Student mental health. Part 2: the main study and reflection of significant issues

The difficulties faced by students and the contributory stressors include developmental issues. A number of factors appear to be the precipitators of stress but despite various suggestions from researchers in other countries there is little evidence in the UK of a comprehensive plan to ameliorate student mental health. It was the aim of this study to identify the factors perceived as stressors by students, find the extzent to which the stressors affect the students and identify a possible remedial strategy. The samples involved students from a wide variety of disciplines and included 40 students in a pilot study and a further 210 students in the main study. The pilot study led to a comprehensive list of potential stressors being drawn up for the main study. Most of these were assessed in a Problem Questionnaire, the General Health Questionnaire and the Glasgow Symptom Checklist. Emotional liability was significant and this was often accompanied by self-destructive thoughts. Student services appeared to be underused even when students felt suicidal. Students need more specialized and prolonged help both in the form of increased counselling facilities which include a Mental Health Service and also mentoring schemes.     

Student mental health: the case studies

University life can precipitate a chain of unfortunate reactions. Stressors and the effects which stress can have on an individual could vary considerably. There are a number of theories of stress. The case studies were an attempt to study in detail the specific stressors and problems suffered by 16 students from the Professions Allied to Medicine. They were part of a larger sample of 45 and previous to that an original sample of 210. Students were tested and retested after an 18-month period using a number of measures. The results showed no definitive pattern but resulted in a volume of information from which conclusions may be drawn. On the whole, coping resources were poor. There was a high level of physiological and psychological symptoms to the point of ‘caseness’ in the GHQ30. There was no association between stress levels and coping nor personalities and emotional indications. Entrance qualifications and final examination results were closely related. What enabled those students with abnormally high clinically indicated psychiatric profiles to complete the course with such outstanding academic results? Answers may lie in theories of activation, motivation, arousal and inhibition illustrated in a model of student mental health.     

The effect of pictorial content on attention levels and alcohol‐related beliefs: An eye‐tracking study

To examine attention levels to different types of alcohol warning labels. Twenty‐two participants viewed neutral or graphic warning messages while dwell times for text and image components of messages were assessed. Pre and postexposure outcome expectancies were assessed in order to compute change scores. Dwell times were significantly higher for the image, as opposed to the text, components of warnings, irrespective of image type. Participants whose expectancies increased after exposure to the warnings spent longer looking at the image than did those whose positive expectancies remained static or decreased. Images in alcohol warnings appear beneficial for drawing attention, although findings may suggest that this is also associated with heightened positive alcohol‐related beliefs. Implications for health intervention are discussed and future research in this area is recommended.     

Sociopolitical Activist or Conversational Partner? Distinguishing the Position of the Therapist in Narrative and Collaborative Therapies

In this article, we explore the similarities and differences of two contemporary family therapy approaches: narrative and collaborative therapies. These therapies are contrasted by describing positioning of the narrative practitioner as sociopolitical activist and the collaborative practitioner as conversational partner. The article begins with a brief overview of the two therapies. Subsequently, we outline their epistemological genealogies and the practice similarities that arise from the theoretical assumptions underpinning these therapies. The remainder of the article addresses the theoretical and therapeutic differences in narrative and collaborative approaches reflected in the positioning of therapist as either sociopolitical activist or conversational partner. While narrative and collaborative approaches share more similarities than differences in relation to their emphasis on the constitutive characteristics of language, focus on sociorelational contexts, and critique of singular objective truths, prominence is given to the starker contrasts in narrative and collaborative understandings of politics, power, dialogue, and discourse. It is proposed that by outlining some provocative contrasts between narrative and collaborative approaches, new conversations and generative practices will emerge in the therapy room.     

