Thwarted agency and the strange afterlife of Islamism in militant laicism in Turkey

This article critically engages with recent theoretical writing on the anthropology of secularism by way of studying the perceptions and consciousness of those whom I name ‘militant laic actors’ in Turkey. Beginning with their key conviction that the present Government of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) possesses a hidden mission to Islamize the country, I argue that rather than relating to the actual policies of the AKP, such a conviction reflects the mood and emotions of laic actors. This perception is not without a social context. It relates to both the enlarged political power of the AKP and to the relative thwarting of social agency experienced by militant laic actors. The paper concludes by noting certain insufficiencies in both Charles Taylor’s and Talal Asad’s work as frameworks for explaining the dynamics of secularism while making a case for the significance of the Turkish situation in contributing to wider debates in the anthropology of secularism.     

Effects of a post-hospitalization group health education programme for patients with coronary heart disease

Abstract

Effects of a post-hospitolization group health education programme for patients with coronary heart disease. A health education programme was offered to groups of coronary heart patients and their partners after discharge from hospital. A randomized pre-test post-test control group design was used to evaluate the effects of this experimental intervention. The health education programme was offered to 109 coronary heart patients in groups of between five and eight patients together with their partners in addition to standard medical care and physical training. A control group of 108 patients received only standard medical care and physical training.

The intervention consisted of eight weekly two-hour group health education sessions and one follow-up session. All sessions focused on the promotion of healthy habits and the reduction of adverse psychosocial consequences of the incident.

In the short term (about four months after the incident) the health education programme showed statistically significant intervention effects on knowledge about coronary heart diseases, smoking cessation, healthy eating habits and the number of consultations with the family physician, but no effects on emotional distress. In the long term (one year after the incident) there was only a significant intervention effect on smoking cessation.

These results suggest that the effects of the programme are modest, especially in terms of maintenance of behavioural change. As a consequence, it is suggested that the programme should not be offered to all coronary patients during cardiac rehabilitation, but only to those who can be expected to profit most from it.     

The Job Demand-Control-Social Support Model and Wellness/Health Outcomes: A European Study

The EUROTEACH study which is reported here, comprised 2796 secondary school teachers from 13 European countries. The study firstly aimed at testing an extended Job Demand-Control-Social support (JDCS) model and checking its gender specificity. While this study failed to provide evidence for the buffer hypothesis derived from the JDCS-model, the strain hypothesis was mostly supported. Additional job conditions tested in this study proved to be important predictors of the outcome variables (emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation, personal accomplishment, somatic complaints and job satisfaction) and standard of living indicators also added explained variance in these outcomes. The study proved that the JDCS model cannot be called a male model. Secondly the study looked at the comparability of 3 European regions (South, West, East). Apart from important regional differences in job conditions, standard of living indicators and outcomes, the most important finding is that the JDCS model explains most variance in outcome variables in Western Europe, and the least in Eastern Europe, and thus seems to suffer from a Western bias.     

Exploring Perceived Social Support from Peer Facilitators in an HIV Treatment Adherence Intervention for African American Patients: A Content Analysis of Participant Perspectives

HIV treatment adherence interventions increasingly rely on peer facilitators to promote treatment adherence and improve patient retention, yet little is known about how participants perceive the role performed by peer facilitators. The present study examined participant perceptions in terms of the social support from peer facilitators in a hospital‐based intervention in Chicago. Content analysis was conducted with reference to four types of social support (instrumental, informational, emotional and affiliational) on exit interviews with 11 participants enrolled in the intervention that targeted African‐American patients living with HIV/AIDS. We examined how the type of social support perceived by participants was related to their self‐reported behaviours in three domains: adherence, sexual safety and general coping. Our analysis revealed that most participants perceived informational and emotional support from their peer facilitators, followed by instrumental support. Affiliational support was the least frequently perceived type of social support. We found that perceived informational support from peer facilitators with regard to adherence had greater impact and credibility amongst participants than the same type of support from medical providers. Informational support was cited most frequently with regard to influencing adherence and sexual safety behaviours, whereas perceived emotional support was cited primarily with helping participants cope with HIV. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

SOCIAL SHARING IN ANTICIPATION OF CARDIAC SURGERY: WHO TALKS MORE AND WHY

This study presents the stress and sharing model, which was developed in order to predict the extent to which patients anticipating cardiac surgery, share their emotions. The model hypothesizes that preoperative sharing of emotions mediated by need, is positively related to surgery-related stress measured independently, and in comparison to the roommates. The model was tested for surgery-related and surgery-unrelated feelings. One hundred and fifty-seven Greek patients participated in the study. The variables included in the model were measured daily, using self-reports. Results show a good fit of the model only for surgery-related feelings (χ²=4.688, p=0.321). The study shows that patients anticipating surgery share their emotions in the same way as patients recovering from stressful or traumatic events. Stressed patients experience the need to focus on the threat (verbally) and not to be ‘distracted’ by talking about irrelevant topics. These findings have important implications for the design of preparatory interventions for surgical patients.     

Memories of Childhood Threat,Fear of Disclosure and Paranoid Ideation: A Mediation Analysis Using a Nonclinical Sample

This study investigated whether associations between childhood memories of threat and adult paranoia could be partially mediated by factors associated with impeded interpersonal communication (concealment and fear of disclosure of personal and distressing information). University undergraduates (N = 179) completed a battery of psychometric scales. Mediation analysis identified a direct effect between early memories of threat and paranoid ideation (B = 0.11, 95% CI = [0.07, 0.14], p = .00). A mediated effect between these variables was also significant (B = .05, 95% CI = [0.02, 0.07], p = .01). However, although significant associations were identified between memories of threat and each of the mediating variables (self-concealment, fear of self-disclosure, anxiety, depression) only fear of self-disclosure displayed a significant association with paranoid ideation (B = .05, 95% CI = [0.02, 0.07], p = .01).     

Cortico-limbic-striatal circuits subserving different forms of cost-benefit decision making

Research on the neural basis that underlies decision making in humans has revealed that these processes are mediated by distributed neural networks that incorporate different regions of the frontal lobes, the amygdala, the ventral striatum, and the dopamine system. In the present article, we review recent studies in rodents investigating the contribution of these systems to different forms of cost-benefit decision making and focus on evaluations related to delays, effort, or risks associated with certain rewards. Anatomically distinct regions of the medial and orbital prefrontal cortex make dissociable contributions to different forms of decision making, although lesions of these regions can induce variable effects, depending on the type of tasks used to assess these functions. The basolateral amygdala and the nucleus accumbens play a more fundamental role in these evaluations, helping an organism overcome different costs to obtain better rewards. Dopamine activity biases behavior toward more costly yet larger rewards, although abnormal increases in dopamine transmission can exert opposing actions on different types of decision making. The fact that similar neural circuits are recruited to solve these types of problems in both humans and animals suggests that animal models of decision making will prove useful in elucidating the mechanisms mediating these processes.