Antiproliferative treatment of patients with metastatic endocrine gastroenteropancreatic tumours (GEP) is based mainly on chemotherapeutic protocols whereby drug toxicity is a major handicap. Octreotide is the first choice in the control of hormone mediated symptoms.

Since systematic treatment selection seems to be able to optimise treatment outcome, at least for PDT, pursuing systematic treatment assignment strategies in mental healthcare settings is a worthwhile endeavour.

This study demonstrates how mixture distribution item response models can be used to detect different response styles in the clinical assessment of anger expression. Analyses of 3 subscales of the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory in a clinical sample of 4,497 patients revealed that there are different response styles that manifest themselves in 2- and 3-class solutions. These solutions are robust across subsamples. Response styles reflect both psychologically meaningful biases (i.e., social desirability) and nonmeaningful response category preferences. Person parameters that correct for class membership (and thus, for response styles) are computed and compared with raw scores. The implications of these results for research on clinical assessment are discussed.

As publications from the domain of psychosomatic rehabilitation pertaining to the conceptual approaches and effects of partial-hospitalization rehabilitation have so far relied on very small case numbers, the effectiveness of partial-hospitalization rehabilitation was analysed in 318 patients in comparison to a large sample of rehabilitants who had participated in fully inpatient rehabilitation. No relevant differences were found among the groups studied in sociodemographic respects or range of diagnoses. The same was true concerning the level of complaints present at the onset of rehabilitation. Good rehabilitation outcomes were achieved in both groups, however, the effect sizes found for changes in depressiveness and indulgence to complaining ("Klagsamkeit") (GSI from the SCL-90) were lower in the partial-hospitalization group than in the patients in fully inpatient rehabilitation. Also, the relatively high share of partial-hospitalization patients discharged unable to return to work might be clinically significant. While our findings confirm the good results reported from other disciplines, they nevertheless are a reminder of the need for very careful selection of patients for partial-hospitalization rehabilitation, in order not to withhold "better" rehabilitation than could be provided on a partial-hospitalization basis from patients with special sociomedical problems. The best rehabilitation outcomes seem to be achieved by those patients who, towards the end of fully inpatient rehabilitation, were granted transition to the partial-hospitalization programme.

No abstract