There are two major reasons for the continuing interest in the problem of 'spontaneous remission' in psychotherapy: (1) the basic problem of whether the phenomenon is indeed 'real'; that is, whether there is a general tendency for
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What is spontaneous remission cancer?
The term spontaneous remissionor spontaneous regression(SR) of cancer translates into the recovery of a patient from cancer in the absence of a disease-specific treatment or in the presence of inadequate therapy [4]. The recovery, therefore, does not involve conventional cancer treatment modalities such as chemotherapy or radiotherapy.
Can remission rates be measured without treatment?
If remission rates without treatment can be known, researchers may be better able to evaluate treatment effectiveness. A longitudinal study could help determine which treatments are effective above and beyond spontaneous remission. 3. Meta-Studies
What is the rate of spontaneous remission from addiction?
Estimates of the rate of spontaneous remission from addiction have ranged from 4% to nearly 60%. Why do some people spontaneously recover and others don’t? Does it mean there is hope for people who are addicted that they will one day be able to “just say no”?
Can you go into remission from addiction?
Left untreated, these conditions are also often fatal. But just as is the case with other serious diseases, some people will experience spontaneous remission from addiction. In theory, these people are simply fed up with substance abuse or alcoholism and stop using outright.
What is spontaneous remission in psychology?
Spontaneous remission refers to the achievement of subclinical levels of physical or psychological symptoms of a specific condition without the aid of psychological, medical, or pharmacological treatment.
How can the placebo effect be responsible for a patient's improvement during therapy?
The mind can even sometimes trick you into believing that a fake treatment has real therapeutic results, a phenomenon that is known as the placebo effect. In some cases, placebos can exert an influence powerful enough to mimic the effects of real medical treatments.
What does full remission mean in mental health?
Full remission is defined as a period of improvement of sufficient magnitude such that the individual is virtually asymptomatic. The term relapse refers to the return of symptoms during remission, while recurrence implies a completely new episode of depression.
What does remission mean in depression?
Remission in the DSM-5 According to the DSM-5, a diagnosis of full remission of depression requires you to go at least 2 months with no significant symptoms of depression. Partial remission is classified in the DSM-5 as having some symptoms of major depression present but no longer meeting the full criteria for MDD.
How do psychotherapists help people gain control over their lives?
Psychotherapy aims to enable patients, or clients, to recognize both positive and negative feelings, and what triggers or situations can make them feel good, nervous, or depressed. This allows them to cope with difficulties in a more constructive way.
Why is placebo effect important in psychology?
The placebo effect is when an improvement of symptoms is observed, despite using a nonactive treatment. It's believed to occur due to psychological factors like expectations or classical conditioning. Research has found that the placebo effect can ease things like pain, fatigue, or depression.
What is considered remission?
Remission means that the signs and symptoms of your cancer are reduced. Remission can be partial or complete. In a complete remission, all signs and symptoms of cancer have disappeared. If you remain in complete remission for 5 years or more, some doctors may say that you are cured.
What does full remission mean?
The disappearance of all signs of cancer in response to treatment. This does not always mean the cancer has been cured. Also called complete response.
Can mental illness go into remission?
Recovery and remission is possible for individuals with serious mental illness, despite the common misconception that they are progressive, chronically debilitating diseases. Like any chronic illness, schizophrenia and severe bipolar disorder are episodic diseases with waxing and waning symptomology.
Can you go into remission with depression?
Being in remission means that the depressed individual has been able to return to a normal level of social functioning. Remission is one of several outcomes for patients with depression (Figure 3). Before a patient is considered to be in remission, the patient must respond to treatment.
Does major depressive disorder go into remission?
While the treatment goal of MDD is complete remission of all symptoms and the patient's return to full-functioning capacity, if physical symptoms persist, the patient does not achieve functional recovery.
Is remission from anxiety possible?
“We were so encouraged to learn that even among those whose anxiety disorders had lasted a decade or longer, half had been in remission from GAD for the past year and one-quarter had achieved excellent mental health and well-being,” says Esme Fuller-Thomson, lead author of the study.
What is spontaneous remission?
In short, spontaneous remission from drug addiction refers to the phenomenon where an addict or alcoholic will summarily stop using or drinking without any type of treatment or forced sobriety such as incarceration or an inability to procure the addictive substance.
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Does spontaneous remission depend on the severity of the problem?
However, this phenomenon isn’t very well understood, and according to some, the rates of spontaneous remission depend on the severity and duration of the problem, and even the types of substances used: “The limited prospective evidence suggests that “remission” from dependence may occur relatively frequently but rates may differ across drugs.
Is there research on remission from drug dependence?
There is very little research on remission from drug dependence; definitions used are often imprecise and inconsistent across studies and there remains considerable uncertainty about the longitudinal course of dependence upon these most commonly used illicit drugs.”. (1)
Is it possible to measure spontaneous remission?
Finally, spontaneous remission from addiction is difficult to measure in any meaningful way because by the time most people finally get clean and sober, it’s likely that they have tried a number of different types of drug addiction treatment.
Studies
Studies have shown that cases of spontaneous remission that are not reported outnumber those reported by at least 10 to 1 and cases related with some disorders have a spontaneous remission rate that appears to be about 1 percent per year.
Mechanisms
The mechanisms for spontaneous recovery are active in many health disorders and also seem to occur in debilitating and progressive diseases such as cancer and tuberculosis. In some disorders the mechanisms of spontaneous remission may be impaired but can be re-established with the proper therapy.
Reports
The term anecdotal evidence is often mentioned by medical researchers in conjunction with cases of spontaneous remission. It refers to the descriptions of remissions by those who directly experienced the process or by those who observed it.
What is spontaneous recovery?
Spontaneous recovery can be defined as the reappearance of the conditioned response after a rest period or period of lessened response. If the conditioned stimulus and unconditioned stimulus are no longer associated, extinction will occur very rapidly after a spontaneous recovery.
What happens when you pair something with an unconditioned stimulus?
After repeatedly pairing something with the unconditioned stimulus, the previously neutral stimulus will begin to trigger the same reaction, at which point it becomes known as a conditioned stimulus. The learned reaction to the conditioned stimulus is now referred to as the conditioned response .
What is classical conditioning?
Classical conditioning involves forming an association between a neutral stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus that naturally and automatically produces a response. Flinching in response to a loud sound or salivating in response to the smell of dinner cooking in the oven are both examples of unconditioned stimuli.
What is the stimulus in the Little Albert experiment?
For example, in the famous Little Albert experiment, researchers John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner repeatedly paired a loud sound (the unconditioned stimulus) with the presentation of a white rat (the neutral stimulus). The child in their experiment was previously unafraid of the animal but naturally frightened by the loud noise ...