Stress, quality of life, psychopathology and somatic idiom

Recommended Prerequisites

Basic notions of early adversity experiences and their relation with the development of pathology in adults.

Teaching Methods

Lectures with students’ participation.

PowerPoint presentation, videos and other pedagogical material.

Learning Outcomes

Development and psychopathology (Professor Cristina Canavarro)

To recognize the transverse and longitudinal importance of early adversity experiences.

To learn about biological and emotional intermediation mechanisms.

To explore the preventive possibility of social interventions.

To become familiar with life and health quality studies, according to the perspective of the WHO.

To understand pain not only in its biological dimension, but also on social, interpersonal and cultural contexts.

 

Somatization and Discomfort Cultural Languages (Professor Manuel Quartilho)

The objectives are centered around the acquisition of concepts related with the somatization process and cultural languages of discomfort in a medical and anthropological perspective. The student must learn all elements concerning historical evolution of present somatization concepts, clinical and cultural functional symptoms and unsolved dilemmas inside doctor-patient relation. Students must develop comprehension and research competences regarding clinical and communitarian perspective, stressing interpersonal, social and cultural aspects.

Work Placement(s)

No

Syllabus

Life quality and health (Professor Cristina Canavarro)

1. Individual, life quality and health

2. Communities, life quality and health

3. Life quality in WHO perspective

 

Development and psychopathology: importance and impact of early adversity experiences (Professor Cristina Canavarro)

1. Dysfunctional values in childhood

2. Childhood adversity experiences, physical and mental health in adulthood

3. Childhood adversity and mental-physical comorbidity in adulthood

 

Pain metamorphosis (Professor Manuel Quartilho)

Pain concepts and theories. Biopsychosocial approaches to pain.

Clinical evaluation of pain.

Acute pain developing into chronic pain.

Functional pain syndromes.

Personality characteristics and coping patterns.

The incapacity issue.

Childhood experiences and chronic pain in adulthood.

Pain and culture – anthropological perspective.

 

Somatization and Discomfort Cultural Languages (Professor Manuel Quartilho)

Concepts: hysteria, neurasthenia, psychosomatic model, sociosomatic model, disease behavior, somatoform disorders, functional somatic syndromes. Integrated somatization model. 2. Assessment and Treatment. 3. The Mind-Body Problem and Psychosomatic Medicine. 4. The specific case of Fibromyalgia and the processes of social construction of “contested” diagnosis. Therapeutic approaches in the mind-body medicine.

Assessment Methods

Continuous
Synthesis work: 100.0%

Bibliography

Hankin, B., Abela, J. (2005). Development of Psychopathology – A Vulnerability-Stress Perspective. Sage.

 

Canavarro, M. C. e Vaz Serra, A. (2010). Qualidade de vida e saúde: Uma abordagem na perspectiva da Organização Mundial de Saúde. Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian.

 

David B. Morris (1991). The Culture of Pain. University of California Press

 

Robert Gatchel and Dennis Turk, Eds. (1999). Psychosocial Factors in Pain. The Guilford Press.

 

Delvecchio Good, M-J et al. (1992). Pain as Human Experience – An Anthropological Perspective. University of California Press.

 

Laurence Kirmayer and James Robbins, Eds (1991). Current Concepts of Somatization. American Psychiatric Press.

 

Anne Harrington (2008). The Cure Within – A History of Mind-Body Medicine

 

Francis Creed, Peter Henningsen and Per Fink (2011). Medically Unexplained Symptoms, Somatisation and Bodily Distress. Cambridge University Press.