Psychological trauma associated with AIDS and HIV infection in women

The growing numbers of women faced with HIV infection and AIDS has specific counselling implications. This paper analyses the psychological needs of all women patients seen by the psychology department (n = 33) over the past 12 months. The mean age was 32.3 years. Psychological crisis was high. Four women reported rapes (three accounting for their HIV infection). Two women had suicide attempts (one on two occasions), Death experiences were notable, including multiple bereavement. Conjidentiality was problematic for many of the women. Problems were reported around pre- and post-test counselling which was absent for three women, and often surrounded the diagnosis of a loved one (child, husband or partner). Most women were first seen as in-patients (when disease progression was extensive) or when their partners or children were in-patients. Despite offers of out-patients follow-up, only four HIV + ve women attended, three of which were irregular. A group of ten women were only seen indirectly when provision of care wasgiven to their children. A consistent group were seen with worries about HIV (either due to sexual contact with a known HZV+ ve or at risk individual) or to unfounded concerns often reflecting underlying psychological problems. This paper explores the counselling challenges of AIDS and HIV for women.     

The effects of false response feedback on human 'fear' conditioning

This study describes a human electrodermal conditioning experiment in which subjects were given false skin conductance feedback during CS presentation. In comparison with appropriate attentional control groups, subjects who believed they were exhibiting a strong CR did actually emit a greater magnitude CR, while subjects who believed they were exhibiting only a weak CR emitted a significantly lower magnitude CR. When both self-report and behavioural measures of UCS revaluation were taken after conditioning, the evidence suggested that response feedback had not differentially affected subjects evaluation of the aversiveness of the UCS. The results suggest that the response modulating effects of response feedback observed in this and other studies are not caused by response feedback influencing evaluation of the UCS, but they are consistent with the hypothesis that beliefs about the nature of response feedback influence the strength of the UCS representation itself.     

Counselling implications of anxiety and depression in AIDS and HIV infection: A pilot study

Anxiety and depression are two major psychological reactions to HIV infection. The recognition and treatment of these are of fundamental importance as they may alleviate the suffering for those with a potentially terminal illness, may increase coping and may improve the quality of their life. Furthermore, many of the physical symptoms associated with anxiety mirror AIDS symptoms. For prompt care it is important that those with HIV/AIDS, and those caring for them, recognize the role of anxiety to minimize unnecessary symptoms and recognize those which could respond to medical intervention. In this study a group of front line AIDS/HIV workers were given an in-depth training course on anxiety and depression. Evaluation of the course revealed a high number of patients suffering from anxiety (80.1%) and depression (31%). The evaluation revealed gains in counselling proficiency, knowledge and symptom recognition. Some of the entrenched myths, particularly surrounding suicide, were not resolved. These findings are discussed in the light of the difficulties of training non-mental health workers in the use of counselling skills.     

A new look at “the hard problem” of bilingual lexical access: evidence for language-switch costs with univalent stimuli

Considerable work has used language-switching tasks to investigate how bilinguals manage competition between languages. Language-switching costs have been argued to reflect persisting inhibition or persisting activation of a non-target language. However, these costs might instead reflect the use of bivalent stimuli (i.e. pictures or digits that can be responded to in either language). That is, language-switching costs may simply reflect a cost of selecting the task-appropriate response for a given item and so may not be reflective of bilingual lexical access [Finkbeiner, M., Almeida, J., Janssen, N., & Carramaza, A. (2006). Lexical selection in bilingual speech production does not involve language suppression. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 32(5), 1075–1089]. The present study addresses this concern by having Chinese/English bilinguals switch between languages in response to inherently univalent stimuli (English words and Chinese Characters) as well as lexically univalent, but orthographically bivalent, stimuli (English words and Chinese Pinyin). Speakers showed switch costs when naming both univalent and orthographically bivalent stimuli, showing that switch costs can be found even with inherently univalent stimuli.     

