Joan Carles Medina

• Doctor of Psychology
• Lecturer at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

Objectives Breast cancer (BC) impacts the patients’ quality of life. Peer support can provide emotional understanding and enhances access to information, social support, coping strategies, and empowerment. Comunitats is an online peer support community app for BC survivors that involves healthcare professionals. This study aims to explore how parti...

Introduction Breast cancer often leads to cancer-related cognitive impairment (CRCI), which includes both objective and subjective cognitive deficits. While psychosocial interventions benefit quality of life and distress reduction, their impact on cognitive deficits is uncertain. This study evaluates the integration of a cognitive module into a dig...

Objectives: Breast cancer (BC) impacts the patient’s quality of life. Peer support can provide emotional understanding as well as enhance information access, social support, and coping strategies, aligning with empowerment. Comunitats is an online peer support community addressed to BC survivors, involving healthcare professionals. This study aims...

Breast cancer is associated with adverse physical and psychological consequences. Although research has identified the various benefits linked to psychosocial interventions, mixed results have been found in relation to peer support. The aim of the present systematic review and meta-ethnography is to explore the qualitative evidence on the experienc...

Background: Receiving a diagnosis of lung cancer is an emotional event, not least because it is usually diagnosed at advanced stages with limited life expectancy. Although evidence-based educational, emotional, and social interventions exist, they reach few patients and usually when it is too late. Objective: This project will be carried out in...

Background Despite the burden associated to depression, current standards of care are still limited in scope and effectiveness. In addition, therapy outcomes have frequently focused solely on symptoms, leaving patients’ wellbeing relatively unaddressed. Aims The objective of this study was to test whether two cognitive therapies increased subjecti...

Introduction Clients with Eating Disorders may be treated as inpatients (IP), day hospital (DH) or community patients (Ambu). The ITAMITED study is following to treatment termination (or end of October 2025) all new clients with EDs presenting between November 2017 and October 2020 to eight centres in Spain. Objectives To describe to what extent i...

Introduction A major revolution in psychiatry since the late 20th and early 21st Century has sought to put the individual client at the heart of intervention, promoting shared decision making. Increasing use of patient reported outcome measures (PROMs) to evaluate interventions and even steer therapies (“power assisted steering for psychotherapy”,...

Health education and psychosocial interventions prevent emotional distress, and the latter has been shown to have an impact on survival. In turn, digital health education interventions may help promote equity by reaching a higher number of cancer patients, both because they avoid journeys to the hospital, by and having a better efficiency. A total...

Background Psychological interventions are commonly used to treat mild-to-moderate depression, but their efficacy in young adults has not been exhaustively addressed. This meta-analysis aims to establish it in comparison to no treatment, wait-list, usual treatment, passive interventions, and other bona-fide treatments. Methods The search was condu...

Background/Objective Fibromyalgia is a chronic pain syndrome that depressive symptoms can aggravate. The aim of the present study was to test the efficacy of Personal Construct Therapy (PCT), an approach that emphasizes identity features and interpersonal meanings as the focus of the treatment of depressive symptoms, in women with fibromyalgia. Me...

Background/Objective Environmental factors such as psychosocial stress have demonstrated to have an impact on the breast cancer (BC) course. This study aims to explore the impact of psychotherapy and stressful life events (SLE) on BC survivors’ illness trajectories. Method 68 women with BC underwent Positive Psychotherapy or Cognitive-Behavioral S...

Psychosocial interventions prevent emotional distress and facilitate adaptation in breast cancer (BC). However, conventional care presents accessibility barriers that eHealth has the potential to overcome. ICOnnecta’t is a stepped digital ecosystem designed to build wellbeing and reduce psychosocial risks during the cancer journey through a Europea...

Declaración de Conflicto de intereses: Cabe señalar que el contenido del manuscrito y los datos de este trabajo no han sido publicados previamente, ni tampoco están siendo considerados en otra revista. ABSTRACT Introduction: After the declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic, health services have had to adapt to be delivered by eHealth tools. Cancer po...

Background The improvement of psychological treatments for depression in young adults is a pressing issue highlighted in the literature. Its relevance is determined not only because young adults are underrepresented in research, but also to prevent chronic severe mental health disorders later in life. Engagement is considered a key factor for a goo...

Background. Depression and anxiety are the most prevalent mental health difficulties in the workplace, costing the global economy $1 trillion each year. Evidence indicates that symptoms may be reduced by interventions in the workplace. This paper is the first to systematically review psychosocial interventions for depression, anxiety, and suicidal...

