Psychological Well-Being and Health Related Quality of Life among a Group of Low-Income Women Living with HIV/AIDS in South Africa

This study documented the relationships among biomedical factors, psychosocial factors, health related quality of life (HRQOL) and suicidality in respect of HIV positive women in KwaZulu-Natal. One hundred and thirty three (133) women over the age of 18 years (mean age 32.96 yrs; SD = 7.28) participated in the study. Participants completed a Suicidality Measure (SM: Sheebhan, Janavs, Amorim, Janavs, Weiller, Hergueta, Baker & Dunbar, 1998), Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MPSS: Zimet, Dahlem, Zimet & Farley, 1988) and the Health Related Quality of Life Survey—SF-36 (Ware, Kosinski & Dewey, 2002). Information on social/contextual variables including income, marital status, employment status, number of children was obtained. Participants completed two biomedical measures, CD4 count and time since diagnosis information. The findings revealed a compromised level of HRQOL in the participants. After controlling for biomedical factors, psychosocial measures did not explain differences in quality of life. Perceived social support was inversely related to suicidality. Newly diagnosed patients were less likely to think of suicide as an option.     

Cognitive-behavioral,solution-focused life coaching: Enhancing goal striving,well-being,and hope

Research is in its infancy in the newly emerging field of coaching psychology. This study examined the effects of a 10-week cognitive-behavioral, solution-focused life coaching group programme. Participants were randomly allocated to a life coaching group programme (n =?28) or a waitlist control group (n =?28). Participation in the life coaching group programme was associated with significant increases in goal striving, well-being and hope, with gains maintained up to 30 weeks later on some variables. Hope theory may explain such positive outcomes. Life coaching programmes that utilize evidence-based techniques may provide a framework for further research on psychological processes that occur in non-clinical populations who wish to make purposeful change and enhance their positive psychological functioning.     

Pollyanna and the Glad Game: A potential contribution to positive psychology

The popular 1913 novel, Pollyanna, introduced the Glad Game. Its author showed how the use of the Glad Game could contribute to the mastery of stressful life events and daily hassles. The Glad Game consists of developing the habit of not dwelling on dysphoric emotions in relation to life's disappointments or threats. The player is taught not to deny negative emotions, but to turn one's attention away and to think of something one could feel glad about in the situation. Eleanor Hodgman Porter emphasized that the Glad Game could be taught. Based on the novel, a number of testable psychological hypotheses, potentially useful to practitioners, can be derived. These include the value of persistence in using a psychological mediator to arouse hope, and personality characteristics consequent to the use of the Glad Game. Popular writings are fruitful sources of insight and hypotheses about psychological processes.     

The benefits of passion and absorption in activities: Engaged living in adolescents and its role in psychological well-being

Across five studies and three samples of early and late adolescents from suburban areas (N = 2198), this research provides a theoretical and empirical examination of a new construct, engaged living, which consists of social integration and absorption. Engaged living, as we define it, is having a passion to help others and be completely immersed in activities. The development and psychometric properties of The Engaged Living in Youth Scale (ELYS) are described. Cross-sectional and longitudinal data, including self and other reports, then show that the ELYS is related to a variety of attributes, well-being, and academic achievement outcomes. Overall, the pattern of associations indicates that youth high in engaged living tend to be more grateful, hopeful, happier (via self, peer, and teacher reports), prosocial, and report elevated life satisfaction, positive affect, and self-esteem and higher grade point averages. Higher scorers also tend to be less depressed, envious, antisocial, and delinquent.     

The effect of contemplation and meditation on ‘great compassion’ on the psychological well-being of adolescents

This study aimed to evaluate the effect of contemplation and meditation (CM) training, with a focus on developing great compassion, on the psychological well-being (PWB) of adolescents. Participants (N = 51, mean age = 15.8) were randomly allocated to either CM training (n = 26) or a comparison group (n = 25). Both groups completed measures of PWB before and after the intervention. Adolescents who received CM training showed statistically significant increases in environmental mastery and personal growth, as well as decreased negative affect compared to the comparison group. Girls in the experimental group also showed a significant decrease in negative affect compared with boys in the experimental group. Both the experimental and comparison groups demonstrated increased life satisfaction, environmental mastery, self-acceptance, autonomy, and purpose in life. There were no changes in positive affect and positive relations with others for both groups.     

