Impacts of Flooding on the Quality of Life in Rural Regions of Southern Slovakia

Human activity has significantly influenced energy flows in the landscape. Physical and geographical features of an area in the context of natural processes highlight their influence on the human lives in the affected regions of Slovakia. The paper aimed on the influence of the extraordinary flooding impact in June 2013 on the quality of life in Slovak rural regions. We have investigated the impact of the resulting damage on human activities in the rural municipality of Ch?aba. The case study of southern Slovakia can provide a more realistic view at regularly flooded areas in Slovak geographical conditions. The target of our research was to map and monitor the situation during the floods and shortly after them and to draw proposals leading to a more operative approach in the context of comprehensive flood protection in Slovakia. The added value of the research is a creation of such graphical supporting documents, which could be served as a basis for creating the plan of flood prevention management in rural territories, as a part of negative impacts of floods reduction on human activities.     

The emotional health of the clergy

Summary and conclusions The health we seek is creative growth through all the relationships of life. We need an elastic concept of health, with a capacity to accept limitations and to do our best with these limitations in creative efforts to keep growing.We need to be aware of the particular hazards in this vocation, which may endanger the emotional health of the clergyman. Seeing these more clearly we can better prepare to cope with them.We must know to whom we belong, and learn to be at home with those persons and groups who become our living, working, and reciprocal community of outgoing care and forgiving love.If we can see emotional health as a dynamic process of ever-growing outreach and integration, we will value the stresses of our life and work. The pains as well as the joys contribute to the challenge and fulfillment of persons who grow through creative encounter with other persons.Continuing education will be needed for this crucial vocation of ministering to others, as it is in every serving profession where the complexities of life are so baffling. Academic courses and library study, though needed, will not suffice to prepare for effective work with other persons in face-to-face relations. There will be constant need for supervised evaluation of what we are and seek to become to others in the critical moments of meeting, listening, and responding as person to person in the ultimate concerns of our life in community.He is also a member of the Academy.     

Health-related quality of life among people living with hiv disease in small communities and rural areas

Abstract

While many studies have examined the life quality of HIV-infected persons in large metropolitan areas, few studies have investigated quality of life issues among persons living with HIV disease in America's small and rural communities. In the present study, 78 people living with HIV/AIDS in small and rural communities (i.e., populations <25,000) reported on their health-related quality of life. Many respondents reported decreased social, emotional, functional, and physical well-being. Results revealed that participants' emotional well-being and the quality of their relationship with their doctor were related to their overall quality of life. The majority of participants (73%) expressed interest in participating in a telephone-linked support group involving other people living with HIV designed to improve quality of life.     

Threat,Knowledge, and Support for a Collective Response to Urban Flooding1

The most realistic solution to recurring urban flooding in most American cities is some form of land use planning (zoning), i.e., an integrated, collective response to this type of threat to the community. Yet there is frequently little public support for such action. The present study surveyed persons living in and around a notorious urban floodplain to assess support for such land use planning as a function of (a) threat, i.e., the motivational effect of proximity to the floodplain, ownership of property at risk, personal flooding history, perceived likelihood of one's home being flooded in the next 5 years, and the presence of small children in the home; and (b) amount of knowledge about variables affecting flooding, i.e., the cognitive element. Although proximity was related strongly to expressions of concern, none of the measures of threat was related to support for land use planning. Knowledge of the variables involved, however, was positively related to support for a planning solution. The findings are discussed in terms of theoretical implications of the cognitive element in collective responses to environmental hazards.     

情绪劳动策略对主动破坏行为的影响

如何开展员工情绪劳动管理,避免负面行为结果,是服务行业面对的重要问题。以788名呼叫中心员工为研究对象,本文获得的结果表明:1)表层动作显著促进主动破坏行为,而深层动作的影响不显著。2)政策强度感知显著调节表层动作与主动破坏行为间关系;当政策强度感知较低时,表层动作对主动破坏行为的正向影响更为显著。3)情感社会分享显著调节深层动作与主动破坏行为间关系;当情感社会分享水平较高时,深层动作对主动破坏行为的负向影响更为显著。本研究从资源保存视角提出工作场所开展情绪劳动管理的有效策略。     

The tasks of self-managing hepatitis C: the significance of disclosure

The narratives of those with hepatitis C were viewed through the lens of Corbin and Strauss' [Corbin, J., & Strauss, A. (1988). Unending work and care: Managing chronic illness at home. The Jossey-Bass health series and The Jossey-Bass social and behavioral science series. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.] self-management model for chronic illness, using qualitative methodology. Fifteen Australian hepatitis C positive interviewees described the challenges and turning points in adjusting to their diagnosis. The data were analysed using open- and closed-coding methods. Support was found for a self-management model encompassing medical, emotional and life role facets for those adjusting to life with hepatitis C. Unique challenges emerged beyond those described by Corbin and Strauss (1988), namely that disclosure impacted both positively and negatively on the tasks of self-management. It was concluded that self-management may be compromised by disclosure, particularly distress derived from hepatitis C-related stigma. The self-management tasks described contribute to broadening clinicians' understanding of the challenges faced by those living with hepatitis C.     

