The Role and Value of Chaplains in the Ambulance Service: Paramedic Perspectives

Journal of Religion and Health - Chaplains are employed by ambulance services in many states across Australia as one element in a suite of initiatives to support the health and wellness of...     

Practical recommendations for considering culture,race, and ethnicity in personality psychology

Personality science is the study of the individual. It aims to understand what makes people similar to others, different from some, and unique to themselves. However, there is room for research in personality to more thoughtfully consider culture, race, and ethnicity in order to better understand individual differences in people’s patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving. High impact personality journals rarely include such factors into the interpretation of results, and cross-cultural and ethnic minority publications are limited within the discipline. This article offers a brief, non-exhaustive overview of how culture, race, and ethnicity are examined in relation to personality, showing that: (1) social structures continue to be neglected in the research, (2) we can learn from research being conducted in neighboring areas, and (3) valuable work is already being done within personality psychology. We offer recommendations that emphasize community based participatory research methods, combined etic-emic approaches, and contextualizing research findings to improve the consideration of culture, race, and ethnicity in personality research.     

Users of secondary school‐based counselling services and specialist CAMHS in Wales: A comparison study

Background: The increasing prevalence of mental health issues in young people has contributed to a rise in the provision of school‐based counselling services in the UK. Between 2008/09 and 2010/11, data were collected from users of secondary school‐based counselling services in Wales. Aims: To identify the characteristics of users of school‐based counselling services in Wales – including demographics, referral pathways, presenting issues, and predominant issues – and how they compare to users of specialist CAMHS in Wales and Welsh secondary school pupils in general. Method: Data were collected on 10,687 episodes of counselling. School counsellors completed a client record sheet after each counselling episode and submitted these to their Local Authority. Collated results were then compared to matched data from Welsh specialist CAMHS and Welsh secondary schools data. Results/findings: A typical user of a secondary school‐based counselling service in Wales was female, of white ethnicity, and from the ‘middle’ school years. There was a marked under‐representation of users from BME backgrounds. Users were most often referred by school staff, and the most common presenting issues were family‐related, anger, and behaviour‐related. Conclusions: There was a higher proportion of females accessing school‐based counselling services than males. This was in direct contrast to data from specialist CAMHS and possible explanations for this are discussed. The under‐representation of BME populations suggested that there were some equality issues associated with accessing these services. Implications for practice: Future research should explore equality issues associated with young people from BME backgrounds accessing intervention services.     

The processing of lexical stress during visual word recognition: Typicality effects and orthographic correlates

Many studies that have examined reading at the single-word level have been restricted to the processing of monosyllabic stimuli, and, as a result, lexical stress has not been widely investigated. In the experiments reported here, we used disyllabic words and nonwords to investigate the processing of lexical stress during visual word recognition. In Experiments 1 and 2, we found an effect of stress typicality in naming and lexical decision. Typically stressed words (trochaic nouns and iambic verbs) elicited fewer errors than atypically stressed words (iambic nouns and trochaic verbs). In Experiment 3, we carried out an analysis of 340 word endings and found clear orthographic correlates of both grammatical category and lexical stress in word endings. In Experiment 4, we demonstrated that readers are sensitive to these cues in their processing of nonwords during two tasks: sentence construction and stress assignment. We discuss the implications of these findings with regard to psycholinguistic models of single-word reading.     

Nine- and twelve-month-old infants relate emotions to people's actions

Under investigation was whether 9- to 12-month-olds appreciate that a person's expression of pleasure when gazing toward an object is consistent with that person's subsequent handling of the object. Infants were randomly assigned to an experimental and control group. In the experimental group infants during the pretrials saw a Happy or an Unhappy person saying either “Oh I like objects” or, “I don't like objects”, respectively, while looking at an abstract object. In the habituation phase, infants saw an actor holding the abstract object, but the emotional expression of the actor was obscured. In the posttrial, infants were alternately presented with either the Happy or the Unhappy actor holding the object. In the control group, infants received the same three phase procedure, except that no object was present during the pre- and habituation trials. Analyses comparing the between-subjects variables revealed that infants in the Experimental group looked significantly longer at the Unhappy actor than infants in the Control group but less long at the Happy actor. This study is the first to compare positive and negative emotions and to show that infants as young as 9 months use these emotions to make inferences about people's subsequent actions on objects.     

