Scene: The 2008 RALPH Awards, held at a highly secret location somewhere in the Northern Hemisphere. via Reno Gazette-Journal

Frasier Crane and his brother, Niles, both practiced psychiatry on their popular NBC sitcom “Frasier.” Mob boss Tony Soprano had his therapist on HBO’s hit show “The Sopranos.” And HBO has even made therapy the focus of two recent shows — “Tell Me You Love Me” and “In Treatment.”

But all of these TV portrayals may actually make viewers less likely to seek psychological services themselves. That’s according to a new study by three Iowa State University psychologists.

ISU psychology professors David Vogel and Douglas Gentile collaborated with graduate student Scott Kaplan on the study of 369 Iowa State students. It explored how exposure to television shows may contribute to negative perceptions about psychological services that can lead to lower intentions to seek such services. They produced a paper titled “The Influence of Television on Willingness to Seek Therapy,” which was published in the March issue of the Journal of Clinical Psychology, a professional journal.

Unflattering portrayals of mental health professionals

Kaplan has conducted a related content analysis on television portrayals of mental health professionals. It found that they’re not favorable.

“Generally, it seems like therapists are portrayed unethically — like sleeping with the client, or implanting false memories, or talking about their clients outside the session,” Vogel said. “These are things that almost never happen with real therapists, but on a show — because they’re probably more exciting — they happen more frequently.”

“Therapists also often are portrayed as buffoons,” Gentile said. “That’s either by being the jokester, like Frasier, or by being the butt of jokes. In either case, these are not positive portrayals. They do not show the skill, expertise and ethics of professional therapists.”

But it’s not just the portrayal of the therapists that may be keeping people out of therapy. It’s also the portrayal of those who seek counseling on TV.

“If you examine the portrayal of the clients, it’s probably as bad or worse,” Vogel said. “So why would you seek therapy if you believe you’re going to be perceived negatively and you’re going to see someone who’s incompetent and not able to help you?”

Because dramas and comedies are the two types of shows that often portray psychologists and psychotherapy, the ISU psychologists asked respondents how often they watched TV comedy and drama shows. They also asked them to assess perceptions of the stigma associated with seeking professional help, attitudes toward therapy, their intentions to seek therapy for psychological and interpersonal concerns, and their feelings of depression.

TV ties to therapy stigma

The study found a positive correlation between viewers’ exposure to comedy and drama shows and their perceptions of stigma associated with seeking professional help. This stigma was then related to lower willingness to seek professional mental health services.

“One of the things that’s important to note about this particular study is that we showed that TV exposure was related to your perceptions of the stigma associated with seeking help, which has been found to be one of the main factors found from inhibiting people from seeking that help,” Vogel said. “So you perceive that yourself, and other people, would be crazy to go (to therapy).”

That’s a problem for those people who could really benefit from professional mental health services. According to Vogel, the most recent studies in the mental health field have found that about half of population experiences a situation in their lives where psychological therapy could be helpful — about 20 percent in a single year. But in a given year, only about 10 percent of the people who could benefit from therapy will seek help from a psychologist or other mental health professional.

“Mental health services are already vastly underutilized, and this cultural stigma is part of the reason,” Gentile said. “And this study suggests that this cultural stigma exists partly because of the way that psychologists and their patients are portrayed on television.”

[Mike Ferlazzo @ Iowa State University]

Michelle Alfa and a team of scientists from Manitoba, Canada investigated the spread of so-called superbugs in hospitals. Hospital patients are thought to catch bugs like vancomycin resistant Enterococci (VRE), methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and C. difficile because they are not eradicated from the hospital environment. These bugs may be transferred between patients through cross-contamination in the bathroom.

“Various studies have looked at the most effective cleaning agents, but none of these studies considered whether housekeeping staff were actually cleaning the toilets properly,” says Alfa. “It is impossible to assess the effectiveness of any action against these bacteria unless you can be sure that cleaners comply with protocols.”

Alfa’s toilet inspectors smeared the UV lotion under the seats of 20 toilets and commodes being used by patients with diarrhoea at a hospital in Winnipeg. Seven of these patients had C. difficile infection, while 13 others did not. The toilets and commodes were tested every weekday for six months and checked using UV light to determine how well they had been cleaned. In addition, samples were taken from toilet surfaces to determine whether C difficile spores were present.

The UV marker revealed that the commodes for the seven patients isolated with C. difficle infections had not been properly cleaned 72% of the time. The toilets fared slightly better, with half of the samples taken showing no residual UV lotion after cleaning. The 13 patients not on isolation had much cleaner toilets, with only 14% glowing brightly under UV light. Further assessments showed that differences in toilet cleaning were “ward dependent” and since specific cleaners work on different wards, the results likely reflect characteristics of the individual cleaning staff.

More worryingly, C. difficle was still detected in 40% of samples taken from the cleanest toilets (i.e. those with no detectable UV marker). “This suggests that both the physical cleaning action as well as the disinfectant/cleaning agent were ineffective for killing and/or removing C. difficile from toilets,” notes Alfa.

“Our data suggest that without an agent with some activity against C. difficile spores the physical action of cleaning alone cannot be relied upon to effectively eradicate this organism from the toilets of patients who are shedding this type of spore. Nevertheless, we would still recommend that monitoring with a UV marker becomes a routine part of a hospital’s housekeeping quality assurance programme.