Background: The improvement of psychological treatments for depression in young adults is a pressing issue highlighted in the literature. Its relevance is determined not only because young adults are underrepresented in research, but also to prevent chronic severe mental health disorders later in life. Engagement is considered a key factor for a go...

Introduction Psychosocial interventions for patients with breast cancer (BC) have demonstrated their effectiveness at reducing emotional distress and improving quality of life. The current digitisation of screening, monitoring and psychosocial treatment presents the opportunity for a revolution that could improve the quality of care and reduce its...

Introduction Eating disorders (EDs) are complex pathologies which require equally complex treatment strategies. These strategies should be multidisciplinary, personalised interventions, performed in appropriate settings along a healthcare continuum from inpatient to community care. Personalisation, and the complexity of levels of care and intervent...

Objective To study the impact of the spontaneous use of Internet on breast cancer patients and on their relationship with health professionals.MethodsA mixed methodology was used. Two questionnaires were designed through three focus groups, and then administered to 186 patients and 59 professionals in order to assess: (1) patients’ use of Internet...

The complexity of Eating Disorders (EDs) generates high personal and economic costs to patients, families, and the society. Various treatments have shown some effectiveness in EDs 1 , but outcomes are still far from satisfactory. Clinical guidelines have mainly relied on controlled efficacy studies to strengthen internal validity, compromising the...

Objective This study assesses the effectiveness of face‐to‐face group positive psychotherapy for cancer survivors (PPC) compared to its online adaptation, online group positive psychotherapy for cancer survivors (OPPC), which is held via videoconference. A two‐arm, pragmatic RCT was conducted to examine the effects of both interventions on emotiona...

This randomized controlled trial compared the efficacy of cognitive behavioral stress management (CBSM) and positive psychotherapy in cancer (PPC) to reduce post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) and distress, and to promote post-traumatic growth (PTG) in cancer survivors. Participants were 140 adult women randomly allocated to CBSM (n = 73) or PPC...

Introducción: A pesar de que los tratamientos psico-oncológicos han demostrado su efectividad en disminuir el malestar emocional y mejorar la calidad de vida de las personas con cáncer, aún existen numerosas barreras que limitan su acceso. La transformación a online de esta atención se plantea como una solución para aumentar la cobertura del servic...

Background: Fibromyalgia (FM) is a debilitating syndrome, more prevalent in women, which is aggravated by the presence of depressive symptoms. In the last decade, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) has demonstrated to reduce such depressive symptoms and pain in these patients, but there are still a considerable number of them who do not respond to...

Background Despite the increasing attention given to evidence-based practice, little research has focused on the quality of clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) involving psychotherapy. The goal of the present study was to evaluate the quality of national CPGs for psychological treatments for depression in European countries. Methods A search of th...

Aims: 1) Describe the challenges and success implementing comprehensive data in a complex multicentre psycotherapy centered service. 2) From the Y1 baseline data to present a comprehensive picture of the state of clients entering integrated treatments mainly for Eating Disorders (ED). 3) Analyse the psychometrics of the self-report measures notin...

La marcada complejidad de los Trastornos de la Conducta Alimentaria (TCA) requiere consecuentemente programas de tratamiento altamente complejos. Estos deben garantizar la continuidad asistencial a través de diferentes dispositivos coordinados, ser suficientemente personalizados y flexibles y combinar diferentes componentes terapéuticos. 325 pacien...

Desde finales del siglo XX la práctica basada en la evidencia ha sido el paradigma de referencia para establecer la eficacia de los tratamientos sin que ello estuviera exento de controversia. Algunos autores cuestionan seguir un modelo de investigación médico que tiene limitaciones importantes al aplicarse a la investigación en psicoterapia. Por ot...

Aim. To describe the challenges and success in implementing comprehensive data collection. To learn from the first year of data collection, focusing mainly on the baseline data as many clients are in continuing therapy and present a comprehensive picture of the state of patients entering integrated treatments for Eating Disorders (ED). To analyse a...

Efforts to improve the well-being of healthcare professionals include mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs). To understand the value of such initiatives, we conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of empirical studies pertaining to the use of MBIs with healthcare professionals. Databases were reviewed from the start of records to January 2...

Background/Objective The comorbidity of depression and fibromyalgia chronic syndrome has been well documented in the literature; however, the cognitive structure of these patients has not been assessed. Previous results reported variability in cognitive rigidity in depressive patients, the key for this might be the presence of chronic physical pain...