Political ecology of emotion and sacred space: The Winnemem Wintu struggles with California water policy

Western water policy in the United States has favored urban and agricultural development over American Indians' needs, demonstrating little understanding of, or concern for, the affective ecologies of landscapes. Using a qualitative approach focusing on in-depth interviews of members of the Winnemem Wintu tribe in California, we uncover how culturally hegemonic meanings of natural resources and landscapes privilege the water needs of modern development and deny the importance of Indigenous emotional connections to sacred places by limiting access to and protection of ancestral territories. Ninety percent of Winnemem ancestral lands along the McCloud River were flooded in 1945 when the Shasta Dam was completed for the federal Central Valley Project. In 2000, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation began investigating a proposal to raise Shasta Dam to increase surface water storage capacity for agricultural production. This proposal would destroy remaining Winnemem sacred spaces that offer deep emotional connections crucial to maintaining their cultural identity and ancestral memories. This paper presents a political ecology of emotion perspective to examine the emotional geographies associated with sacred spaces within ancestral landscapes and related struggles against hegemonic approaches to resource management. We argue that an investigation of sacred spaces reveals intimate links between emotion, memory, and identity and exposes the devastating consequence of institutional approaches to land development that favor meanings and practices of the dominant culture and political structure.     

Invisible Household Labor and Ramifications for Adjustment: Mothers as Captains of Households

We address the issue of invisible labor in the home by examining how the distribution of the mental and emotional labor inherent in managing the household between spouses may be linked with women’s well-being, including their satisfaction with life, partner satisfaction, feelings of emptiness, and experiencing role overload. In a sample of 393 U.S. married/partnered mothers, mostly of upper-middle class backgrounds with dependent children at home, results showed that a majority of women reported that they alone assumed responsibility for household routines involving organizing schedules for the family and maintaining order in the home. Some aspects of responsibilities related to child adjustment were primarily handled by mothers, including being vigilant of children’s emotions, whereas other aspects were shared with partners, including instilling values in the children. Responsibility was largely shared for household finances. Regression analyses showed that after controlling for dimensions of emotional and physical intimacy, feeling disproportionately responsible for household management, especially child adjustment, was associated with strains on mothers’ personal well-being as well as lower satisfaction with the relationship. The implications of our work highlight the need to consider the burden of household management on mothers’ well-being and speak to mothers’ own needs for support and care as the primary managers of the household. In future research on division of labor, it will be useful to measure these critical but often neglected dimensions of who coordinates the household, given potential ramifications of this dimension for the quality of marriages and women’s personal well-being.

     

Personality change at the intersection of autonomic arousal and stress

We hypothesized that personality change in children can be predicted by the interaction of family risk with susceptibility to autonomic arousal and that children characterized by both high-risk families and highly reactive autonomic nervous systems tend to show maladaptive change. This hypothesis was tested in a 6-year longitudinal study in which personality-type prototypicality, problem behavior, and negative emotional intensity were measured at 2-year intervals. The results indicated that children who both had exaggerated skin conductance responses (a measure of autonomic reactivity) and were living in families with multiple risk factors were most likely to develop an undercontrolled personality type and to exhibit increases in problem behavior and negative emotional intensity. The implications of the results for understanding personality change are discussed.     

Transnationalism as a motif in family stories

Family stories have long been recognized as a vehicle for assessing components of a family's emotional and social life, including the degree to which an immigrant family has been willing to assimilate. Transnationalism, defined as living in one or more cultures and maintaining connections to both, is now increasingly common. A qualitative study of family stories in the family of those who appear completely "American" suggests that an affiliation with one's home country is nevertheless detectable in the stories via motifs such as (1) positively connotated home remedies, (2) continuing denigration of home country "enemies," (3) extensive knowledge of the home country history and politics, (4) praise of endogamy and negative assessment of exogamy, (5) superiority of home country to America, and (6) beauty of home country. Furthermore, an awareness of which model--assimilationist or transnational--governs a family's experience may help clarify a clinician's understanding of a family's strengths, vulnerabilities, and mode of framing their cultural experiences.     

Politics and emotion: Working with disadvantaged children in South Africa

This paper discusses the experience of consulting to organizations involved in the provision of care to disadvantaged groups of children in South Africa. It draws particular attention to the impact of South Africa's painful political history on the emotional life of these organizations. This has created an additional burden for organizational staff who often work under difficult conditions with very troubled groups of children. The paper highlights the common experiences of deprivation and loss, fears around the abuse of power and problems with acknowledging differences between people, which are a part of South Africa's political legacy. These kinds of issues were found to have a powerful impact on the functioning of organizations and also on the quality of the consultancy relationship itself. We argue that it is important to recognize the emotional demands of child-care work generally, but also that it is equally necessary work, through our political experiences, to achieve some kind of understanding of these. Lack of containment for these experiences will impact on the quality of care organizations are able to offer to children in our context.     

