I do not know what else to do: caregivers’ perspective on reassurance seeking in OCD

Excessive Reassurance Seeking (ERS) is an under-researched and poorly understood behavior that resembles the compulsive behaviors that are typically seen in OCD. ERS can be complex, persistent, extensive, debilitating and may dominate people’s interactions. In addition to resembling compulsive checking in OCD it may also have the effect of transferring responsibility to others. Caregivers are frequently asked to take part in a range of rituals as part of the OCD sufferer’s problem, often seeing it as a way of supporting the sufferer. We are still in the early stages of understanding the factors that elicit and maintain these responses in caregivers. The present investigation considered the interpersonal components of ERS by applying an in-depth analysis using qualitative methods in the context of an interview of caregivers who provide reassurance to OCD sufferers. Ten interviews were conducted and analysed using thematic analysis. Seven overarching themes were identified as important in the experience of being asked for and providing reassurance. These concern factors such as how people seek reassurance, how they process it, why other people give it and so on. A particularly pervasive theme was caregivers’ experience of frustration in the face of ERS. Clinical implications of the findings are discussed

Carer's perception of and reaction to reassurance seeking in obsessive compulsive disorder

The purpose of the present study is to explore the experience of being asked for reassurance from the perspective of carers of OCD sufferers, and to examine its relationship to sufferers’ reassurance seeking by a direct comparison with data obtained from the person they normally offer reassurance to. Forty-two individuals with OCD and their carers completed alternate versions of the Reassurance Seeking Questionnaire. Result suggest that carers report most commonly providing reassurance when asked to do so, and the frequency of their reassurance provision is associated with how carefully sufferers seek reassurance, rather than their OCD symptom severity. The carer's perspectives on the impact of reassurance provision was accurate; both sufferers and carers perceive that reassurance works only temporarily, but even if the anxiety-relieving effect of reassurance decreases in the medium term, it is likely to be perceived as beneficial because carers accurately perceived that sufferers would feel much worse if they refuse to provide reassurance. The present study is the first to quantitatively investigate carer’s experiences of reassurance provision, and elucidate why carers feel the need to provide it

Change, Choice, and Commercialization: Backpacker Routes in Southeast Asia

South-East Asia has the oldest and largest backpacker trails. This paper examines the geographies of such flows, drawing upon the largest survey to date of backpackers in Asia using qualitative research to survey the key changes from the 1970s to the 2000s. Backpacker trails have changed significantly and new routes have emerged including the ‘northern trail’ (Bangkok - Cambodia - Vietnam - Laos). It is to be expected that routes change as backpackers constantly seek new places, pioneering for later mass tourism. However, this paper suggests that using institutionalization as a framework, these changing trails and backpacker ‘choices’ can be seen as driven by growing commercialization and institutionalization. This then operates in combination with external variables (travel innovations - low cost airlines, and new transport networks); exogenous shock (political instability, terrorism); and growing regional competition from emerging destinations such as Vietnam and Cambodia

MicroRNAs in lung diseases: Figure 1

The advent of RNA sequencing technology has stimulated rapid advances in our understanding of the transcriptome, including discovery of the vast RNA complement generated by transcript splice variation and the expansion of our knowledge of non-coding RNAs. One non-coding RNA subtype, microRNAs (miRNAs), are particularly well studied, primarily because of their important roles as post-transcriptional gene regulators. The first miRNA was identified in the early 1990s and there are now thought to be around 1000 distinct miRNAs in man, with each cell type expressing a distinct repertoire. Increasing evidence has implicated miRNAs as having causative roles in a variety of lung diseases and has driven investigations into their potential as therapeutic targets