A physician's armamentarium includes the presence of the tool of touch which is used not only to diagnose and to heal, but also to reassure patients that they are safe and well cared for in the hands of the physician. The use of touch in the practice of psychology, however, is relatively proscribed. In this essay, I examine how we, as psychologists, can best “hold” our clients without the use o...

As robotic platforms are designed for human robot interaction applications, a full body sense of touch, or “sensitive skin,” becomes important. The Huggable is a new type of therapeutic robotic companion based upon relational touch interactions. The initial use of neural networks to classify the affective content of touch is described.

OBJECTIVE to verify whether the Paw Edema Model can be used in investigations about the effects of Therapeutic Touch on inflammation by measuring the variables pain, edema and neutrophil migration. METHOD this is a pilot and experimental study, involving ten male mice of the same genetic strain and divided into experimental and control group, submitted to the chemical induction of local infla...

This research aimed to check the effectiveness of Therapeutic Touch on decreased pain intensity, depression self-assessment scores and improved sleep quality. A clinical before-after trial is presented. The study was carried out at a Basic Health Unit in Fernandópolis, SP-Brazil, involving 30 elderly patients with chronic non-oncologic pain who received 8 sessions of Therapeutic Touch in accord...

Touching is often a forgotten part of medicine. The manual medicine or therapeutic touch (TT) is much more powerful than many modern, biomedically oriented physicians think. Pain and discomfort can be alleviated just by touching the sick area and in this way help the patient to be in better contact with the tissue and organs of their body. Lack of presence in the body seems to be connected with...