Anna Higgitt

National Health Service | NHS

This article is based on an exhaustive review of the psychotherapy outcomes literature, undertaken originally at the instigation of the UK Department of Health by Roth and Fonagy (Department of Health, 1995). We have recently updated this review (Fonagy, Target, Cottrell, Phillips, & Kurtz, 2002; Roth & Fonagy, 2004) and extended it to identify all...

![Figure][1] This publication is a collaborative endeavour by international authors with expertise that can guide planned responses to terrorism, in particular bioterrorism. Ursano ([2002][2]) has listed the goals of terrorism as: erosion of national security; disruption of the continuity

Notwithstanding a history of over 100 years, psychoanalytically informed psychological therapies have a poor evidence base. This paper provides a selective review of trials of brief psychodynamic psychotherapies and an overview of mostly follow-up or follow-along studies of long-term more intensive psychoanalytic therapy. In relation to the treatme...

The aim of this study was to determine the factors associated with receipt of different levels of shared care, and the effect of shared care on patient outcomes. A total of 349 patients with severe mental illness were selected from general practice lists. Patient functioning was assessed using standardised questionnaires, and GPs completed a questi...

A number of themes have run through health policy initiatives of the two Labour Governments of the past 5 years: modernisation; stigma; inequalities and social exclusion; partnerships; involvement of users and carers. But perhaps the most important from the point of view of mental health professionals is the initiative to alter the culture within w...

Clinical effectiveness - Volume 181 Issue 2 - Anna Higgitt, Peter Fonagy

The isolation experienced by many patients with severe psychotic disorders is generally assumed to be due to their social withdrawal. An alternative possibility is that relatives avoid frequent contact with patients because they find the situation distressing. To examine the predictors of frequent patient-relative contact, in particular the role of...

It is unclear whether intensive case management influences the prevalence of suicidal behaviour in patients with psychosis. To compare the effect of intensive case management and standard care on prevalence of suicidal behaviour in patients with chronic psychosis. Patients with established psychosis (n = 708) were randomised either to intensive cas...

• Part 1.. General Framework and the Health of the Community • 1.. Healthy Societies: An Overview / J. Fraser Mustard • 2.. Socioeconomic and Behavioral Differences in Health, Morbidity, and Mortality in Kansas: Empirical Data, Models, and Analyses / J. Fraser Mustard • 3.. Social Cohesion and Health / Ichiro Kawachi • 4.. Building Healthy Communit...

Patients' beliefs about the causes of anxiety problems have received comparatively little attention. In the present study, agoraphobic patients rated the contribution of eight factors in causing their condition. They also selected the major cause of their agoraphobia and evaluated that in relation to the elements of attributional style. The most co...

The intensity of putative benzodiazepine withdrawal symptoms was evaluated as part of a double blind placebo-controlled study of benzodiazepines and behaviour therapy in the management of agoraphobia. During the first phase of that study, some subjects were switched from low dose diazepam to placebo, and others remained on diazepam. Symptoms were e...

Dependency on prescribed drugs - Volume 6 Issue 2 - Robert Butler, Anna Higgitt

The aim of this paper is to identify a theoretical framework which may provide a meaningful context for developing practical interventions to build upon the concept of resilience. In so doing I shall briefly consider the importance of the concept, what is known about it, and then focus on a specific facet of the problem: intergenerational transmiss...

In a study designed to evaluate the impact of benzodiazepine use on the outcome of behaviour therapy, 91, severe, chronic agoraphobics (46 BDZ users and 45 non-users) were randomly allocated on a double-blind basis to in vivo exposure with low-dose diazepam (ED) or placebo (EP). Drug doses were adjusted on the basis of weekly psychiatric assessment...

This paper presents a summary of the Anna Freud Centre-University College London, Parent-Child Project. Its most important finding was that the security of the infants' relationship with both parents at 12 and 18 months could be predicted on the basis of qualitative aspects of the parents' accounts of their own childhoods collected before the birth...

Psychodynamic concepts about borderline personality disorder are reviewed and the literature concerning psychotherapeutic treatment of this group is examined. The treatment contexts considered include: psychoanalysis and intensive (expressive) psychoanalytic psychotherapy, supportive psychotherapy, group psychotherapy, family therapy, in-patient tr...

c1 Anna Higgitt, Consultant Psychiatrist, St Charles Hospital, Exmoor Street, London W10 6DZ, UK.

