Wall
2012-10-25
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Genes, depression and life satisfaction
2012-10-25
Vulnerability to major depression is linked with how satisfied we are with our lives. This association is largely due to genes.
This is the main finding of a new twin study from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health in collaboration with the University of Oslo. The researchers compared longitudinal information from identical and fraternal twins to determine how vulnerability to major depression is associated with dispositional (overall) lifetime satisfaction.
Previous studies have systematically shown that life satisfaction is considerably stable over time. People ...
New opportunity for rapid treatment of malaria
2012-10-25
Researchers have identified a new means to eradicate malaria infections by rapidly killing the blood-borne Plasmodium parasites that cause the disease.
Malaria causes up to 3 million deaths each year, predominantly afflicting vulnerable people such as children under five and pregnant women, in tropical regions of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Treatments are available for this disease, but the Plasmodium parasite is fast becoming resistant to the most common drugs, and health authorities say they desperately need new strategies to tackle the disease.
This new potential ...
Did the changing climate shrink Europe's ancient hippos?
2012-10-25
Giant German hippopotamuses wallowing on the banks of the Elbe are not a common sight. Yet 1.8 million years ago hippos were a prominent part of European wildlife, when mega-fauna such as woolly mammoths and giant cave bears bestrode the continent. Now palaeontologists writing in Boreas, believe that the changing climate during the Pleistocene Era may have forced Europe's hippos to shrink to pygmy sizes before driving them to warmer climes.
"Species of hippo ranged across pre-historic Europe, including the giant Hippopotamus antiquus a huge animal which often weighed ...
DNA's double stranded stretch
2012-10-25
Theoretical physicists like to play with very unconventional toys. Manoel Manghi from Toulouse University in France and his colleagues have adopted a seemingly playful approach to examining what happens to a double stranded molecule of DNA when it is stretched to the breaking point, in a study about to be published in EPJ E. Instead of using optical tweezers to stretch DNA as previously done in experimental settings, the authors focused on using a theoretical model to account for the structural deformations of DNA and determine how its mechanical characteristics could explain ...
Peer review option proposed for biodiversity data
2012-10-25
Copenhagen, Denmark – Data publishers should have the option of submitting their biodiversity datasets for peer review, according to a discussion paper commissioned by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF).
The proposal is among a set of recommendations made by Mark Costello and co-authors in the paper Quality assurance and Intellectual Property Rights in advancing biodiversity data publication, freely available for download through the GBIF Online Resource Centre.
The paper argues that concerns over data quality impede the use of large biodiversity databases ...
Lonely older adults face more health risks
2012-10-25
Montreal, October 25, 2012 – Always look on the bright side of life. Thanks to a new study from Concordia University, this catchy refrain offers a prescription for staying healthy during one's golden years.
Research has shown that lonely older adults are at greater risk of developing health problems but a new study by Carsten Wrosch, a professor in Concordia's Department of Psychology and member of the Centre for Research in Human Development, offers hope. In a forthcoming article in Psychosomatic Medicine, Wrosch proves that older adults who approach life with a positive ...
After-effects of Saturn's super storm shine on
2012-10-25
VIDEO:
This animation shows the evolution of Saturn's 'Great Springtime Storm' in the planet's stratosphere. It is based on observations performed at mid-infrared wavelengths.
As clouds broke out in Saturn's stormy troposphere,...
Click here for more information.
The heat-seeking capabilities of the international Cassini spacecraft and two ground-based telescopes have provided the first look at the aftermath of Saturn's 'Great Springtime Storm'. Concealed from the naked ...
Gene that's usually bad news loses its punch if you live to your 90s, Mayo study finds
2012-10-25
ROCHESTER, Minn. -- A gene linked to the risk of developing Alzheimer's, heart disease and diabetes becomes less important to quality of life once people hit their 90s, a Mayo Clinic study shows. At that point, good friends and a positive attitude have a bigger impact, the researchers say. The findings are published this month in the Journal of American Medical Directors Association.
Researchers used the National Institutes of Health-supported Rochester Epidemiology Project, a database of patient records in Olmsted County, Minn., to find people ages 90 to 99 living on ...
Highlights of the 25th Congress of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology 2012
2012-10-25
In the course of the 25th ECNP Congress leading experts and five and a half thousand psychiatrists, neurologists, neuroscience researchers and public health professionals from over 90 different countries met from 13 to 17 October 2012 in Vienna, Austria, to celebrate ECNP´s 25-year anniversary and engage in groundbreaking debate.
Against the background of the increasing burden of disorders of the brain and restrained drug development in this area, the ECNP Congress once again highlighted the key importance of neuroscience for better treatment and prevention. "Crucially, ...
US NAS and Royal Society Issue Statement on Earthquake Case in Italy
2012-10-25
The case of six Italian scientists sentenced to be jailed for failing to warn of the L'Aquila earthquake in Italy in 2009 highlights the difficult task facing scientists in dealing with risk communication and uncertainty.
We deal with risks and uncertainty all the time in our daily lives. Weather forecasts do not come with guarantees and despite the death tolls on our roads we continue to use bikes, cars, and buses. We have also long built our homes and workplaces in areas known to have a history of earthquakes, floods, or volcanic activity.
Much as society and governments ...