Claas Lahmann

University Medical Center Freiburg · Clinic of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy

About 30-50% of complex dizziness disorders are organically not sufficiently explained or related to a psychiatric disorder. Of patients with such dizziness disorders, 80% are severely impaired by dizziness in their daily and working lives; nevertheless, they are often not diagnosed or treated adequately. This review aims to give a systematic overv...

Background Vertigo and dizziness are often not fully explained by an organic illness, but instead are related to psychiatric disorders. This study aimed to evaluate psychiatric comorbidity and assess psychosocial impairment in a large sample of patients with a wide range of unselected organic and non-organic (ie, medically unexplained) vertigo/dizz...

Despite the frequent observation that vertigo and dizziness (VD) disorders may trigger or exacerbate secondary psychiatric comorbidities, there is limited understanding of the mechanisms underlying this development. To address this gap, we investigated whether symptom-related fears and cognitions as indicated by questionnaire-based measures are med...

Background: Beyond the degree of adiposity, the pattern of fat distribution has a profound influence on cardiometabolic risk. It is unclear if sex differences in body fat distribution can potentially explain any sex differences in the prevalence of the metabolic syndrome (MetS) and in individual cardiometabolic risk factors among obese men and wom...

To improve the health status of teachers, there is a need for good and reliable instruments to continuously assess their mental health. The current study proposed the GHQ-12 questionnaire as an appropriate instrument for measuring the mental health of teachers. The GHQ-12 is a well-established screening instrument that has mostly been applied in no...

Mental Health Screening of Syrian Refugees in Germany: The Refugee Health Screener Objectives: The purpose of the present study was to examine (1) the impact of training in psychotherapy on professional activities and personal life and (2) the frequency of psychotherapy services in primary care and specialty practices. Method: General practitioners...

Background The understanding of the cerebral neurobiology of anorexia nervosa (AN) with respect to state- versus trait-related abnormalities is limited. There is evidence of restitution of structural brain alterations with clinical remission. However, with regard to functional brain abnormalities, this issue has not yet been clarified. Methods We...

Background: Chronic tinnitus is a commonly occurring symptom of the auditory system. Epidemiological studies assume a lifetime prevalence in men and women of 3.5% for chronic tinnitus requiring treatment. Almost 25% of all Germans have experienced at least one episode of tinnitus. No causal therapy is yet available, but numerous treatment strategi...

Objective: Previous diffusion tensor imaging studies reported a reduced fractional anisotropy in the body of the corpus callosum in patients with anorexia nervosa, which may indicate impaired white matter integrity in interhemispheric connections. The aim of the current study was to investigate whether structural connectivity is affected in patien...

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic and the measures to protect the physically vulnerable may disproportionately affect people with mental health vulnerabilities, who receive psychotherapeutic inpatient treatment, as many of these measures impact the (inter)subjective space crucial to psychotherapy. Objective: We investigate how people with pre-ex...

Background Based on promising effects seen in a pilot study evaluating a generic mindfulness-based program for migraine, we developed a migraine-specific adaptation of the Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) program. The aim of this study was to evaluate this program for feasibility and effectiveness in a randomized controlled trial. Method...

In den letzten Jahren und Jahrzehnten hat sich der Lebenswandel vieler Menschen dahingehend verändert, als dass diese sukzessive weniger Zeit in der Natur und in Bewegung verbringen (Guthold et al., 2018). Dies betrifft auch und insbesondere Menschen mit psychischen Erkrankungen (Sander et al., 2018; von Zimmermann et al., 2020) und psychotherapeut...

Despite the growing relevance and applicability of elements based on and derived from the embodied mind paradigm, body psychotherapy (BPT) appears not to be a well-established treatment option. This might be due to a lack of proof for its efficacy. We searched electronic databases (Pubmed MEDLINE, PsycInfo, and PSYNDEX) for randomized controlled tr...

Objective: Aim of the pilot study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a day hospital program for eating disorders (EDs) after implementation of mentalization-based treatment (MBT), including a comparison to a historical matched control group. Method: All consecutively admitted patients with an ED were included in a prospective, observational st...

Introduction: Teaching is considered a mentally challenging occupation. Teacher self-efficacy is a personal resource which buffers the experience of stress and may be important in maintaining mental health. The preventive intervention “Manual-Based Psychological Group Program for Teachers” (MBPGPT) was applied and evaluated state-wide to improve th...

We tested the efficacy of an integrative psychotherapeutic group treatment (IPGT) in reducing vertigo/dizziness-related impairment along with depression, anxiety, and somatization by conducting a randomized controlled superiority trial comparing IPGT to self-help groups moderated by a clinical psychologist (SHG). Adult patients with functional vert...

