Spiritual support in life threatening illness

This work evaluated the experiences of 45 patients of children with cancer and 101 cancer patients with their home pastors and hospital chaplains. The sttisfactions and difficulties enountered in these interactions are detailed, and recommendations are offered to aid persons in acute distress. Individuals in these circumstances appear to desire spiritual support more than evident psychologial aid, though the skillful use of the latter to understant the religious desires of the patients and parents is appreciated. It is also evident that pastors dealing which problems related to potential terminality are themselves under considerble stress.     

Welfare participation and social support in late life

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships among participation in welfare programs, gender, and change in social support in adults aged 65 and older. It was hypothesized that older men receiving public assistance would encounter more social network problems than older women on welfare. The findings reveal that during the 7-year study older men in receipt of welfare benefits, compared with older women on welfare, received less social support from others, were more dissatisfied with the assistance they got, and encountered more negative interaction from informal social network members (i.e., family and friends). The results suggest that those who administer welfare programs, as well as public policymakers, should consider developing interventions that address the wider psychosocial problems associated with receiving public assistance.     

Longitudinal study of social support and meaning in life

The purpose of this study was to see whether 3 types of social support (enacted support, negative interaction, and anticipated support) are associated with change in meaning in life. Data from a nationwide longitudinal survey of older people suggested that greater anticipated support (i.e., the belief that others will provide assistance in the future if needed) is associated with a deeper sense of meaning over time. The same was true with respect to emotional support received from family members and close friends. In contrast, the findings revealed that, at least initially, negative interaction lowers an older person's sense of meaning in life. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved).     

Positive life events and social support and the relationship between life stress and psychological disorder

Conclusion In conclusion, the present research demonstrated the deleterious effects of negative life events. Number of negative events was a significant predictor of psychological disorder even when initial disorder was statistically controlled. The cross-sectional regression findings provided some support for the stress-buffering effects of positive life events, but these effects were nonsignificant when initial disorder was statistically controlled. The cross-sectional and prospective regression findings suggest that received social support, as measured by the ISSB, does not have a direct or stress-buffering effect on psychological disorder. These analyses, however, demonstrated the direct and stress-buffering effects of perceived social support, as measured by the ISEL, and the data suggest that the ISEL is a promising measure of this construct.The authors thank Sheldon Cohen who provided helpful comments on an earlier version of this article.     

Regarding Scenes

ABSTRACT— When we view the visual world, our eyes flit from one location to another about three times each second. These frequent changes in gaze direction result from very fast saccadic eye movements. Useful visual information is acquired only during fixations, periods of relative gaze stability. Gaze control is defined as the process of directing fixation through a scene in real time in the service of ongoing perceptual, cognitive, and behavioral activity. This article discusses current approaches and new empirical findings that are allowing investigators to unravel how human gaze control operates during active real-world scene perception.     

Art in support of life: Caravaggio and the plague

In the struggle with COVID-19, art offered a way to face the solitude of the lockdown. The focus of this paper is primarily on Caravaggio’s painting The Seven Works of Mercy, with references to other paintings to amplify some aspects of the artist’s approach to life and his uniqueness in the artistic landscape of his time. Darkness was part of Caravaggio’s research for spiritual truth and by entering the stories of his life and exploring the tales told through imaginative expression in his paintings, it is possible to understand his process of exploration of ancestral darkness. The author uses her imagination to reflect on how art can help to contact the profound fears buried in the unconscious which are now being awakened by the pandemic. The contemplation of this painting facilitated the emergence of emotions related to the darkness of our time, with the discovery that empathy and mercy offer a way to come to terms with the pandemic. This approach demands a different understanding of reality with Caravaggio’s dark creative world becoming a companion that permits the exploration of what is not yet thinkable in daily life. Images accompany the author’s research that relies on her imagination and amplifications.     

The emergence of "family integrity" in later life

In contrast to the rich and abundant literature on the early stages of the family life cycle, there are relatively few theoretical accounts of family developmental processes in the second half of life. In an effort to address this imbalance, we introduce the concept of "family integrity" to refer to the ultimate, positive outcome of an older adult's developmental striving toward meaning, connection, and continuity within his or her multigenerational family. Subjectively, for the older adult, family integrity may be experienced as a deep and abiding sense of peace and/or satisfaction with his or her multigenerational family relationships, past, present, and future. It is the result of a growing concern for relational closure that typically begins to emerge in mid-life and gains ascendance in later-life. Objectively, at the level of observable relational processes, it is manifest in three interrelated competencies of the family as a system: (a) the transformation of relationships over time in a manner that is dynamic and responsive to the changing life cycle needs of individual family members, (b) the resolution or acceptance of past losses or family conflicts, with the dead as well as the living, and (c) the shared creation of meaning by passing on individual and family legacies within and across generations. As a construct, family integrity involves processes at multiple levels of social organization. At the individual level, it refers to an older adult's inner experience of satisfaction or "completeness" in the context of his or her family relationships. At the family level, it refers to observable relational competencies and transactions that contribute directly to an elder's sense of meaning, purpose, and connection with others. Simultaneously, at the level of culture and society, there are values and rituals that influence whether individuals experience meaning and purpose within the multigenerational family.     