The Role of Couple Discrepancies in Cognitive and Behavioral Egalitarianism in Marital Quality

Although gender ideologies and perceptions of equity in the division of household tasks have been associated with marital quality, there is limited understanding of the relationship between discrepancies (in husbands’ and wives’ subjective ideals and accounts of the division of labor) and relationship quality. We examined cognitive egalitarianism (beliefs about gender roles), behavioral egalitarianism (perceptions of the division of household tasks and management), and marital quality among 220 heterosexual, newlywed couples (N?=?440) living in east and central regions of the United States. We used multi-level modeling to examine associations between cognitive egalitarianism, behavioral egalitarianism, and marital quality with a specific focus on discrepancies in the reports of husbands and wives. As hypothesized, both husbands and wives had lower marital quality when their cognitive egalitarianism was discrepant from their partner, and such a discrepancy had a greater influence on wives’ reports of marital quality, especially for wives with higher cognitive egalitarianism. Although we expected similar results for the associations between behavioral egalitarianism and marital quality, we found that the strength of the association between wives’ behavioral egalitarianism and marital quality decreased as the discrepancy from their husbands’ behavioral egalitarianism increased. The association between cognitive egalitarianism and marital quality also increased as behavioral egalitarianism increased for wives but not for husbands. The results of this study illustrate the central role of spousal discrepancy in perceptions and enactment of household labor.     

N-backer: an auditory n-back task with automatic scoring of spoken responses

The n-back task is commonly used to load working memory (WM) in dual-task and neuroimaging experiments. However, it typically involves visual presentation and buttonpress responses, making it unsuitable for combination with primary tasks that involve vision and action, such as sequential object use and other tasks of daily living. The N-backer software presented here will automatically present and score auditory–verbal n-back sequences utilising the standard speech synthesis and recognition facilities that come with Microsoft Windows. Data are presented from an experiment in which 12 student participants carried out three tasks from the Naturalistic Action Test (NAT) while their attention was divided between the primary task and a continuous auditory–verbal 2-back secondary task. The participants’ 2-back performance was scored in two ways: by hand, from video recordings, and automatically, using the software, allowing us to evaluate the accuracy of N-backer. There was an extremely high correlation between these scores (.933). The videos were also used to obtain a comprehensive error score for the NAT. Significantly more errors were made in the more complex NAT tasks when participants were 2-backing, as compared with when they were not, showing that the auditory–verbal n-back task can be used to disrupt sequential object use. This dual-task method may simulate the attentional deficits of patients with brain injury, providing insights into the difficulties they face in tasks of daily living.     

Self-image bias in drug use attributions

The aim was to examine the degree to which people's personal drug use affects how they perceive other drug users, with a view to investigating the possibility that drug use attributions are a function of self-image bias. University students (n = 60), categorized post hoc as drug users or nonusers, completed questionnaires assessing locus, control, and stability attributions about their own personal drug use or imagined drug use. Attributions pertaining to presented vignettes of light and heavy drug use by others were also assessed. Heavy drug use elicited the most "addicted" attributions (dispositional locus, low control, and high stability) and drug-using participants made more addicted attributions about their own personal drug use than did nonusing participants about their imagined use. Additionally, attributions made by non-drug users regarding their imagined personal drug use were similar to those they made for the light drug use described in presented vignettes. Conversely, drug users made attributions which were similar for their personal drug use and for the heavy drug-use vignette. These data lend support to conceptualizing addiction as a product of the functional attribution process-"addict" attributions being applied mainly where drug use is more problematic (heavy) and thus in need of explanation. The data also lend support to the notion that a self-image bias is operating in drug use attributions when people can identify with the behavior of others.     

Theoretical note: Coordinate systems in visual word recognition

Marr and Nishihara (1978) have made certain recommendations about how representations postulated in a theory of visual information processing should be specified. Using this scheme the paper discusses representations which might be postulated in a model of visual word recognition. A representation is specified in terms of a set of primitives (e.g., word identities or visual features) in combination with a coordinate system. The coordinate systems considered are retinal, spatial (e.g., position on page) word-centred (position in word) and sentence-centred (position in sentence).

Various combinations of primitives and coordinate systems are considered along with how to decide which combinations are actually generated in the process of fluent reading. A tentative model is put forward in which a single processing stage, which starts anew after each saccade, generates a representation with word identities as its primitives and sentence-centred coordinates. Evidence to support such a model which has no intermediate representation with spatial coordinates is briefly reviewed.