Introduction Endothelial dysfunction is a very common finding in obesity and metabolic syndrome. The aim of our study was to investigate if longterm weight reduction (WR) success may reverse endothelial activation in individuals with severe obesity participating in a multimodal WR program. Methods Participants with obesity (øBMI 40.3 ±7.5 kg/m²) u...

Objective The aim of this study was to identify and explore mediators of psychodynamic-interpersonal psychotherapy (PIT) on treatment outcome in multisomatoform disorders (MSD). Methods Data from 164 patients with MSD who took part in a randomized control trial of PIT (n = 88) vs. enhanced medical care (EMC; n = 76) were re-analyzed. A parallel me...

In individual psychotherapy verbal communication and movement synchronization are closely interrelated. The microanalysis of timing, rhythm and gestalt of movement has established dynamic movement coordination as a systemic property of the dyadic interaction. Movement synchronization supports and enhances the unfolding of linguistic meaning. In ord...

Background: In the past decades, behavioral medicine has attained global recognition. Due to its global reach, a critical need has emerged to consider whether the original definition of behavioral medicine is still valid, comprehensive, and inclusive, and to reconsider the main tasks and goals of the International Society of Behavioral Medicine (I...

Employees’ mental health impairments are a leading reason for sickness-leave and early retirement. This is why a large number of different intervention programmes have evolved in recent years with the aim of counteracting this development. Our study evaluates a short-term cognitive-behavioral psychotherapeutic intervention off the workplace. We inv...

Background: Unhealthy attitudes towards sport and problematic exercise behavior in eating disorders (ED) are common and associated with poorer treatment outcome and higher relapse rates. There is a need to develop and empirically test interventions that could complement standard treatment. The study aimed to assess the efficacy of the Freiburg spo...

Background: Whole brain radiation therapy (WBRT) is the standard therapy for multiple brain metastases. However, WBRT has a poor local tumor control and is associated with a decline in neurocognitive function (NCF). Aim of this trial is to assess the efficacy and safety of a new treatment method, the WBRT with hippocampus avoidance (HA) combined w...

Patienten mit funktionellen Körperbeschwerden und somatoformen Störungen leiden an ihrem Körper, fühlen sich hilflos im Umgang mit den Körperbeschwerden und haben oft Schwierigkeiten im Kontakt mit anderen. Zwischenmenschliche Konflikte, Selbstwirksamkeit, Körpererleben und die Beziehung zum eigenen Körper – dies sind Ansatzpunkte für die eine oder...

Objective: For cancer patients, the period between hospital discharge and outpatient follow-up can result in “distressand” patients need to be prepared by health care professionals (HCP) for that while being in hospital. Adequate communication is important for that. HCPs have often high levels of stress which can have a negative impact on HCPs’ com...

Objective: Vertigo and dizziness (VD) are frequent symptoms that can occur due to various structural pathologies or due to functional impairment. Independent of their aetiology, the symptoms are often associated with physical and psychological burden which manifests in severe handicap in more than half of the patients. It is suggested that illness...

Zusammenfassung Hintergrund Patienten mit psychischen Erkrankungen werden in unterschiedlichen Versorgungssektoren und Fachgebieten behandelt. Die Indikationsgrenzen zwischen psychiatrischer und psychosomatischer Versorgung, zwischen Akut- und rehabilitativer Versorgung sowie zwischen der ambulanten, teil- und vollstationären Versorgung können nur...

Studies have shown that pain acceptance is associated with a better pain outcome. The current study explored whether changes in pain acceptance in the very early treatment phase of an interdisciplinary cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT)-based treatment program for chronic pain predict pain outcomes. A total of 69 patients with chronic, non-malignan...

Purpose: Pain and depression have been shown to have a bidirectional interaction. Although several outcome studies have been conducted, it is still unclear if and how depression influences pain outcome. The current study aims to further clarify this relationship by comparing the predicting value of an interview- and a questionnaire-based assessment...

Background Clinical outcomes for patients with heterogeneous somatoform disorder (bodily distress disorder, including medically unexplained symptoms) are suboptimal, new treatments are required to improve acceptance. Body-oriented psychological therapy approaches have been identified as potentially beneficial additions to the portfolio of treatment...

BACKGROUND The smartphone-based framework TrackYourStress (TYS) is a new crowdsensing mHealth platform for ecological momentary assessments of perceived stress levels. OBJECTIVE In this pilot study, we investigated whether stress levels change while using TYS and whether stress-level trajectories depend on the individuals’ perceived stress reactiv...

