Perceptions of the Limitations of Confidentiality Among Chinese Mental Health Practitioners,Adolescents and Their Parents

The present study aims to (a) survey Chinese mental health professionals’ attitudes toward therapeutic confidentiality with adolescent patients in specific clinical situations, and (b) compare Chinese adolescents’ and parents’ beliefs about when most mental health professionals would breach confidentiality. A sample of 36 mental health practitioners, 152 parents, and 164 adolescents completed a survey to assess their opinions about when confidentiality should be breached in 18 specific clinical situations (e.g., an adolescent tells his or her therapist that he or she smoked a cigarette, had unprotected sex, or attempted suicide). Nearly half of the parents (46%) and adolescents (41%) and 78% of the therapists in our sample selected “yes” in response to the question of whether the principle of confidentiality applies to adolescents. However, 49% of parents indicated “no,” and 53% of adolescents indicated “not sure.” Compared to adolescents, parents were significantly more likely to believe that therapists would breach confidentiality for the high-breach-likelihood items. For the low-breach-likelihood items, adolescents and parents were significantly more likely than therapists to believe confidentiality should be breached. Results from this study provide data to inform the development, refinement, practical implementation, and communication of guidelines and recommendations specific to adolescents receiving psychotherapy in China.     

The Religious and Spiritual Needs of Patients in the Hospital Setting Do Not Depend on Patient Level of Religious/Spiritual Observance and Should be Initiated by Healthcare Providers

Journal of Religion and Health - According to many studies, addressing the religious and spiritual (R/S) needs of patient's increase patient satisfaction. One area of interest is how patient...     

Arithmetic is Determinate

Journal of Philosophical Logic - Orthodoxy holds that there is a determinate fact of the matter about every arithmetical claim. Little argument has been supplied in favour of orthodoxy, and work of...     

Pre-Pandemic Peer Relations Predict Adolescents’ Internalizing Response to Covid-19

Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology - The goal of the current longitudinal study was to investigate the role of adolescents’ peer victimization and aggression prior to COVID-19...     

Competition or Community? The Backstage Experience of Men in Bodybuilding Competitions

Bodybuilding is an increasingly popular sport in the United States. Across fields of psychology, history, sociology, and anthropology, bodybuilding has been examined as being related to, or as manifestly being, a pathology. Extant work on men who are bodybuilders are often built on the assumption that narcissism, self-doubt, and insecurity are the driving forces for men’s involvement. The present study sought to examine the experiences of eleven men who have competed in bodybuilding competitions. In contrast to the dominant academic discourse on bodybuilding as an embodiment of toxic masculinity or as a reaction to underlying feelings of inferiority, the study participants described friendly, supportive competition contexts. That such feelings were found backstage, as opposed to in a gym, strengthens the need for a more nuanced distinction between bodybuilding as a culture, and bodybuilding as a sport. This study disrupts dominant narratives of bodybuilding as pathological and contributes to work on the construction of gender and masculinity in sport. The present work suggests a scholarly approach to men’s bodybuilding in an open and nuanced manner that does not focus on pathologizing bodybuilding or competition.

     

A dual-motive model of scapegoating: displacing blame to reduce guilt or increase control

The authors present a model that specifies 2 psychological motives underlying scapegoating, defined as attributing inordinate blame for a negative outcome to a target individual or group, (a) maintaining perceived personal moral value by minimizing feelings of guilt over one's responsibility for a negative outcome and (b) maintaining perceived personal control by obtaining a clear explanation for a negative outcome that otherwise seems inexplicable. Three studies supported hypotheses derived from this dual-motive model. Framing a negative outcome (environmental destruction or climate change) as caused by one's own harmful actions (value threat) or unknown sources (control threat) both increased scapegoating, and these effects occurred indirectly through feelings of guilt and perceived personal control, respectively (Study 1), and were differentially moderated by affirmations of moral value and personal control (Study 2). Also, scapegoating in response to value threat versus control threat produced divergent, theoretically specified effects on self-perceptions and behavioral intentions (Study 3).     

Social deviance activates the brain’s error-monitoring system

Social psychologists have long noted the tendency for human behavior to conform to social group norms. This study examined whether feedback indicating that participants had deviated from group norms would elicit a neural signal previously shown to be elicited by errors and monetary losses. While electroencephalograms were recorded, participants (N = 30) rated the attractiveness of 120 faces and received feedback giving the purported average rating made by a group of peers. The feedback was manipulated so that group ratings either were the same as a participant’s rating or deviated by 1, 2, or 3 points. Feedback indicating deviance from the group norm elicited a feedback-related negativity, a brainwave signal known to be elicited by objective performance errors and losses. The results imply that the brain treats deviance from social norms as an error.