Joav Merrick

In this yearbook for 2014 we present you with the latest research on pain management. We start out with the ethical mind of "Dr Feelgood", discuss social isolation among adults with chronic pain and you will also find several chapters related to mindfulness and pain. Oncologic pain is discussed and dated in many chapters and it is our hope that you as the reader will find the information of interest and useful.

In this yearbook for 2012 we present you with the latest research on pain management. We start our with experience from Hong Kong on palliative care and the four year training program and then further along the pages of this yearbook you will find information about pain, psychological symptoms and prescription drug misuse in HIV, oxygen therapy in patients with advanced lung disease, pain beliefs and pain-related profiles of older persons living in nursing homes, happiness among community-dwelling older persons, fibromyalgia in women, chronic headache, pain management programs, and the role of radiotherapy for the management of painful bone metastases. It is our hope that you as the reader will find the information of interest and useful.

In this yearbook for 2011 we start out with a description of research from the University of Toronto in Canada on bone metastases. The next section also from the Odette Cancer Centre, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre is about brain metastases, a frequent manifestation of advanced cancer devastating to the patient as typically patients do not survive more than a year upon diagnosis and the treatment itself often results in significant side effects that impact a patients quality of life. The next section is on neuroplasticity, which reflects the ability of human brain to alter the pattern of neural activation in response to previous experience, and recent findings indicate that the effects of experience can lead to both structural as well as functional reorganisation. If neuromodulatory approaches prove to be safe and effective, they could change the current view of best practice in pain management and assume a significant role in the clinic. This yearbook will present you with the latest research on pain management.

Pain is a common issue among the elderly. Common causes of pain in this population include angina, arthritis, bone and joint disorders, neuropathies, and other chronic conditions. When we become more aware of the importance of healthy aging, we often neglect the significance of pain management in older adults and, therefore, pain in older adults is often under-treated. Pain under-treatment in this population is the result of misconceptions regarding the aging process, difficulty accessing care, and the stigma associated with admission of pain and reluctance to medicate. In fact, unrelieved pain has a severe impact on both the individual and the society, which further increases the burden of medical and social services. Given the aging population globally and the increasing burden on medical and social services, it is worthwhile to empower older adults to be more independent and take more responsibility in their aging process via the use of various non-pharmacological strategies. It is our hope that this research will increase the quality of life for this population and save health care resources and expenses in the long term. In this book, you will find information on non-pharmacological approaches to manage pain, which we hope will be of use to the reader.

Holistic medicine, or quality of life as medicine, as we often call it, is basically a strategy for improving the patients quality of life, through mobilising of inner resources. This can never harm and will almost always benefit the patient's wellbeing and often also help him or her to fight back the disease. The cure is very much the same for all patients: Help to know yourself better and to step into character and be more yourself, and more in tune with the universe. So it can be started right away, also without a specific diagnosis. Is modern, holistic medicine powerful? Oh yes, very much so. Holistic medicine is a truly powerful medicine, in spite of nobody really understanding the deepest structures of consciousness, the connection between mind and body, and the way holistic medicine works. But just because our scientific understanding admittedly still is limited we should not stop doing what we know works. In this book the authors cover the basic principles of healing and ethics of traditional Hippocratic medicine from a new and modern scientific approach.

Holistic medicine, or quality of life as medicine, as we often call it, is basically a strategy for improving the patients quality of life, through mobilising of inner resources. This can never harm and will almost always benefit the patient's wellbeing and often also help him or her to fight back the disease. The cure is very much the same for all patients: Help to know yourself better and to step into character and be more yourself, and more in tune with the universe. So it can be started right away, also without a specific diagnosis. Is modern, holistic medicine powerful? Oh yes, very much so. Holistic medicine is a truly powerful medicine, in spite of nobody really understanding the deepest structures of consciousness, the connection between mind and body, and the way holistic medicine works. But just because our scientific understanding admittedly still is limited we should not stop doing what we know works. In this book the authors cover the basic principles of healing and ethics of traditional Hippocratic medicine from a new and modern scientific approach.

