Distress,Loss, and Adjustment Following the Birth of a Baby: A Qualitative Exploration of One New Father's Experiences

In contrast with the vast literature on the postnatal psychological difficulties experienced by some mothers, there have been few attempts to study the mental health of fathers in and around the time of the birth of a baby. Using an interpretive phenomenological analysis, this study attempts to map the experience of fathers following the birth of a child. A male consultation group was employed to guide the study, and the results feature an in-depth analysis of one new father. The findings were consistent with Kelly's notion of constructs of transition in revealing powerful emotional themes regarding loss and difficulties with adjustment. These are explored within the context of contemporary fathering, relational patterns, and male identity. The findings suggest that men's experience of distress may be linked to prevalent yet contradictory discourse directly linked to expectations about their roles following childbirth. They also suggest the clinical importance of this area, as men's well-being appears to impact that of the mother and baby.     

Development of a career-enabler framework within a South African higher education institution

This study developed a preliminary career-enabler framework for use in a higher education setting. A quantitative survey was conducted with a sample of 1392 employees within a higher education institution in South Africa. Structural analysis was performed using exploratory factor analysis. The analysis yielded three enablers with acceptable psychometric properties, namely: self-transcendence, self-enhancement and self-conservation through work motives and needs. Interventions that focus on career-enablers within a higher education institution need to address these three factors.     

Etude des Facteurs psychosociaux,du burnout,de la Vigueur et des troubles musculosquelettiques chez les soignants hospitaliers

Psychosocial factors, the burnout and the musculoskeletal disorders coexist in health professionals at the hospital. From 176 answers to a questionnary built from Karasek (1990) and Siegrist (1996) theories of psychosocial factors, Shirom (2004) of burnout and vigor and finally Kuorinka (1987) of musculoskeletal disorders, we measure and put in link these different aspects, then we propose a predictive model for burnout and pains.     

Is A Person Thinking About Suicide Likely to Find Help on the Internet? An Evaluation of Google Search Results

It is unclear whether individuals searching the Internet for assistance with thoughts of suicide are likely to encounter predominantly helpful or harmful resources. This study investigated websites retrieved by searching Google for information and support for suicidal thoughts. Google searches retrieved a high percentage of irrelevant websites (26%, n = 136). Of the 329 relevant websites retrieved, the majority were suicide preventive (68%); however, a considerable proportion of sites expressed mixed (22%) or neutral (8%) suicide attitudes, and 1% were explicitly pro‐suicide. The results highlight a need for suicide prevention organization websites to be made more easily accessible. In the meantime, clinicians should be aware of appropriate websites to recommend to clients.     

Targeting those in need: baseline data from the first English National Health Service (NHS) health trainer service

As part of a wider strategy to reduce health inequalities, England's National Health Service has introduced health trainers (HTs) to facilitate healthier behaviour among disadvantaged groups. This study reports baseline data from the first English HT service: assessing whether the HTs reached socially disadvantaged clients engaging in unhealthy behaviours and describing client belief characteristics relevant to the delivery of the service. Data from 864 clients show that the service reached disadvantaged groups and that those groups were engaging in risky health behaviours. Self-efficacy about changing behaviour was not strong and clients were unlikely to have made explicit behaviour-change plans prior to attending the service. Implications for HT services around targeting those most in need and supporting psychological triggers for change are discussed.     

Mothers and Children as Informants of Bullying Victimization: Results from an Epidemiological Cohort of Children

Stressful events early in life can affect children’s mental health problems. Collecting valid and reliable information about children’s bad experiences is important for research and clinical purposes. This study aimed to (1) investigate whether mothers and children provide valid reports of bullying victimization, (2) examine the inter-rater reliability between the two informants, (3) test the predictive validity of their reports with children’s emotional and behavioral problems and (4) compare the genetic and environmental etiology of bullying victimization as reported by mothers and children. We assessed bullying victimization in the Environmental-Risk (E-Risk) Longitudinal Twin Study, a nationally-representative sample of 1,116 families with twins. We collected reports from mothers and children during private interviews, including detailed narratives. Findings showed that we can rely on mothers and children as informants of bullying victimization: both informants provided information which adhered to the definition of bullying as involving repeated hurtful actions between peers in the presence of a power imbalance. Although mothers and children modestly agreed with each other about who was bullied during primary and secondary school, reports of bullying victimization from both informants were similarly associated with children’s emotional and behavioral problems and provided similar estimates of genetic and environmental influences. Findings from this study suggest that collecting information from multiple informants is ideal to capture all instances of bullying victimization. However, in the absence of child self-reports, mothers can be considered as a viable alternative, and vice versa.     

Suicide, schizophrenia, and schizoid-type psychosis: role of life events and childhood factors

The first objective was to identify the provoking events of suicide in patients with schizophrenia or schizoid-type disorder, and to assess the humiliation component of these events. The second objective was to verify if quality of care during childhood is a vulnerability factor for suicide in patients with schizophrenia or schizoid-type psychosis. Thirty-three cases of suicide with a diagnosis of schizophrenia or schizoid-type psychosis were compared with 34 living patients with a similar diagnosis. The psychological autopsy method was used. The assessments were made with the Structured Clinical Interview for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Axis I mental disorders, the Life Events and Difficulties Schedule, and the Child Experiences and Child Abuse Interview. The suicide group (SG) experienced more often a recent severe event, usually of a humiliation nature, than the control group (CG). It also experienced more severe events associated with aggressive behavior or with psychiatric impairment. Contrary to expectations, the CG had worse scores than the SG for quality of care during childhood. In conclusion, suicide in schizophrenia is related both to environmental stress and to psychiatric impairment.     

Shades of emotion: What the addition of sunglasses or masks to faces reveals about the development of facial expression processing

Three studies investigated developmental changes in facial expression processing, between 3years-of-age and adulthood. For adults and older children, the addition of sunglasses to upright faces caused an equivalent decrement in performance to face inversion. However, younger children showed better classification of expressions of faces wearing sunglasses than children who saw the same faces un-occluded. When the mouth area was occluded with a mask, children under nine years showed no impairment in expression classification, relative to un-occluded faces. An early selective focus of attention on the eyes may be optimal for socialization, but mediate against accurate expression classification. The data support a model in which a threshold level of attentional control must be reached before children can develop adult-like configural processing skills and be flexible in their use of face- processing strategies.     

Time frames and the distinction between affective and cognitive well-being

We examined whether the empirical differences between affective well-being (AWB) and cognitive well-being (CWB) might be due to (a) the use of different time frames in measures of AWB and CWB or (b) structural differences. In Study 1, a multitrait-multimethod (MTMM) analysis indicated that levels of different components are more similar but do not converge completely when the same time frame is used. In Study 2, we found that people are more likely to consider global life circumstances (as opposed to specific events and activities) when they evaluate their CWB, regardless of the specific time frame. In both studies, the time frame did not moderate the associations between AWB and CWB and important correlates (personality, life circumstances).