Intrinsic motivation and sustained art activity among male fine and applied artists

Studies of fine artists (e.g., painters, sculptors, photographers) indicate that many experience intrinsic motivation. However, questions can be raised about whether intrinsic motivation can be sustained over time. Because economic support for art is sporadic, meager, or nonexistent, many fine artists shift from one unrelated job to another—exhibiting a fluid career pattern. Such a career pattern would be difficult to withstand for any prolonged period of time because of economic uncertainties, familial pressures, and social status. The present study compared the responses of fine artists in fluid careers (n = 6) with those of applied artists in stable careers (n = 6) regarding whether and why they produce art (at the start of mid‐life). Both groups were queried 18–20 years after attending art school together. A content analysis and chi‐square test revealed that the fine artists were significantly more likely than the applied artists to offer intrinsic motives as an explanation for why they produced art. Theories of intrinsic motivation were utilized to account for the sustained activity. The results suggest fruitful directions for future research.     

Enhanced counselling for women undergoing BRCA1/2 testing: Impact on knowledge and psychological distress–results from a randomised clinical trial

This randomised controlled trial evaluated the impact of an enhanced counselling (EC) intervention on knowledge about the heritability of breast and ovarian cancer and distress, as a function of BRCA test result, among high-risk women. Before deciding about whether or not to undergo genetic testing, participants were randomly assigned to the EC intervention (N = 69), designed to promote cognitive and affective processing of cancer risk information (following the standard individualised counselling session), or to the control condition (N = 65), which involved standard individualised counselling followed by a general health information session to control for time and attention. Women in the EC group exhibited greater knowledge than women in the control group, 1 week after the intervention. Further, at the affective level, the intervention was found to be the most beneficial for women testing positive: specifically 1 week after test result disclosure, women in the intervention group who tested positive experienced lower levels of distress than women in the control group who tested positive. The findings suggest that the design of counselling aids should include a component that explicitly activates the individual's cognitive–affective processing system.     

Intrusive thoughts and avoidance in breast cancer: Individual differences and association with psychological distress

Abstract

Eighty-five women with newly diagnosed breast cancer were classified on the basis of high and low levels of cancer-related intrusive thoughts and avoidance at diagnosis, and their psychological adjustment was studied prospectively at 3 and 6 months post diagnosis. Patients who initially reported high levels of both intrusive thoughts and avoidance and those who reported high levels of intrusive thoughts but low avoidance experienced the highest levels of anxiety and depression symptoms, and continued intrusive thoughts and avoidance. Patients who were high in avoidance but low in intrusive thoughts also experienced adjustment problems, including increased intrusive thoughts, when compared with patients who were low in both types of symptoms. The findings highlight the value of considering subgroup differences in patterns of intrusion and avoidance as predictors of subsequent psychological adjustment to breast cancer.     

Goal Internalization and Outcome Expectancy in Adolescent Anxiety

Anxiety has been conceptualized in terms of increased avoidance motivation and higher expectancies of undesirable outcomes. However, anxiety research has hitherto not examined an important qualitative aspect of motivation: the degree to which reasons for goal pursuit are experienced as controlling and originating outside the core self. We asked 70 adolescents (34 boys, 36 girls; aged 16–18 years) to list their important approach and avoidance goals, and rate the extent to which they pursued each goal for intrinsic, identified, introjected and external reasons. Participants also rated goal importance, expectancies for goal outcomes, and completed an anxious symptom measure. Broadly in line with predictions, anxiety was significantly associated with introjected reasons for pursuing approach goals and external reasons for pursuing avoidance goals but not with autonomous reasons for goal pursuit. As predicted, anxiety was significantly associated with heightened expectancies of undesirable avoidance goal outcomes, but not with expectancies for desirable approach goal outcomes. Results suggest that the salient role of avoidance-based motivation in anxiety extends to introjected reasons underlying approach goal pursuit. Our findings point to the theoretical and clinical importance of addressing controlled reasons for goal pursuit in adolescent anxiety.