Clergy Burnout: A Comparison Study with Other Helping Professions

Clergy experience a large number of stressors in their work, including role overload and emotional labor. Although studies have found high rates of depression in clergy, the degree of work-related burnout in clergy compared to other occupations is unknown. The widely used Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) measures three aspects of burnout: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment. We sought studies using comparable versions of the MBI for clergy; for social workers, counselors, and teachers because of those occupations’ emotional intensity and labor; and for police and emergency personnel because of the unpredictability and stress-related physiological arousal in those occupations. We found a total of 84 studies and compared the ranges of burnout scores between the studies of clergy, each additional occupation, and MBI published mean norms. Compared to U.S. norms, clergy exhibited moderate rates of burnout. Across the three kinds of burnout, clergy scores were relatively better than those of police and emergency personnel, similar to those of social workers and teachers, and worse than those of counselors. Clergy may benefit from burnout prevention strategies used by counselors. The moderate levels of burnout found for clergy, despite the numerous stressors associated with their occupation, suggest that clergy generally cope well and may be models to study. Overall, there is room for improvement in burnout for all professions, especially police and emergency personnel. It is important to remember the variation within any profession, including clergy, and prevent and address burnout for those in need.     

Seminary Students and Physical Health: Beliefs,Behaviors, and Barriers

Journal of Religion and Health - As an occupational group, clergy exhibit numerous physical health problems. Given the physical health problems faced by clergy, understanding where physical health...     

VR-based conversation training program for patients with schizophrenia: a preliminary clinical trial.

Schizophrenia is a devastating mental illness and is characterized by hallucinations and delusions as well as social skills deficits. Generally, social skills training designed to help patients develop social skills includes role-playing, but this form of training has typical shortcomings, which are largely due to a trainer's difficulties to project emotion. Virtual reality (VR)-based techniques have the potential to solve these difficulties, because they provide a computer-generated but realistic three-dimensional world and humanlike avatars that can provide emotional stimuli. In this paper, we report on a method of implementing virtual environments (VEs) in order to train people with schizophrenia to develop conversational skills in specific situations, which could overcome the shortcomings of or complement conventional role-playing techniques. The paper reports the efficacy of the proposed approach in a preliminary clinical trial with 10 patients with schizophrenia.     

Selective responsiveness of chronically ill children to assessments of depression.

Many investigators have noted that depression is a common symptom among pediatric cancer patients. However, prevalence rates vary widely across studies. This variation in prevalence rates may be due, in part, to selective reporting of patients based on measures used and environmental cues. In this study, we evaluated 50 chronically ill pediatric patients (19 cancer and 31 diabetic patients) for their use of selective reporting of depression. Factors in the 2 x 2 design were Intervention (disclosure videotape and cartoon videotape) and Examiner (familiar examiner and unfamiliar examiner). In the Intervention manipulation, subjects were shown either a videotape prompting the child that self-disclosure was appropriate or a tape of a cartoon (control condition). In the Examiner manipulation, subjects were administered the experimental measures by either a familiar (parent) or unfamiliar (research assistant) examiner. Dependent variables were the Children's Depression Inventory (CDI; Kovacs, 1981), the Depression scale of the Roberts Apperception Test for Children (RATC; McArthur & Roberts, 1982), and a depression measure taken from the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL; Achenbach & Edelbrock, 1983). As hypothesized, the Examiner x Intervention interaction revealed that children who did not view the disclosure videotape and who were tested by an unfamiliar examiner gave significantly lower self-reports of depression on the CDI than children in the other conditions. However, parent and child projective reports of depression did not vary as a function of experimental condition. The results are interpreted as selective responding on the part of pediatric patients. Limitations of assessing internal psychological states in children are discussed.     

Newborn screening for cystic fibrosis: Educational implications

We examined the educational implications of newborn screening for cystic fibrosis (CF) as performed by combining the measurement of immunoreactive trypsin with analysis for the most common CF mutation, F508. Four out of 77 (5%) of maternity staff from 11 hospitals in rural New South Wales, Australia had learned about the salient features of the screening protocol from a pamphlet distributed from a central laboratory. In comparison, a didactic lesson resulted in a significantly greater (p<0.00006) number of maternity staff learning about the salient features of the screening protocol. Most maternity staff expanded their explanation to parents of newborn babies because of the didactic lesson.     

Microcomputers in psychology laboratory courses

The implementation of a microcomputer-based laboratory curriculum is described and analyzed in terms of general guidelines for introducing computer-based instruction. Procedures are suggested for analyzing need, choosing a system, and implementing the project. Pedagogical considerations arising from the use of computer technology are also discussed.     

The Effect of Internal Locus of Control on Career Adaptability: The Mediating Role of Career Decision‐Making Self‐Efficacy and Occupational Engagement

This study examined the mediating roles of career decision‐making self‐efficacy (a domain‐specific motivational variable) and occupational engagement (a behavioral variable) on the relationship between internal locus of control (a general motivational variable) and career adaptability among college students in South Korea (N = 310). The findings extend past research on career adaptability by identifying a relationship among the variables.     

Concordance Between Parent Reports of Children's Mental Health Services and Service Records: The Services Assessment for Children and Adolescents (SACA)

The concordance between parent reports of children's mental health services and medical and administrative service records were assessed in a field test of the Services Assessment for Children and Adolescents (SACA) interview instrument. Service use reports from primary caregivers, usually mothers, for their child's emotional or behavioral problems were compared against inpatient, outpatient, and school records in St. Louis, one of the pilot sites for the Multi-Site Study of Service Use, Need, Outcomes and Costs in Child and Adolescent Populations (UNOCCAP). A global any use service variable, comprised of inpatient, outpatient, and school reports, yielded an overall service use concordance kappa of .76 between parent reports and records. Parent reports of inpatient hospitalization services using the SACA yielded the highest agreement with medical records, with kappa statistics of 1.00 for use of any inpatient hospital care and for medication use. Parent reports of specific inpatient services concurred with medical records more moderately, yielding kappas from .50 to .66. Reports of any outpatient mental health services yielded variable rates of agreement, with kappas ranging from .67 for any use of outpatient care, to .66 for medication use, to negligible kappas for specific treatments. Parent reports of school services were weakly related to records for most services, except for moderate agreement (.48) on placement in special classrooms for emotional or behavioral problems. Family burden or impact discriminated more powerfully than other variables between respondents who concurred with records and those who did not.     

Feeling frugal: socioeconomic status,acculturation, and cultural health beliefs among women of Mexican descent

Psychosocial and socioeconomic variables are often confounded. The authors combined quantitative with grounded theory analysis to investigate influences of acculturation, socioeconomic status (SES), and cultural health beliefs on Mexican-descent women's preventive health behaviors. In 5 focus group interviews sampling across levels of acculturation and SES, women expressing more traditional Mexican health beliefs about breast cancer screening were of lower SES and were less U.S. acculturated. However, SES and acculturation were uncorrelated with screening behaviors. Qualitative analysis generated hypotheses about joint influences of SES and traditional health beliefs; for example, low-SES women may learn frugal habits as part of their cultural traditions that influence their health care decision making, magnifying SES-imposed structural restrictions on health care access.