Holistic medicine, or quality of life as medicine, as we often call it, is basically a strategy for improving the patients quality of life, through mobilising of inner resources. This can never harm and will almost always benefit the patient's wellbeing and often also help him or her to fight back the disease. The cure is very much the same for all patients: Help to know yourself better and to step into character and be more yourself, and more in tune with the universe. So it can be started right away, also without a specific diagnosis. Is modern, holistic medicine powerful? Oh yes, very much so. Holistic medicine is a truly powerful medicine, in spite of nobody really understanding the deepest structures of consciousness, the connection between mind and body, and the way holistic medicine works. But just because our scientific understanding admittedly still is limited we should not stop doing what we know works. In this book the authors cover sexology in traditional Hippocratic medicine from a new and modern scientific approach.

Holistic medicine, or quality of life as medicine, as we often call it, is basically a strategy for improving the patients quality of life, through mobilising of inner resources. This can never harm and will almost always benefit the patient's wellbeing and often also help him or her to fight back the disease. The cure is very much the same for all patients: Help to know yourself better and to step into character and be more yourself, and more in tune with the universe. So it can be started right away, also without a specific diagnosis. Is modern, holistic medicine powerful? Oh yes, very much so. Holistic medicine is a truly powerful medicine, in spite of nobody really understanding the deepest structures of consciousness, the connection between mind and body, and the way holistic medicine works. But just because our scientific understanding admittedly still is limited we should not stop doing what we know works. In this book the authors cover research, philosophy, economy and politics of traditional Hippocratic medicine from a new and modern scientific approach.

Holistic medicine, or quality of life as medicine, as we often call it, is basically a strategy for improving the patients quality of life, through mobilising of inner resources. This can never harm and will almost always benefit the patient's wellbeing and often also help him or her to fight back the disease. The cure is very much the same for all patients: Help to know yourself better and to step into character and be more yourself, and more in tune with the universe. So it can be started right away, also without a specific diagnosis. Is modern, holistic medicine powerful? Oh yes, very much so. Holistic medicine is a truly powerful medicine, in spite of nobody really understanding the deepest structures of consciousness, the connection between mind and body, and the way holistic medicine works. But just because our scientific understanding admittedly still is limited we should not stop doing what we know works. In this book the authors cover the basic principles of healing and ethics of traditional Hippocratic medicine from a new and modern scientific approach.

Young people are regarded as future assets of the society. Hence, adolescent prevention programs are commonly developed to tackle adolescent risk behaviour and positive youth development programs are designed to promote holistic development in adolescents. However, a survey of the literature shows that research on adolescents is mainly confined to the Western societies. For Chinese psychologists, paediatricians, psychiatrists, and allied human service workers, knowledge about adolescent development is largely developed in the Western culture. To what extent is Western knowledge on adolescent development applicable to Chinese young people? Are Chinese adolescent risk behaviours similar to those in Western societies? To what extent are intervention programs, such as adolescent prevention programs, applicable to Chinese people? These are important questions to be addressed by human service professionals working with Chinese adolescents and their families.

Looking back over the course of the three-plus decades of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, scholars and researchers have made many significant strides in understanding and responding to HIV and AIDS. From the inception of the HIV/AIDS epidemic during the early 1980s until the mid-1990s, when highly active antiretroviral treatment (HAART) was introduced as an innovative and highly-effective way of controlling HIV and HIV-related diseases, the "average" person diagnosed as being HIV-positive could expect to live for several months and if lucky, for a few years. Today, with the medical advances that have been made in the fight against HIV/AIDS, people who have contracted HIV usually can expect to live relatively healthy lives, in most instances for many years without experiencing any serious complications of HIV disease. This book focuses on the social science aspects of current HIV research.

Adolescent substance abuse is a growing concern in Hong Kong and there has been several peaks in adolescent substance abuse in the past two decades. In fact, these peaks mirrored the global trend of abusing non-opiate psychotropic substances and the growing belief among young people that psychotropic substance abuse is non-addictive and it is a trendy choice of life. Evidence-based practice is still very primitive in the fields of youth work and adolescent prevention in Hong Kong and there are many obstacles involved. This book examines how adolescent prevention and positive youth development programs can be developed in different Chinese contexts.

