Longitudinal Relationships Between Positive Affect,Loneliness, and Suicide Ideation: Age‐Specific Factors in a General Population

The aims of this study were to analyze whether positive and negative affect, social support, and loneliness are factors longitudinally related to suicide ideation in the general population in different age groups. A total of 2,392 individuals from a nationally representative sample of the Spanish general population were evaluated in 2011–2012 and in 2014–2015. After including relevant control variables in the analyses, lower positive affect was prospectively related to ideation in 18‐ to 59‐year‐old individuals, whereas feelings of loneliness were related to ideation in 60‐year‐and‐older individuals. Social support was not associated with suicide ideation in any age group. These results are in line with the need for age‐tailored suicide prevention programs. The present findings might also suggest that health care professionals should consider feelings of loneliness rather than social support to assess the presence of suicide ideation in older people.     

Religious and Political Violence: Globalising Syncretism and the Governance State*

Abstract

In this paper we argue that the conjunctions of religion and politics through eruptions of violence are codetermined and codependent through syncretic manifestations rather than a result of some kind of basic clash between different, self-contained systems of ideas and values. The vicissitudes of religious fervour are linked to issues of development and social change in which long-cherished traditions are confronted by seemingly inexorable forces beyond the control of those being affected by them. Religious violence is a political movement which should be understood as not being outside modernisation in the sense of being opposed to it; it is in fact part of the development of modernisation. Resistance arises from the experience of being excluded from the fruits of modernity while at the same time being enmeshed within the multiple social relations underpinning the production and distribution of those ‘fruits’. Whether from a postmodern or from a more conventional perspective a totalising analysis organised around master concepts like ‘globalisation’ or ‘civilisation’ is often developed to explain the intersections of religion and violence. We reject these approaches in favour of one predicated on the idea of the ‘governance state’. It is our argument that this better captures the core axis of analysis – namely the changing nature of the state and its management of populations and the concomitant forms of resistance by those subjected to it in an era in which such ‘modernities’ are played out.     

Towards a model for evaluating spiritual recollections

Spiritual recollections are often evaluated through the effectiveness of delivery, rather than the outcomes of the recollections. Such preference is understandable given the difficulty in defining and quantifying recollection outcomes. To address this gap, the article proposes a framework for evaluating recollection outcomes rather than delivery, and shows how a Filipino Catholic university makes use of this framework for its spiritual recollections. Using data from the university’s Office of Campus Ministry, the study shows how these outcomes were defined and finds that prayer significantly increases the odds of gaining from the recollection while participation in the alternative multifaith group reduces these odds. The article details the changes that were made in response to these results and ends with possible adaptation of this model in other contexts.     

Social stimuli increase physiological reactivity but not defensive responses

Emotional reactions are crucial in survival because they provide approach and withdrawal behaviors. However, an unsolved question is whether the social content of the affective stimuli has a specific effect on emotional responses. We studied whether the social content of affective pictures influenced the defensive response and response mobilization. For this purpose, we recorded startle blink reflex (a defensive response) and skin conductance responses (a measure of unspecific physiological reactivity or arousal) in 73 participants while they viewed a series of 81 pictures of varying affective valence and social content. Our results revealed that defense response, as indicated by increases in the magnitude of the startle blink reflex, was mainly dependent on threatening or unpleasant cues, but was unrelated to the social content of the pictures. The social content, however, had an influence on pleasant stimuli, provoking an increase in resource mobilization, as reflected by changes in electrodermal activity. Hence, the social content of the affective stimuli may increase the physiological arousal elicited by pleasant stimuli, and it appears to be unrelated to the defense reactivity provoked by unpleasant stimuli.     

A Holistic Client Functioning Profile Comparison of People With Serious Mental Illness

Among a sample of 196 participants, small differences in holistic client functioning, as measured by standardized Adult Needs and Strengths Assessment (Lyons & Walton, 1999) and symptom severity scores, emerged across 3 diagnostic categories of serious mental illness (SMI; i.e., depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia). However, sizable variations in symptom severity were evident across diagnoses of SMI, despite study participants receiving a similar configuration and intensity of recovery-oriented usual-care services. These results may evidence previous concerns surrounding the transdiagnosis of SMI, overlapping criteria and symptomatology among disorders in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and mental health treatment and service practices in the United States. Implications for counselor practice are discussed.     

Cultural dimensions,socioeconomic development,climate, and emotional hedonic level

A research synthesis was conducted with four studies which correlated national mean self-ratings of affect balance (positive minus negative affect) and subjective well-being with the nations' cultural characteristics (individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, and power-distance national scores on Hofstede's dimensions), socioeconomic development (Human Development Index), and climate (absolute latitude). A meta-analysis of these collective level cross-cultural studies shows that individualism correlates positively with affect balance and subjective well-being, controlling for socioeconomic development, cultural femininity, power-distance, uncertainty avoidance, and climate. Similar results were found for individual-level data. The meaning of collective-level or national means of individual self-reports of affect balance is discussed.