Good boys,gang members,asylum gained and lost: The devastating reflections of a bureaucrat-ethnographer

State institutions and their acts of indifference, valorization, and violence operate through relationships, emotions, legal framings, and people. Engaging feminist geographic interventions, in this article we center state employees and their quotidian, affective relationships to asylum-seekers and the asylum process. We show how these actors embody state migration control through their daily practices. And we highlight the insights of former employees undertaking reflexive feminist research into their past working life. Drawing on the memories of one such “bureaucrat-ethnographer” (Valdivia), and our shared feminist engagement together, we outline three key insights for research on state migration practice. First, that the training state employees undergo aims to develop objective, neutral, and emotion-free decision-making, yet it relies on highly affective and biased state assumptions about asylum-seekers and their motivations. Second, while this training fosters simplified understandings of the causes and impacts of violence, a feminist geographic lens makes visible its complexly power-laden machinations. Last, we assert that state employees face distinct emotional pressures as they deal with devastation: the state's, their own, and that of asylum claimants. Valuing the insights of bureaucrats who become, or are at once, undertaking critical research disrupts intellectual divisions and hierarchies and complicates our understanding of the migration control practices of the state.     

Personal factors related to compassion fatigue in health professionals

This study examines the role of some personal and professional factors in compassion fatigue among health-care professionals. Research participants included 182 (89 mental and 93 medical) health-care professionals who completed an assessment battery measuring compassion fatigue, emotion management, trait emotional intelligence, situation-specific coping strategies, and negative affect. Major findings indicate that both self-report “trait” emotional intelligence and ability-based emotion management are inversely associated with compassion fatigue; adaptive coping is inversely related to compassion fatigue; and differences exist between mental and medical professions in emotional intelligence, coping strategies, and negative affect. Furthermore, problem-focused coping appears to mediate the association between trait emotional intelligence and compassion fatigue. These findings shed light on the role of emotional factors in compassion fatigue among health-care professionals. Beyond enhancing our knowledge of practitioners' professional quality of life, the current study serves as a basis for the early identification of groups of practitioners at risk for compassion fatigue.     

Lower back pain in nurses working in home care: linked to work–family conflict,emotional dissonance,and appreciation?

In industrial countries home care services for elderly people living in the community are growing rapidly. Home care nursing is intensive and the nurses often suffer from musculoskeletal pain. Time pressure and job control are job-related factors linked to the risk of experiencing lower back pain (LBP) and LBP-related work impairment. This survey investigated whether work-family conflict (WFC), emotional dissonance and being appreciated at work have incremental predictive value. Responses were obtained from 125 home care nurses (63% response rate). Multiple linear regression showed that emotional dissonance and being appreciated at work predicted LBP intensity and LBP-related disability independently of time pressure and job control. WFC was not a predictor of LBP-related disability in multiple regression analyses despite a zero-order correlation with it. Redesigning the working pattern of home care nurses to reduce the emotional demands and improve appreciation of their work might reduce the incidence of LBP in this group.     

“It’s a big adjustment coming from the reserve to living in a totally different society”: Exploring the well-being of First Nations athletes playing sports in an urban mainstream context

Indigenous athletes living in remote or rural areas, interested in pursuing sport at elite levels, often relocate from their home communities to urban “mainstream” centres. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore the psychological well-being and multicultural adjustment experiences of two relocating First Nations athletes. Conversational group interviews and photovoice reflections were adopted to hear stories from six participants: two First Nations female siblings who relocated from a rural First Nation community to pursue hockey, the athletes’ parents, and the athletes’ billet parents. Five themes were created to explain how the athletes adjusted and strove to flourish in their new environment: (1) Interconnected webs of support; (2) Managing emotional challenges; (3) Progressing during setbacks; (4) Comfort in new environments; and, (5) Maintaining cultural connections. Findings suggest that First Nations athletes who relocate from their home communities may require a robust support network and nurturing environment to flourish in an urban mainstream sport context.     

The Quality of Home Environment in Brazil: An Ecological Model

Based on Bronfenbrenner's (1999) ecological perspective, a longitudinal, prospective model of individual differences in the quality of home environment (Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment—HOME) was tested in a sample of 179 Brazilian children and their families. Perinatal measures of family socioeconomic status (SES) and child birth weight had direct effects on HOME at preschool age. As either family SES or child birth weight increased, HOME also increased through diminished emotional distress in the mother a month following childbirth. SES had a negative effect on number of children in the household, which in turn had a long-term negative impact on HOME. Compared to mothers who had reported not to plan their pregnancy, those who did were more likely to have fewer children, to report more spouse support during childbearing, and to show less emotional distress a month after childbirth, all of which also influenced HOME at preschool age. These findings are discussed in light of the broader socio-ecological Brazilian context, with direct implications to clinical practice aimed at improving the quality of home environment.     