Rett Syndrome is a severe neuro-developmental disorder characterised by losses in the areas of intellectual functioning, fine and gross motor skills and communicative ability. Other features include deceleration of head growth and the development of stereotypic hand movements, occurring after a period of apparently normal development. This book examines the history of Rett Syndrome, as well as the considerable research being conducted in this particular field including a study which presents the reversal of Rett Syndrome signs in a mouse model in the laboratory of Adrian Birds. Due to the rapid progression of gene therapy and the vast interest of the global scientific community, it is probable that within a matter of years a cure can be found for individuals with Rett Syndrome.

Mental illness comes in many qualities and many degrees, from the young patient with low self-esteem and incomplete psychosexual development, to the patient with severe depression, anxiety, personality disturbances, social phobia, paranoia, mental delusions, or even severe autism, and schizophrenia with hallucinations and complete lack of sense of coherence and sense of reality. The fundamental idea of mental disorders in holistic psychiatry is that they ascend from existential isolation that grows from a specific lack of self-insight and understanding of the inner logic of life. This book presents and discusses the principles of holistic psychiatry in order to increase the use of this treatment among patients diagnosed with a mental illness.

We live in a time when the environment makes headlines, especially in association with global climate change and the potential human impact on the planet. It is remarkable that even now, with the environment becoming an important issue in world politics, we still do not really know how or to what extent our environment interacts with our brain and overall physiology. The environment is intricately and, from a research standpoint, hopelessly, multifactorial. The effects of global climate change may be readily seen not only in the thermoregulatory response to temperature fluctuation. This book discusses the environment and its influence on mood disorders and suicide from a scientific perspective.

Over the past 60 years, the world has seen gradual and hard-won progress in reducing child mortality and improving the lives of opportunities of children. Some of this is attributable to medical science, much of it to simple but effective public health measures. Even though 24,000 children continue to die each day from preventable causes, this represents a dramatic improvement, and progress continues to be made. Climate change threatens to undo all of this progress, and wipe out the gains of decades. The threat of rising sea levels, the potential loss of productive farmland and the potential threat to water supplies are all profound concerns, and threaten the well-being of children and communities around the world. This book examines the connection between climate action and the future of childrens' health.

Happiness at work.......your quality of life and sometimes your life depends on it. Work is an important part of the life of the modern man, as it always has been, but work has become more complicated that before. Today what we do is often done as a part of a large organisation. The work is often abstract manipulation of matter or information, and the value created by the single member of the organisation has become increasingly difficult to measure. Organisations have become increasingly responsible for not only the physical work environment, but also for the mental working environment, and factors like stress and sexual harassment are becoming more and more regulated by company rules and culture. The health of the employees has become a major financial interest of the company as only healthy employees and leaders can perform optimally. Often the companies have health insurance for their people. Today employees and leaders also expect work to provide their life with meaning and stimulating experiences and developing challenges. Scholarly knowledge is substituted with experiential learning in a developing and dynamic environment. Society is developing fast and only companies with modern, well-oriented and culturally integrated employees can win the competition by offering costumers, clients or patients the best products and services. A strong association between quality of life, development of personal character, self-realisation, development of talents and skills, physical and mental health, meaning of life, sense of coherence and similar core concepts of modern medical and psychosocial sciences have in many studies now been strongly associated with work satisfaction, joy on the job and similar concepts. The scientific challenge we have taken upon our shoulders is to put the whole messy and chaotic area in order, and create a formula according to which the actual integrated status of worker can be calculated. We have decided to call the integrated concept of all above mentioned dimensions for working life quality, similar to the well-known global quality of life concept in medicine and social sciences. We are proud to present, in the present book, a mathematical formula from which the created value of an employee or leader can be known, if only the working life quality is known. We also provide a questionnaire for measuring the quality of working life, based on a theory of quality of working life. We have in a study on a random sample of the Danish population found a strong statistical association between the measured quality of working life and health. We started the research in quality of working life in 1994, and the first version of the QWL-theory was ready in 1996. In 1997 it was empirically tested in a study involving 1,500 persons and 30 companies. After adjusting the questionnaire and analysis of the data we further improved our understanding to the level that we are happy to present in this book, based on a number of published scientific papers.