Online counselling in secondary schools: would students seek help by this medium?

Students in secondary schools experience problems that can impact on their well-being and educational outcomes. Although face-to-face counselling is available in most Australian secondary schools, many students, particularly boys, do not seek appropriate help. Research suggests that online counselling can be effective and increase engagement. This study of 215 secondary school students sought to assess students' intention to use online counselling if it was made available in schools. The results found no gender difference in the likely intentions to seek online help though year level was significant and students experiencing psychological distress had a preference for online counselling. If students did use online counselling it was more likely they would discuss sensitive topics rather than for career issues. Implications for school counselling are discussed.     

Comparison of the Effects of Telephone Suicide Prevention Help by Volunteers and Professional Paid Staff: Results from Studies in the USA and Quebec,Canada

Research since the 1960s has consistently found that lay volunteers are better at helping suicidal callers than professionals. Yet, professional degrees are increasingly becoming requirements for helpline workers. In our first study, we conducted post hoc comparisons of U.S. helplines with all professional paid staff, all lay volunteers, and a mix of both, using silent monitoring and standardized assessments of 1,431 calls. The volunteer centers more often conducted risk assessments, had more empathy, were more respectful of callers, and had significantly better call outcome ratings. A second study of five Quebec suicide prevention centers used silent monitoring to compare telephone help in 1,206 calls answered by 90 volunteers and 39 paid staff. Results indicate no significant differences between the volunteers and paid employees on outcome variables. However, volunteers and paid staff with over 140 hours of call experience had significantly better outcomes. Unlike the United States, Quebec paid employees were not required to have advanced professional degrees. We conclude from these results and previous research that there is no justification for requiring that suicide prevention helpline workers be mental health professionals. In fact, the evidence to date indicates that professionals may be less effective in providing telephone help to suicidal individuals when compared to trained lay volunteers.     

A Broader Understanding of Moral Distress

On the traditional view, moral distress arises only in cases where an individual believes she knows the morally right thing to do but fails to perform that action due to various constraints. We seek to motivate a broader understanding of moral distress. We begin by presenting six types of distress that fall outside the bounds of the traditional definition and explaining why they should be recognized as forms of moral distress. We then propose and defend a new and more expansive definition of moral distress and examine how it can enable the development of a taxonomy of moral distress.     

Information processing during sleep onset and sleep.

This Special Section examines the extent of information processing during sleep onset and sleep itself. It is generally agreed that, stimulus input is markedly inhibited during sleep, thus preventing conscious awareness of the external environment. Overt behavioural responses are rarely made within sleep. Two neurophysiological measures are therefore often used. The electrical activity of the brain (the EEG) can be employed to distinguish waking (conscious) from sleeping (unconscious) states. It is also possible to quantify the EEG prior to and following a detection (or a failure of a detection) of a stimulus. Such measures can thus be used to predict conscious awareness. A second measure that frequently has been employed is the brain's response to an external stimulus (the evoked potential). Different components of the evoked potential can be used to trace the extent of information processing during the different states of consciousness. Some are associated with a preconscious detection while others are associated with conscious awareness. Other evoked potentials may be unique to sleep.     

SEXIST DISCRIMINATION MAY ACCOUNT FOR WELL-KNOWN GENDER DIFFERENCES IN PSYCHIATRIC SYMPTOMS

It was hypothesized that women may have more depressive, anxious, and somatic symptoms than men because they experience a deleterious stressor that men do not: sexist treatment. A total of 255 students (180 females, 75 males) at a state university completed an anonymous questionnaire containing measures of these symptoms. Women were found to exhibit significantly greater symptoms than men on all of them. Further, women who experienced frequent sexism had significantly more symptoms than men on all symptom measures, whereas women who experienced little sexism did not differ from men on any symptom measure. These findings suggest that gender-specific stressors not only play a role in psychiatric symptoms among women but may account for well-known gender differences in those symptoms as well.     

Emotional Intelligence in the Collection of Debt

Two studies are reported which compare more and less successful account officers (debt collectors) in terms of their emotional intelligence, measured using the BarOn Emotional Quotient Inventory. The findings support the view that higher levels of emotional intelligence lead to enhanced job performance. Implications for selection are considered in the conclusion.     

Propositionalism about intention: shifting the burden of proof

A widespread view in the philosophy of mind and action holds that intentions are propositional attitudes. Call this view ‘Propositionalism about Intention’. The key alternative holds that intentions have acts, or do-ables, as their contents. Propositionalism is typically accepted by default, rather than argued for in any detail. By appealing to a key metaphysical constraint on any account of intention, I argue that on the contrary, it is the Do-ables View which deserves the status of the default position, and Propositionalism which bears the burden of proof. I go on to show that this burden has not been met in the literature.     

A comparison of computer‐assisted and therapist‐led instruction for children with autism spectrum disorder

The current investigation applied a model of assessment‐based instruction to an evaluation of the efficacy and efficiency of computer‐assisted and therapist‐led instruction on skill acquisition for 3 participants with autism spectrum disorder. We also evaluated the participant's attending during instruction and the social validity of each format of instruction. The results showed that computer‐assisted instruction was most efficient for 2 of the 3 participants, although attending varied across instructional formats. In addition, the social validity of instructional formats varied across participants.