Background: The mobile phone app, TrackYourStress (TYS), is a new crowdsensing mobile health platform for ecological momentary assessments of perceived stress levels. Objective: In this pilot study, we aimed to investigate the time trend of stress levels while using TYS for the entire population being studied and whether the individuals' perceiv...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0205315.].

Background: Intimacy and psychosexual development represents core problems of anorexia nervosa (AN). Experiential and neurobiological evidence however is scarce. Material and methods: Thirty‐one female AN patients were compared with 35 non‐patients (NP) and 22 recovered participants (REC) by using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Participant...

Abstract Introduction: Persistent medically unexplained symptoms (MUS) are a major burden for health care. Cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) is efficacious for patients with MUS, with small to medium effects. The current study investigates whether therapy outcomes of a CBT for MUS patients can be improved by complementing it with emotion regulation...

Muscle dysmorphia (MD) is a condition that is characterized by body image disturbance, a drive for muscularity and excessive exercising. It leads to considerable functional impairment. Most previous studies focused on male samples. The study aimed to validate a German version of the Muscle Dysmorphic Disorder Inventory (MDDI) in order to make the i...

Background: Mental health comorbidities are frequent in patients with vertigo and dizziness. The current study was conducted in a specialized interdisciplinary university center for vertigo and dizziness. Clinical routines consist of a structured work-up in which neuro-otological and neurological tests are performed to first detect possible organic...

Objective: To identify changes in work-related psychological attitudes that influence mental health improvement in school teachers after participation in a psychological group program. Methods: In an exploratory study with N=544 matched cases we combined a screening instrument for general mental health (GHQ) with measures of work-related behavioral...

Electronic supplement. Further information on the analysis conducted in this paper is provided in an electronic supplement, containing extended tables and figures. (PDF)

Anxiety as a risk factor of Alzheimer's disease and vascular dementia – ERRATUM - Eva Becker, Claudia Lorena Orellana Rios, Claas Lahmann, Gerta Rücker, Joachim Bauer, Martin Boeker

OBJECTIVE:To investigate the effect of the number of coaching sessions after communication skills training on the medical communicative performance of oncologists in clinical practice. METHODS/DESIGN:The training, consisting of a workshop and one (control group) vs. four (intervention group) sessions of individual coaching, was evaluated in a rando...

Comparison group difference IG minus CG at t2, baseline t1. Comparison group difference IGxCG, evaluation of the consultations (all items and domains) by external raters at t2, adjusted in mixed regression models for baseline t1, rater, and patient distress. Parameter Estimates refer to the group difference IG minus CG at t2. (DOCX)

Evaluation of the consultations at t0 and t1. Evaluation of the consultations (all items and domains) by external raters at t0 and t1 (scale range: 0–4); p-value from paired t-test to assess differences between t0 and t1. (DOCX)

Comparison group difference IG minus CG at t1, baseline t0. Comparison group difference IG minus CG, evaluation of the consultations (all items and domains) by external raters at t1, adjusted in mixed regression models for baseline t0, rater, and patient distress. Parameter Estimates refer to the group difference IG minus CG at t1. (DOCX)

ComOn-Coaching—Patient sample. (SAV)

Evaluation of the consultations at t0 and t2. Evaluation of the consultations (all items and domains) by external raters at t0 and t2 (scale range: 0–4); p-value from paired t-test to assess differences between t0 and t2. (DOCX)

Comparison group difference IG minus CG at t2, baseline t0. Comparison group difference IGxCG, evaluation of the consultations (all items and domains) by external raters at t2, adjusted in mixed regression models for baseline t0, rater, and patient distress. Parameter Estimates refer to the group difference IG minus CG at t2. (DOCX)

Evaluation of the consultations at t1 and t2. Evaluation of the consultations (all items and domains) by external raters at t1 and t2 (scale range: 0–4); p-value from paired t-test to assess differences between t1 and t2. (DOCX)

ComOn-Coaching—Physicians sample. (SAV)

ComOn-Coaching—Consultation ratings. (SAV)

Background The aetiology of dementia is not yet fully understood. Stress can have a damaging effect on brain health. The prognostic effect of anxiety is still unclear regarding Alzheimer's disease as well as vascular dementia. Aims To explore the association between anxiety and future dementia. Method Medline, PsycINFO, CINAHL, Web of Science and...

Objectives Functional vertigo and dizziness (VD) are frequent and severely distressing complaints that are often described as hard to treat. Our aim was to provide preliminary data on potential effects of multimodal psychosomatic inpatient therapy for patients with functional VD symptoms in reducing vertigo‐related handicap and related psychopathol...