[Charlotte Webber @ BioMed Central]

The dime-sized laser, to be described Thursday, May 8, at the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics, emits 10 billion pulses per second, each lasting about 40 femtoseconds (quadrillionths of a second), with an average power of 650 milliwatts. For comparison, the new laser produces pulses 10 times more often than a standard NIST frequency comb while producing much shorter pulses than other lasers operating at comparable speeds. The new laser is also 100 to 1000 times more powerful than typical high-speed lasers, producing clearer signals in experiments. The laser was built by Albrecht Bartels at the Center for Applied Photonics of the University of Konstanz.

Among its applications, the new laser can be used in searches for planets orbiting distant stars. Astronomers look for slight variations in the colors of starlight over time as clues to the presence of a planet orbiting the star. The variations are due to the small wobbles induced in the star’s motion as the orbiting planet tugs it back and forth, producing minute shifts in the apparent color (frequency) of the starlight. Currently, astronomers’ instruments are calibrated with frequency standards that are limited in spectral coverage and stability. Frequency combs could be more accurate calibration tools, helping to pinpoint even smaller variations in starlight caused by tiny Earthlike planets. Such small planets would cause color shifts equivalent to a star wobble of just a few centimeters per second. Current instruments can detect, at best, a wobble of about 1 meter per second.

Standard frequency combs have “teeth” that are too finely spaced for astronomical instruments to read. The faster laser is one approach to solving this problem. In a separate paper, the NIST group and astronomer Steve Osterman at the University of Colorado at Boulder describe how, by bouncing the light between sets of mirrors a particular distance apart, they can eliminate periodic blocks of teeth to create a gap-toothed comb. This leaves only every 10th or 20th tooth, making an ideal ruler for astronomy.

Both approaches have advantages for astronomical planet finding and related applications. The dime-sized laser is very simple in construction and produces powerful and extremely well-defined comb teeth. On the other hand, the filtering approach can cover a broader range of wavelengths. Four or five filtering cavities in parallel would provide a high-precision comb of about 25,000 evenly spaced teeth that spans the visible to near-infrared wavelengths (400 to 1100 nanometers), NIST physicist Scott Diddams says.

Osterman says he is pursuing the possibility of testing such a frequency comb at a ground-based telescope or launching a comb on a satellite or other space mission. Other possible applications of the new laser include remote sensing of gases for medical or atmospheric studies, and on-the-fly precision control of high-speed optical communications to provide greater versatility in data and time transmissions. The application of frequency combs to planet searches is of international interest and involves a number of major institutions such as the Max-Planck Institute for Quantum Optics and Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

[Laura Ost @ National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)]

In a paper published today in Nature Biotechnology, researchers led by Los Alamos National Laboratory and the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute announced that the genetic sequence of the fungus Tricoderma reesei has uncovered important clues about how the organism breaks down plant fibers into simple sugars. The finding could unlock possibilities for industrial processes that can more efficiently and cost effectively convert corn, switchgrass and even cellulose-based municipal waste into ethanol. Ethanol from waste products is a more-carbon-neutral alternative to gasoline.

The fungus T. reesei rose to dubious fame during World War II when military leaders discovered it was responsible for rapid deterioration of clothing and tents in the South Pacific. Named after Dr. Elwyn T. Reese, who, with colleagues, originally isolated the hungry fungus, T. reesei was later identified as a source of industrial enzymes and a role model for the conversion of cellulose and hemicellulose — plant fibers — into simple sugars.

The organism uses enzymes it creates to break down human-indigestible fibers of plants into the simplest form of sugar, known as a monosaccharide. The fungus then digests the sugars as food.

Researchers decoded the genetic sequence of T. reesei in an attempt to discover why the deep green fungus was so darned good at digesting plant cells. The sequence results were somewhat surprising. Contrary to what one might predict about the gene content of a fungus that can eat holes in tents, T. reesei had fewer genes dedicated to the production of cellulose-eating enzymes than its counterparts.

“We were aware of T. reesei’s reputation as producer of massive quantities of degrading enzymes, however we were surprised by how few enzyme types it produces, which suggested to us that its protein secretion system is exceptionally efficient,” said Los Alamos bioscientist Diego Martinez (also at the University of New Mexico), the study’s lead author. The researchers believe that T. reesei’s genome includes “clusters” of enzyme-producing genes, a strategy that may account for the organism’s efficiency at breaking down cellulose.

On an industrial scale, T. reesei could be employed to secrete enzymes that can be purified and added into an aqueous mixture of cellulose pulp and other materials to produce sugar. The sugar can then be fermented by yeast to produce ethanol.

“The sequencing of the Trichoderma reesei genome is a major step towards using renewable feedstocks for the production of fuels and chemicals,” said Joel Cherry, director of research activities in second-generation biofuels for Novozymes, a collaborating institution in the study. “The information contained in its genome will allow us to better understand how this organism degrades cellulose so efficiently and to understand how it produces the required enzymes so prodigiously. Using this information, it may be possible to improve both of these properties, decreasing the cost of converting cellulosic biomass to fuels and chemicals.”

[James E. Rickman @ DOE/Los Alamos National Laboratory]