Background Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is aimed to counteract cognitions and behaviours that are considered as dysfunctional. The aim of the study is to test whether the inclusion of a non-counteractive approach (dilemma-focused intervention, DFI) in combination with CBT group therapy will yield better short- and long-term outcomes than an...

Depression is one of the most prevalent disorders and one of the leading causes of disability worldwide. Regarding economic implications, depressive disorders have also a large impact on health budgets through both direct and indirect costs. Studies on their clinical course have shown that they often become chronic, a phenomenon related to their hi...

Given the demanding nature of many professions, efforts are ongoing to develop initiatives to improve occupational wellbeing, including mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs). To assess the efficacy of MBIs, meta-analytic procedures were conducted on 35 randomized controlled trials derived from an earlier inclusive systematic literature search (cov...

Many professions have developed practice guidelines that clinicians can turn to in order to inform their practice and service delivery. Medicine for example has been developing guidelines for physicians for well over a decade, and has implemented various means to disseminate those guidelines. However, in psychology as well as in other fields, the v...

Introduction: Given the increasing prevalence of mental health problems in the general population, it is indispensable to use assessment tools aimed to assess the outcome of therapeutic interventions in order to refine the process of psychological rehabilitation. Method: We describe the process of adaptation into Spanish and a first psychometric...

Introducción. Ante la creciente prevalencia de proble-mas de salud mental en la población general, resulta impres-cindible el uso de instrumentos de evaluación destinados a evaluar el resultado de las intervenciones terapéuticas, con el fin de facilitar el proceso de rehabilitación psicológica. Metodología. Se expone el proceso de adaptación al es...

Objective: Among efforts to improve the well-being of healthcare professionals are initiatives based around mindfulness meditation. To understand the value of such initiatives, we conducted a systematic review of empirical studies pertaining to mindfulness in healthcare professionals. Method: Databases were reviewed from the start of records to...

Work can be demanding, imposing challenges that can be detrimental to the physical and mental health of workers. Efforts are therefore underway to develop practices and initiatives that may improve occupational wellbeing. These include interventions based on mindfulness meditation. This paper offers a systematic review of empirical studies featurin...

This study seeks to provide support to the two continua model of mental health. Participants were assessed before and after they received psychotherapy, measuring happiness, functioning, depression, and distress. All variables improved and showed significant differences according to conflicts’ resolution, but self-reported happiness was the only on...

Given the potentially demanding nature of teaching, efforts are underway to develop practices that can improve the wellbeing of educators, including interventions based on mindfulness meditation. We performed a systematic review of empirical studies featuring analyses of mindfulness in teaching contexts. Databases were reviewed from the start of re...

Given the increasing prevalence of mental health problems in the general population, it is necessary to use assessment tools aimed at collecting psychological information of the person, (re)designing appropriate therapeutic interventions, and ultimately promoting adequate psychological rehabilitation. For that purpose, the Young Person’s – Clinical...

There is a need for widely and systematically using standardised assessment measures in order to advance the research in psychotherapy, since these instruments allow to test both the efficacy and effectiveness of interventions. Given the variety of available psychological therapies, pantheoretical assessment methods are desirable in order to make c...

Nowadays psychotherapy is acknowledged by clinical guidelines as the treatment of choice for non-severe psychological disorders such as anxiety. Although most research has been focused on few types of interventions, constructivist psychotherapy has already demonstrated its effectiveness. Nevertheless, more research is still needed to better underst...

Objective The objective of this paper is to assess the reliability and validity of the Spanish translation of the Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation – Outcome Measure, a 34-item self-report questionnaire that measures the client’s status in the domains of Subjective well-being, Problems/Symptoms, Life functioning, and Risk. Method Six hundred...

Background: Since long ago it has been asserted that internal conflicts are relevant to the understanding and treatment of mental disorders, but little research has been conducted to support the claim. The aim of this study was to test the differential efficacy of group cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) plus an intervention focused on the dilemma...

El presente estudio se sitúa en la línea de investigación iniciada por Bradburn hace varias décadas, quien señaló que los afectos negativos y positivos constituían factores correlacionados aunque distintos, la cual más tarde fue ampliada por Keyes proponiendo un modelo que concibe la salud y la enfermedad mental como dos continuos también correlaci...

The Repertory Grid Technique is the most researched and well-known measurement instrument from the perspective of Personal Construct Theory. Among its strengths, we find the capacity to enable mixed methods research, its flexibility, and its respect for respondents’ construction of their own experience. Although the field of psychotherapy is perhap...