Infrastructuring Amphibious Space: The Interplay of Aquatic and Terrestrial Infrastructures in the Chao Phraya Delta in Thailand

Abstract

The historic flooding that occurred in 2011 in central Thailand revealed fierce struggles over flood protection, which were made particularly complex because of the unruly nature of water itself. The interplay between two forms of infrastructure, each of which shape the flows of water coursing through the Chao Phraya Delta, is key to understanding this complexity. As an ambiguous place in between the sea and land, a delta environment can be seen alternatively as an extension of the sea or as reclaimable land. Constructing infrastructures based on either of these views remakes the landscape accordingly—thus making the landscape more terrestrial or more aquatic. In the Chao Phraya Delta, the terrestrial infrastructure, which consists of road networks and land-based urban living, has been overlaid on a pre-existing aquatic infrastructure characterized by canal transport and flood adaptive architecture. Mainly due to state interest in facilitating water transport, the aquatic infrastructure organized the landscape of the delta until the mid-twentieth century. However, since then the introduction of modern irrigation has progressively rendered the delta landscape more terrestrial. Dry land created by the irrigation system made modern forms of agriculture, commerce and industry possible. While this terrestrial trend seemed to take over the entire delta, the terrestrial infrastructure did not eliminate the aquatic one. Instead it created a dynamic interplay between different forms of infrastructure. The 2011 flood foregrounded the centrality of this interplay in flood protection and sheds new light on the role of the aquatic infrastructure.     

Aging family caregivers: policies and practices

This review examines later life family support for adults with developmental disabilities from a life course perspective that takes into account social trends and changes in service patterns and in attitudes of families. Key issues addressed include: (1) trends affecting family caregiving, (2) health and social outcomes of life-long caregiving, (3) support needs of families, (4) family support policies and practices, and (5) recommendations for a research and policy agenda. Research examining outcomes of life-long caregiving has shown that most families adapt well to having a family member with disabilities. However, some families are at risk for poorer physical and mental health outcomes. These include cultural minorities and families of adults with behavioral challenges. Caregiving does seem to have a negative impact on maternal employment and family income as mothers often give up or cut back on employment to care for a child with developmental disabilities, who is more likely to continue living in the family home throughout adulthood than other adult children. Federal and state initiatives are addressing issues of family support through both the developmental disabilities and aging service systems.     

Emotions of austerity: Care and commitment in public service delivery in the North East of England

In the context of an austerity agenda, constructed through the deployment of aversive emotions, we offer a more-than-rational understanding of uneven austerity politics for organisations providing public services with marginalised groups. The article highlights how emotions are at the heart of the experiences of those delivering services in the North East of England. It considers the emotional toll of changes under austerity on the professional lives of participants, but also those impacts which relate to wider interpretations of loyalty and care beyond individual participants. Due to the nature of occupational roles which involve an ethos and practice of commitment, and through relations with decision makers, colleagues, service users and community over time, participants are engaged in a range of emotional work. We explore how recent experiences have highlighted a continued and in some cases accelerated undermining of their work and communities of which they are, in different ways, a part. However, they are also seen as generative of a set of significant emotionally charged responses to such challenges, which variously challenge and conform to the dominant discourse of austerity.     

Culturally grounded strategies for suicide and alcohol risk prevention delivered by rural Alaska Native communities: A dynamic wait-listed design evaluation of the Qungasvik intervention

We examined the effectiveness of the Qungasvik (Tools for Life) intervention in enhancing protective factors as a universal suicide and alcohol prevention strategy for young people ages 12−18 living in highly affected rural Alaska Native communities. Four communities were assigned to immediate intervention or to a dynamic wait list. Outcomes were analyzed for 239 young people at four time points over two years of community intervention. Outcomes assessed two ultimate variable protective factors buffering suicide and alcohol risk, and three intermediate variable protective factors at the individual, family, and community level. Dose dependent intervention effects were associated with growth in ultimate but not intermediate variables. This evaluation of the Qungasvik intervention provides support for the effectiveness of its Indigenous strategies for suicide and alcohol misuse prevention in this rural Alaska Native setting. Though findings did not provide support for a theory of change where growth in ultimate variables is occasioned through effects on intermediate variables, research designs focused on young people who enter intervention at lower levels of preexisting protection hold promise for better understanding of intervention change processes. The Qungasvik intervention is responsive to an acute public health need for effective rural Alaska Native suicide and alcohol risk prevention strategies.