Social Support,Coping Strategies and Psychological Well-being among Young People Awaiting Employment

Abstract

It is usually thought that unemployed people who experience high levels of social support show greater psychological well-being than those who experience less social support. This relationship is moderated by factors like the coping strategies used to face the disturbance. This article describes a study carried out on a population of young French people awaiting employment following a training course. The results show that the effects of social support on psychological well-being are modulated by the way individuals manage the relationships between the different domains of their life (family, professional, personal, and social).     

Workplace bullying and its relation with work characteristics,personality, and post-traumatic stress symptoms: an integrated model

Workplace bullying refers to prolonged exposure to frequent hostile behaviors at work, which can lead to severe stress reactions. Research in this area has not revealed a clear picture on how bullying escalates in organizations. Drawing on recent developments in work stress theory, this study tested a comprehensive model of bullying in which work environmental and personality factors were hypothesized to act as antecedents of bullying and post-traumatic stress symptoms as an outcome. Structural equation modeling on data provided by 609 public sector employees in Italy showed that job demands (workload and role conflict) and job resources (decision authority, co-worker support and salary/promotion prospects) were related to bullying over and above neuroticism, and that bullying mediated the relationship between job demands and PTSD symptoms. Evidence also emerged for a buffering effect of job resources on the job demands–bullying relationship. Overall results are compatible with a view of bullying as a strain phenomenon, initiated by both work environmental and personality factors.     

Deception,Catholicism, and Hope: Understanding Problems in the Communication of Unfavorable Prognoses in Traditionally-Catholic Countries

The doctor's use of deception in appropriate circumstances has commonly been considered a necessity of the medical art. Resistance to full and frank communication is typical of many traditionally Catholic countries, and particularly of Italy, a western country where Catholicism remains particularly influential. The Catholic teaching on truth and lies, and the problem of telling the truth to a severely ill patient is discussed. It is suggested that the contemporary Catholic model of gradually telling a terminal patient the truth, which looks reasonable and feasible in theory, is rarely followed in practice, as in the majority of cases the truth is not told tout court. Problems stem from the way in which medicine is currently practiced in Italy; from the synergism between Catholicism and the medical tradition's grounded paternalism; and from the ambiguity of the term ‘hope’. Catholic ethics in fact recommends that the truth must be told without destroying hope, but the Catholic meaning of ‘hope’ is very different from its meaning in current language.     

The Relationship Between Group Identification and Satisfaction with Life in a Cross-Cultural Community Sample

A variety of studies have shown that group identification (a sense of belonging to one’s social group, coupled with a sense of commonality with the group’s members) is linked to high levels of satisfaction with life (SWL). The aim of the present study was to support and extend this literature by: (1) investigating the link between group identification and SWL with a large cross-cultural community sample; (2) examining whether the relationship is moderated by nationality; and (3) considering whether SWL is enhanced by possessing multiple group identifications simultaneously. Utilizing data from Wave 1 of the Health in Groups project, 3829 participants from both Scotland and Italy completed a questionnaire assessing their identification with their family, their local community, and a group of their choice, as well as their level of SWL. Higher identification with each group predicted higher SWL. Nationality was a marginal moderator of the relationship between family identification and SWL, with the relationship being stronger for Italian participants than for Scottish participants. There was also an additive effect of group identification, with a positive relationship between the number of groups with which participants identified and their SWL. These effects were obtained even after controlling for gender, age, employment status, nationality, and extent of contact with each group. The implications for healthcare professionals and their patients are discussed.     

The Counseling Experiences of Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Clients

The counseling experiences of 13 transgender and gender nonconforming (TGNC) individuals were examined via semistructured, in‐depth interviews. Using multiple standards of trustworthiness (e.g., member checking, negative case analysis), the authors analyzed each interview from an interpretative phenomenological analytic framework. Four main themes were identified: mental health professional selection process, transaffirmative approach, transnegative approach, and support systems beyond counseling. Implications for implementing culturally responsive TGNC affirmative counseling, TGNC sensitive counselor training, and social justice–oriented research are discussed.     

Do you remember where sounds,pictures and words came from? The role of the stimulus format in object location memory

Contrasting results in visual and auditory spatial memory stimulate the debate over the role of sensory modality and attention in identity-to-location binding. We investigated the role of sensory modality in the incidental/deliberate encoding of the location of a sequence of items. In 4 separated blocks, 88 participants memorised sequences of environmental sounds, spoken words, pictures and written words, respectively. After memorisation, participants were asked to recognise old from new items in a new sequence of stimuli. They were also asked to indicate from which side of the screen (visual stimuli) or headphone channel (sounds) the old stimuli were presented in encoding. In the first block, participants were not aware of the spatial requirement while, in blocks 2, 3 and 4 they knew that their memory for item location was going to be tested. Results show significantly lower accuracy of object location memory for the auditory stimuli (environmental sounds and spoken words) than for images (pictures and written words). Awareness of spatial requirement did not influence localisation accuracy. We conclude that: (a) object location memory is more effective for visual objects; (b) object location is implicitly associated with item identity during encoding and (c) visual supremacy in spatial memory does not depend on the automaticity of object location binding.     

Reconcilable Differences? Human Diversity,Cultural Relativity,and Sense of Community

Sense of community (SOC) is one of the most widely used and studied constructs in community psychology. As proposed by Sarason in (The Psychological sense of community: prospects for a community psychology, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 1974), SOC represents the strength of bonding among community members. It is a valuable component of community life, and it has been linked to positive mental health outcomes, citizen participation, and community connectedness. However, promotion of SOC can become problematic in community psychology praxis when it conflicts with other core values proposed to define the field, namely values of human diversity, cultural relativity, and heterogeneity of experience and perspective. Several commentators have noted that promotion of SOC can conflict with multicultural diversity because it tends to emphasize group member similarity and appears to be higher in homogeneous communities. In this paper, we introduce the idea of a community-diversity dialectic as part of praxis and research in community psychology. We argue that systematic consideration of cultural psychology perspectives can guide efforts to address a community-diversity dialectic and revise SOC formulations that ultimately will invigorate community research and action. We provide a working agenda for addressing this dialectic, proposing that systematic consideration of the creative tension between SOC and diversity can be beneficial to community psychology.     

��ber das Wesen der psychotischen Wahnbildung

The aim of this paper is to explore the nature of the delusional construction so as to render it susceptible to a therapeutic approach. Particular attention is devoted to the nature and structure of delusion and its relation to the healthy part of the personality. In the author??s view, delusion is a psychopathological construction that makes it impossible for the patient to understand his own experience. The delusional construction is similar to a dream-like sensorial production but, unlike a real dream, it remains in the waking memory and creates characters which live independently of the ??dreamer??s?? awareness. It is a dream that never ends. The delusional imagination is so deeply rooted in the patient??s mental functioning that, even after systematic analysis, the delusional world, which had seemed to disappear, re-emerges under new configurations. This paper particularly deals with the difficulty in working through the psychotic episode and in ??deconstructing?? the delusional experience because of the terror connected with it.