Sleep,resilience, and psychological distress in United States military Veterans

Sleep problems are prevalent among Veterans. Left untreated, such problems may elevate psychological distress and increase risk of subsequent mental health disorders. Psychological resilience may buffer against negative psychological outcomes, yet the relationship between sleep and resilience has not been studied. This study explored poor sleep, resilience, and psychological distress using questionnaires collected as part of the Study of Post-Deployment Mental Health. Participants (N = 1,118) had served in the US military since September 11, 2001, had one or more overseas deployments, and were free from a past-month DSM-defined mental health disorder. Hierarchical linear regression was used to examine the association between poor sleep quality (Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index total score) and psychological distress (Global Symptom Index; Symptom Checklist-90-R), controlling for demographic and health characteristics. Moderation analyses tested for a potential buffering effect of resilience (Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale). Poor sleeping Veterans had worse physical and psychological health, lower resilience, and endorsed more lifetime traumatic events. Poor sleep was associated with greater psychological distress controlling for health and demographic characteristics. Both resilience factors—adaptability and self-efficacy—had significant buffering effects on the relationship between poor sleep and psychological distress, suggesting that resilience may protect against negative outcomes in poor sleepers. Additional research is warranted to better understand the relationships between sleep, resilience, and psychological distress. Such research may inform pertinent prevention efforts, including interventions that improve sleep, enhance resilience, and protect against incident mental health diagnoses.     

Inference in the Wild: A Framework for Human Situation Assessment and a Case Study of Air Combat

Situation awareness is a key construct in human factors and arises from a process of situation assessment (SA). SA comprises the perception of information, its integration with existing knowledge, the search for new information, and the prediction of the future state of the world, including the consequences of planned actions. Causal models implemented as Bayesian networks (BNs) are attractive for modeling all of these processes within a single, unified framework. We elicited declarative knowledge from two Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) fighter pilots about the information sources used in the identification (ID) of airborne entities and the causal relationships between these sources. This knowledge was represented in a BN (the declarative model) that was evaluated against the performance of 19 RAAF fighter pilots in a low‐fidelity simulation. Pilot behavior was well predicted by a simple associative model (the behavioral model) with only three attributes of ID. Search for information by pilots was largely compensatory and was near‐optimal with respect to the behavioral model. The average revision of beliefs in response to evidence was close to Bayesian, but there was substantial variability. Together, these results demonstrate the value of BNs for modeling human SA.     

Second-Order Change in Marriage and Family Therapy: A Web-Based Modified Delphi Study

Second-order change is a central concept in Marriage and Family Therapy, but still remains poorly operationalized. We conducted a web-based modified Delphi study with 31 established faculty members currently teaching in COAMFTE-accredited Master's and Doctoral programs in the United States and in Canada to identify consensus regarding second-order change concepts, clinical operationalization, evaluation, and teaching principles. Numerous exemplars of first and second-order change were generated, but consensus on most items was low. Consensus was highest for pedagogy and low regarding concepts and clinical examples of first-order change and evaluation of second-order change. Results suggest clearer definitions and better measurement of systemic change are needed.     

Children and Adolescents of Cancer Patients: The Impact of Cancer on the Family

In this article, extant literature was reviewed to examine the impact of parental cancer on the family. Many researchers and scholars have hypothesized that parental illnesses, like cancer, can affect all levels of the family system. However, most psychosocial research to date has focused on how cancer affects the patient and the couple. Consequently, little is known about how parental cancer affects the psychosocial development of children and adolescents. Therefore, research is needed to explore how children and adolescents are negatively impacted or protected from the effects of living with a parent who has cancer. More specifically, longitudinal studies that examine the mechanisms by which the cancer affects children's and adolescents' functioning can help physicians and family therapists clinically intervene in more efficacious ways.     

Accounts of workplace bullying: The role of the organization

In over a decade of research into bullying at work, the focus has been on defining, measuring, and explaining the essential nature of the bullying phenomenon. This focus has positioned the individual as the main unit of analysis, with the organization acting as a facilitating backdrop. By assuming a critical research position as opposed to the dominant positivist tradition from which most of the bullying research emanates, attention can be drawn to additional and marginalized accounts. Our research does not offer a definition of bullying—rather, we examine the implications of the different ways in which the term bullying is used. This paper uses data from a case study in a large telecommunications company's call centres. We demonstrate that while employees use the pathologized individual and the facilitating environment to account for bullying, in addition they use the notion of the pathologized organization. This additional narrative brings issues of power and politics in organizations to the fore. Taking a critical management approach, we focus on employee accounts of the oppressive impact of power structures. We argue that marginalizing certain accounts functions to maintain the organizational power balance. By using the term bullying to describe their work experience, employees in this study sought to employ an emotive and highly charged term to highlight their discontent at increasingly difficult work situations.