Relational self-construal moderates the effect of social support on life satisfaction

While social support is associated with a host of important physical and psychological benefits, these effects are not always straightforward. Still, the moderating factors that might underlie individual differences in reactions to social support are not well-understood. In the current studies, we examined individual differences in relational self-construal in the typically positive relationship between social support and life satisfaction. In Study 1 (N = 79) relational self-construal moderated the relationship between social support and life satisfaction such that social support was especially beneficial for those with high relational self-construal. We replicated this effect in Study 2 (N = 284), and also found that social support was especially important for individuals with high relational self-construal in the context of high feelings of stress. These studies suggest that social support has differently gauged effects on life satisfaction depending on an individual’s relational self-construal.     

Core religious beliefs and providing support to others in late life

A number of studies suggest that people who have strong social support systems at church tend to enjoy better mental and physical health. Yet little is known about the factors that promote strong church-based social support networks. The purpose of this study is to show that key religious beliefs may have something to do with it. A new construct—spiritual connectedness–is introduced for this purpose. Spiritual connectedness refers to an awareness of the bond that exists among all people and the sense of the interdependence among them. Data from a nationwide longitudinal survey of older people in the United States reveal that a strong sense of spiritual connectedness is associated with providing more emotional support and tangible assistance to fellow church members over time. The data further reveal that older people with a strong sense of spiritual connectedness are more likely to pray for others, as well.     

Social support, life stress, and subsequent medical care utilization

Four-hundred thirty-seven adults 40 years old or older were monitored for medical care utilization in a health maintenance organization over a 5-year period. Rates of utilization were related, in specific ways, to initially obtained indicators of life stress and social support and to interactions between life stress, social support, and age. Use of both standard and step-down hierarchical multiple-regression procedures permitted a distinction between immediate and delayed effects. Implications are drawn regarding the buffering hypothesis for the mitigating effects of social support on the likelihood of health breakdown.     

Regarding a Regress

Is there a successful regress argument against intellectualism? In this article I defend the negative answer. I begin by defending Stanley and Williamson's (2001) critique of the contemplation regress against Noë (2005). I then identify a new argument – the employment regress – that is designed to succeed where the contemplation regress fails, and which I take to be the most basic and plausible form of a regress argument against intellectualism. However, I argue that the employment regress still fails. Drawing on the previous discussion, I criticise further regress arguments given by Hetherington (2006) and Noë (2005).     

Sex roles and social support as moderators of life stress adjustment

In this study we used a longitudinal design to test the stress-buffering effects of sex role orientation in combination with perceived social support on measures of trait anxiety and depression. College undergraduates served as subjects. The cross-sectional analyses provided strong support for the hypothesis that masculinity would function as a life stress buffer. The hypothesis that social support would serve as a stress buffer when coupled with high masculinity was supported by one of the cross-sectional analyses as well as the longitudinal analysis. This pattern was found primarily for perceptions of tangible social support. The longitudinal analysis also revealed a significant interaction involving negative life events and masculinity and femininity. This interaction effect provided unexpected support for a balance model of androgyny, in that non-sex-typed subjects showed greater resilience to recent life stress than did sex-typed subjects. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for the study of life stress adjustment.     

Personality, social support, and psychological distress in later life

A conceptual model was developed to address 2 issues that have received relatively little attention in the social support literature. First, an attempt was made to assess the interrelationships among 3 types or dimensions of supportive social relations. In addition, the impact of selected psychological and social factors on social support use was examined. Findings from a nationwide survey of older adults in the United Kingdom suggest that social contact tends to increase the amount of received support, and received support in turn tends to bolster perceptions of support availability in the future (i.e., anticipated support). With regard to the second issue, social roles (especially marital status) and social extraversion emerged as potentially important correlates of social support use in later life.     

论澳大利亚支持《土著人民权利宣言》的历史影响

2009年4月3日,澳大利亚政府做出了支持联大会议2007年9月13日通过的<土著人民权利宣言>的决定.这是一个具有广泛历史影响的决定.它对强化工党的改革者形象必将产生积极影响,对澳大利亚土著人权益的保护以及种族和解进程的推动不无裨益;同时,此举还有利于改善澳大利亚在国际人权领域的形象,为实现其外交政策抱负创造有利条件.