Positive psychology at work: A conceptual review,state-of-practice assessment,and a look ahead

Positive psychological principles have become increasingly prevalent in the workplace in recent years. However, the field still lacks a comprehensive and practice-based overview of this important trend. The present article focuses on reviewing recent research in positive psychology as it relates to the workplace, including research regarding constructs such as resilience, appreciative inquiry, empowerment, gratitude, psychological capital, work engagement, supervisor and organizational support, positive teamwork and co-worker relations, and positive leadership. For each, we synthesize research examining the nature of the construct itself, its nomological network, individual- and organizational-level outcomes, and how organizations can enhance each within their employees for increased organizational success and enhanced employee experience. Finally, we discuss gaps in the relevant literature and make specific recommendations regarding how to ameliorate such oversights in order to enhance the rigor of positive workplace research as well as the frequency and efficacy of relevant organizational interventions.     

Going beyond ethnoracial discrimination and social support in accounting for psychological adjustment: Evidence for the importance of hope as a positive psychological construct in multiethnoracial adults

ABSTRACT

In the present study, we examined the role of ethnoracial discrimination, social support (viz., family & friends), and hope (viz., agency & pathways) in accounting for negative psychological adjustment (viz., worry & depressive symptoms) and positive psychological adjustment (viz., vitality & life satisfaction) in a sample of 203 (164 females & 39 males) multiethnoracial adults. Results of conducting a series of hierarchical regression analyses indicated that beyond ethnoracial discrimination and social support, the inclusion of hope was found to augment the prediction model of psychological adjustment. Within the hope set, agency was found to be uniquely associated with adjustment. Pathways was found to be uniquely associated with positive indices of psychological adjustment. The present findings are the first to highlight the significance of hope in multiethnoracial adults. Some implications of the present findings for understanding psychological adjustment in multiethnoracial adults are discussed.     

Self-directed speech affects visual search performance

People often talk to themselves, yet very little is known about the functions of this self-directed speech. We explore effects of self-directed speech on visual processing by using a visual search task. According to the label feedback hypothesis (Lupyan, 2007a), verbal labels can change ongoing perceptual processing—for example, actually hearing “chair” compared to simply thinking about a chair can temporarily make the visual system a better “chair detector”. Participants searched for common objects, while being sometimes asked to speak the target's name aloud. Speaking facilitated search, particularly when there was a strong association between the name and the visual target. As the discrepancy between the name and the target increased, speaking began to impair performance. Together, these results speak to the power of words to modulate ongoing visual processing.     

Facing the third millennium: An evolutionary crisis

We are witnessing the birth of the first global civilization on our planet earth due to the accelerative progress of science and technology. This is also accompanied by a crisis in health care, pollution and other environmental disasters, a rising wave of violence and crime, stresses due to globalization, and so on. Recently, we formulated “An Action Plan for Human Survival” (Reference 24).

This article explores in depth the challenges in bringing about a peaceful transition to a global civilization. It explores global civilization, environmental crisis and population. It reveals that the stresses generated by globalization and environmental crisis cannot be resolved by dualistic thought, or concepts, or ideals, or intellectual constructions; as these are sterile in bringing mutation in the human psyche. We see that the emergence of global consciousness is not keeping pace with the globalization, and it is feared that globalization may turn out to be abortive and ultimately self‐destructive.

The crisis is not political, or economic, or social. It is evolutionary in character. We have to explore nature's evolutionary impulse. The challenge is to resolve the “crisis of perception,” or to allow the mutation to happen in the mind‐brain system. The only technology for radical transformation or mutation of human psyche is purification or deconditioning of the human psyche. This leads to new relationship between man and man, and between man and environment. It ends all pain, sorrow and travails and ushers a new era of freedom, peace and bliss. This is the key to human survival, progress and fulfillment.     

Imprisoned by the past: Unhappy moods lead to a retrospective bias to mind wandering

Evidence suggests that mind wandering is a frequent accompaniment to an unhappy mood. Building on such work, two laboratory experiments used mood induction to assess whether the greater frequency of mind wandering in a low mood is also accompanied by a shift towards a focus on events from the past. Experiment 1 induced moods via video and induction of an unhappy mood was associated with a greater tendency for past-related mind wandering as measured by a post-task questionnaire. In Experiment 2, negative and positive moods were induced in a group of participants using the Velten mood-induction procedure and the temporal focus of mind wandering was measured using experience sampling probes. Analyses indicated that induction of an unhappy mood led to an increase in past-related mind wandering and the magnitude of this change increased with scores on a measure of depressive symptoms. Together these experiments suggest that when the mind wanders in an unhappy mood it is drawn to events from its past.