Making the grade: a pilot investigation of an e-intervention to increase mental health literacy and help-seeking intentions among international university students

ABSTRACT

International students may have less understanding and awareness of mental health issues and appear unlikely to seek help. The purpose of the current study was to construct and evaluate a brief online educational intervention designed to increase mental health literacy (MHL) and help-seeking among international tertiary students studying in Australia. The intervention was tested among 45 international tertiary students (undergraduate and postgraduate), who were randomly allocated to control and intervention conditions. The intervention led to significant improvements in help-seeking attitudes, particularly in stigmatising attitudes. No significant effects were found for MHL or help-seeking intentions. A brief educational intervention can improve help-seeking attitudes among international tertiary students. Future research may focus on establishing optimal intervention dosage.     

Assessing Suicidal Potential by Time Perspective*

ABSTRACT: The clinical assessment of the high risk suicidal person continues to be a major challenge for diagnosticians. Based on the parameter of time as a major differentiating variable, a semiprojective psychological technique—the Time Questionnaire (TQ)—has been developed. The present study reports findings elaborating and extending a pilot study using the TQ. The TQ consistently and significantly differentiates suicidal high risk patients from both nonclinical controls and from such clinical comparison groups as nonsuicidal psychiatric patients and suicidal low risk patients. Such factors as race, patient status, and psychiatric diagnosis were controlled and found to have no significant effect on results. Age was found to affect results only in the population 65 and over. Reliability and normative data based on an N of over 500 persons are also presented.     

WOMEN'S PSYCHOLOGICAL ADJUSTMENT FOLLOWING EMERGENCY CESAREAN VERSUS VAGINAL DELIVERY

The present study was designed to investigate possible differences in psychological adjustment and satisfaction between women delivering vaginally and those delivering by emergency cesarean section. Women's satisfaction with the birth experience was distinguished from postpartum psychological adjustment, as measured by depression, anxiety, and confidence in mothering ability. Twenty-two women who delivered vaginally and twenty-two women who delivered by emergency cesarean section were selected according to stringent criteria, to control for factors known to be associated with positive cesarean outcomes. Significant differences were found in level of satisfaction, with cesarean mothers reporting less satisfaction with the delivery than vaginal mothers. However, no differences were found between the groups on the three measures of psychological adjustment. Under optimal conditions, cesarean deliveries are not associated with adverse early postpartum psychological adjustment.     

Factor Composition of the Suicide Intent Scale

An exploratory analysis of the Suicide Intent Scale was performed on a sample of 98 psychiatric inpatients who had made suicide attempts. The factor analysis was performed using a method for polychotomous data, and resulted in a two-factor solution. The Lethal Intent factor contained items pertaining to the subjective level of lethal intent, while the Planning factor contained items largely related to objective planning for the attempt. Preliminary analysis of these factors suggest that the Suicide Intent Scale can be used to evaluate two separate aspects of suicidal behavior.     

Developmental changes in application of the majority rule in group decisions

This study examined age-related changes in the child's application of the principle of majority rule in group decisions. Following a problem posed by Moessinger (1981), we enquired whether children routinely apply the majority rule when the majority consists of a shifting (variable) set of members across decisions, and alternate between majority and minority when the majority and minority is fixed, i.e. consists of the same individuals each time. In Geneva, Moessinger found that 8-year-olds failed to discriminate between fixed and shifting majorities, while most 13-year-olds (75 per cent) did so. An altered replication was conducted in Australia modifying Moessinger's procedure to control for extraneous variables such as ‘set’ and the need for variety in choice. It was found that on the task 7 per cent of 8-year-olds, 20 per cent of 10-year-olds, 32 per cent of 12-year-olds, and 39 per cent of 14-year-olds discriminated on a behavioural criterion between fixed and shifting majorities. Ten per cent of 8-year-olds, 40 per cent of 10-year-olds, 52 per cent of 12-year-olds, and 55 per cent of 14-year-olds made the discrimination on Moessinger's cognitive ‘reason’ criterion. The results show that development of the conceptual distinction between fixed and shifting majorities is gradual and continuous.     

Reading skill and language skill

To learn to read is to acquire a visual language skill which systematically maps onto extant spoken language skills. Some children perform this task quite adeptly while others encounter much difficulty, and it has become a question of both scientific and practical merit to ask why there exists such a range of success in learning to read. Obviously, learning to read places a complex burden on many emerging capacities, and in principle, at least, reading disability could arise at any level from visual perception to general cognition. Yet since reading is parasitic on spoken language, the possibility also exists that reading disability is derived from some subtle difficulty in the language domain. This article reviews some of the many studies which have explored the association between early reading skills and spoken language skills. The focus will be on findings which reveal that when the linguistic short-term memory skills of good and poor beginning readers are critically examined, considerably many, though perhaps not all, poor readers prove to possess subtle deficiencies which correlate with their problems in learning to read.     

Suicide After Evaluation for Involuntary Psychiatric Commitment—Who Gets Them and What Influences Survival Time?

Although involuntary psychiatric hospitalizations are associated with suicide risk, little is known about the relationship between evaluation for involuntary detention and suicide. We analyzed data on 10,082 suicides from 2000 to 2011 to examine demographics related to evaluation for detention and the association between demographics and evaluation dispositions on survival time. Evaluation preceded 11% of suicides; 53.8% of deaths occurred within 365 days, 6.5 times the expected rate. Males and older individuals were least likely to have been evaluated. Minority status and referral disposition influence 30‐day survival time. Risk is highly concentrated in the first year following evaluation.     

DOES "FEMINIST" PLUS "THERAPIST" EQUAL "FEMINIST THERAPIST"?

This research examined the therapy behaviors self-identified feminist therapists engaged in. Practicing therapists (N = 101) were asked to endorse various feminist self-labels and to indicate how often they engaged in a variety of feminist (as assessed by the Feminist Therapy Behaviors-Revised [FTB-R] scale; and other therapy behaviors with both women and men clients. The following results were found. First, incrementally specific feminist self-labeling by therapists improved the prediction of therapy behaviors reflecting the notion that the personal is political. Second, the most strongly identified feminist therapists were distinguished from other therapists by their attention to issues of oppression (e.g., sexism, racism, heterosexism) and socialization. Third, therapists reported engaging in FTB-R behaviors with men clients almost as much as with women clients. And finally, FTB-R and other therapy behaviors emerged as distinct, both in terms of the underlying structure of therapists' responses and in terms of the links to feminist self-labeling.