Epidemiologists and psychoanalysts have been equally concerned about the intergenera-tional concordance of disturbed patterns of attachment. Mary Main's introduction of the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) has provided the field with an empirical tool for examining the concordance of parental and infant attachment patterns. In the context of a pros...

Epidemiologists and psychoanalysts have been equally concerned about the intergenera‐tional concordance of disturbed patterns of attachment. Mary Main's introduction of the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) has provided the field with an empirical tool for examining the concordance of parental and infant attachment patterns. In the context of a pros...

In an attempt to establish whether prolonged withdrawal symptoms after stopping intake of benzodiazepines is caused by return of anxiety, hysteria, abnormal illness behaviour or the dependence process itself producing perhaps a prolonged neurotransmitter imbalance, a group of such patients suffering prolonged withdrawal symptoms (PWS) was compared...

Studies of body size estimation are frequently used to identify body-image disturbances in clinical populations. No clear pattern of results has, however, so far emerged. One reason for this may be that studies confound non-sensory influences on performance deriving from motivational components with the observer's discriminative sensitivity. This s...

The recent research literature on the effects of benzodiazepines is reviewed, with special emphasis on findings relevant for the practising clinician. The mode of action, patterns of use and abuse potential of benzodiazepines are discussed. The evidence on the risks of dependency and possible drawbacks of long-term use are examined. The possible ef...

Conceptual and practical issues which surround attempts at assessing the efficiency of psychotherapy departments are surveyed and the advantages and disadvantages associated with performance indicators reviewed. The issues of assessing efficiency in general and the selection of appropriate indicators at both national and local levels are discussed....

Dependence on benzodiazepines following continued use is by now a well-documented clinical phenomenon. Benzodiazepines differ in their dependence potential. The present studies were aimed at examining the possibility that differential rates of tolerance development might account for differences in dependence risk. Four studies are reported. The fir...

By interviewing and administering questionnaires to 63 patients one to five years after treatment for benzodiazepine dependence the long-term success rate was examined together with factors associated with outcome. Fifty-four per cent of patients had permanently withdrawn from medication at follow-up. Most of those who were successful continued to...

Sixteen patients referred for withdrawal from their chronic benzodiazepine usage were treated over a 28-week period using a primarily cognitive approach in a group or on an individual basis using telephone contact. The withdrawal regime was individually tailored for each patient according to the intensity of withdrawal symptoms. Anxiety management...

Sixteen patients referred for withdrawal from their chronic benzodiazepine usage were treated over a 28-week period using a primarily cognitive approach in a group or on an individual basis using telephone contact. The withdrawal regime was individually tailored for each patient according to the intensity of withdrawal symptoms. Anxiety management...

Ro 15-1788 is an imidazodiazepine which was initially described as a pure benzodiazepine antagonist lacking in intrinsic actions. Although recent animal work has shown the drug to have differing intrinsic actions depending on the dose, the majority of studies on human subjects conclude that it is a pure antagonist of benzodiazepines. Two oral doses...

The development of dependence after the long term use of benzodiazepines is now supported both by clinical evidence and by the results of double blind studies.(1-3) Withdrawal symptoms have been reported after treatment for as little as four to six weeks.(4 5) The withdrawal symptoms observed are wide ranging, and, while they include some related t...

address the protective function of the capacity mentally to represent emotions and cognitions in self and other / our aim will be to show that the extent to which mental states, emotions and cognitions, are incorporated into internal working models . . . relates to security of attachment in adults, their ability to foster secure attachments in thei...

A case of a psychotic episode following Erhard Seminars Training is reported. This is the first reported case of adverse psychological effects from this type of training in Great Britain but it closely resembles previous reports from the United States of America. The possibility of a distinct syndrome is tentatively raised. The apparent rarity of s...

From the studies referred to here and others, we may conclude that early preventive interventions have the potential, in the short term, to improve children's health and welfare (including better nutrition and physical health and fewer feeding problems, low-birth-weight babies, and accident and emergency room visits, as well as a reduced potential...

Structural and symptomatic change in psychoanalysis and psychodynamic psychotherapy of young adults: A quantitative study of process and outcome [Abstract]