The effects of mindfulness-based interventions for health and social care undergraduate students – a systematic review of the literature

Health and social care undergraduate students experience stress due to high workloads and pressure to perform. Consequences include depression and burnout. Mindfulness may be a suitable way to reduce stress in health and social care degree courses. The objective of this systematic review is to identify and critically appraise the literature on the effects of Mindfulness-Based Interventions for health and social care undergraduate students. PubMed, EMBASE, Psych Info, CINAHL, The Cochrane Library and Academic Search Complete were searched from inception to 21st November 2016. Studies that delivered Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy, or an intervention modelled closely on these, to health or social care undergraduate students were included. Eleven studies, representing medicine, nursing and psychology students met the inclusion criteria. The most commonly used measurement tools were; the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire and the General Health Questionnaire. Short term benefits relating to stress and mood were reported, despite all but one study condensing the curriculum. Gender and personality emerged as factors likely to affect intervention results. Further research with long-term follow-up is required to definitively conclude that mindfulness is an appropriate intervention to mentally prepare health and social care undergraduate students for their future careers.     

Temporal stability of the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity: Test-retest data over five weeks

Recently Lewis, Cruise, and Mc Guckin (2005) have reported on the test-retest reliability of the 7-item version of the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity; however, their study was limited. The present aim was to evaluate the temporal stability of both the 24- and 7-item versions of the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity over a five-week period among a sample of 114 Irish undergraduate university students. Data demonstrated that stability across the two administrations was very high for both the 24- (r = .95) and 7-item (r = .94) versions. These data support the short-term test-retest reliability of both the 24- and 7-item versions of the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity.     

The Influences of Sex and Gender-Role Identity on Moral Cognition and Prosocial Personality Traits

The relations of sex and gender-role identity to moral thought and prosocial personality traits were examined. Two hundred and nine men and women rated the importance of real-life, care-related, justice-related, and mixed (both care- and justice-related) moral dilemmas. Responses on the real-life and mixed dilemmas also were scored for care and justice orientations. Women and feminine persons viewed moral conflicts as more important than did men and masculine people. On the mixed dilemmas, women scored higher than men on care reasoning, whereas men scored higher than women on justice reasoning. Regardless of sex or gender role, relational real-life dilemmas evoked higher importance and care reasoning scores than did nonrelational ones. Women and persons high in femininity showed more empathic concern for other people. Masculine persons scored lower on personal distress, whereas androgynous persons reported more helpful behaviors than did all others.     

Early Parenting Intervention: Family Risk and First-time Parenting Related to Intervention Effectiveness

The effects of cumulative risk and parity on the effectiveness of a home based parenting intervention were tested in a randomized controlled trial with 237 families with 1- to 3-year-old children screened for high levels of externalizing behavior. The intervention was aimed at enhancing positive parenting and decreasing externalizing behaviors. The results showed that cumulative risk was not associated with either change in child externalizing behaviors or change in positive parenting. When intervention effectiveness was compared for primiparas (i.e., first-time mothers) versus multiparas (i.e., mothers with more than one child), we found that intervention mothers of first-born children displayed an increase in their use of positive discipline strategies as compared to first-time mothers in the control group, whereas a similar effect for multiparas was absent. Among multiparas we found an intervention effect on sensitivity, with control group mothers showing an increase in sensitivity, whereas the intervention group showed a constant level of sensitivity over time. These results suggest that parity may be a moderator of intervention effectiveness. Implications for investigating moderators of intervention effectiveness are discussed.     

Associations Between Fathers’ and Mothers’ Psychopathology Symptoms,Parental Emotion Socialization,and Preschoolers’ Social-Emotional Development

In this study we tested whether the relation between fathers’ and mothers’ psychopathology symptoms and child social-emotional development was mediated by parents’ use of emotion talk about negative emotions in a sample of 241 two-parent families. Parents’ internalizing and externalizing problems were measured with the Adult Self Report and parental emotion talk was observed while they discussed a picture book with their children (child age: 3 years). Children’s parent-reported internalizing and externalizing problems and observed prosocial behaviors were assessed at the age of 3 years and again 12 months later. We found that mothers’ use of emotion talk partially mediated the positive association between fathers’ internalizing problems and child internalizing problems. Fathers’ internalizing problems predicted more elaborative mother–child discussions about negative emotions, which in turn predicted more internalizing problems in children a year later. Mothers’ externalizing problems directly predicted more internalizing and externalizing problems in children. These findings emphasize the importance of examining the consequences of parental psychological difficulties for child development from a family-wide perspective.     

Health Locus of Control After Lung Transplantation: Implications for Managing Health

Health locus of control (HLC) beliefs may influence the health behaviors that patients perform on their own behalf. Likewise, the HLC beliefs that clinicians consider desirable may influence how active they encourage patients to be in managing health. It remains unclear how involved lung recipients want to be and how involved transplant clinicians believe they should be. The aims of this study were to describe HLC beliefs and behaviors manifested by recipients and clinicians in the setting of lung transplantation. Mixed-methods were used, including quantitative techniques to measure demographics, clinical characteristics, and HLC using the Multidimensional Health Locus of Control Scale (MHLC), and qualitative techniques to explore how HLC beliefs were manifest in the clinical setting. Nearly all participants manifested behaviors consistent with high internality and externality, highlighting the importance of holding ‘dual health locus of control’ beliefs for optimal health management and lending support for recipients and clinicians to share responsibility for managing post-transplant health.Funded by the Nursing & Social Sciences Council of the International Society of Heart and Lung Transplantation.