Health Literacy,Health Inequality and a Just Healthcare System

Limited health literacy is a pervasive and independent risk factor for poor health outcomes. Despite decades of reports exhibiting that the healthcare system is overly complex, unneeded complexity remains commonplace and endangers the lives of patients, especially those with limited health literacy. In this article, we define health literacy and describe the empirical evidence associating health literacy and poor health outcomes. We recast the issue of poor health literacy from within the ethical perspective of the least well-off and argue that poor health outcomes deriving from limited health literacy ought to be understood as a fundamental injustice of the healthcare system. We offer three proposals that attempt to rectify this injustice, including: universal precautions that presume limited health literacy for all healthcare users; expanded use of technology supported communication; and clinical incentives that account for limited health literacy.     

Organizational Identification and Perceived Intra-School Conflict Among Secondary Special Education and General Education Teachers

The relationships between the organizational variables-teacher assignment (general education or special education) and primary organizational identification (teachers' individual schools or respective district-level departments) and perceived organizational conflict were investigated. Four-hundred and fifty-four high school teachers—382 general education and 72 special education—responded to a three-part questionnaire. Both general education and special education teachers identified with both the school and the district-level departments to a greater than neutral level; the general education teachers identified more with their local schools than their district-level departments and the special education teachers identified equally with both their local school and the district-level department. Significant correlations between teacher organizational identification and perceived conflict were found for both groups of teachers—as the identification increased, the perception of conflict decreased. No significant differences were found in comparisons of general education and special education teachers on the identification or perceived conflict variables. Conclusions, with alternative causative factors, and recommendations for enhancing relationships between general educators and special educators are provided.     

Roles of Leisure in Coping with Stress Among University Students: A Repeated-Assessment Field Study

This article reports findings of a study to examine the effects of leisure coping on various stress coping outcomes including: immediate outcomes (perceived coping effectiveness, perceived satisfaction with coping outcomes, and perceived stress reduction) and distal or long-term outcomes (physical and mental ill-health and psychological well-being), above and beyond the contributions of general coping - coping not directly associated with leisure. A repeated-assessment field design was used to examine ways in which university students cope with stressors in their daily lives. The study found that leisure coping beliefs (leisure-generated dispositional coping resources) significantly predicted lower levels of mental and physical ill-health and greater levels of psychological well-being above and beyond the effects of general coping. Also, the use of leisure coping strategies (situation-specific stress coping strategies through leisure) was significantly associated with higher levels of perceived coping effectiveness and stress reduction when the effects of general coping were taken into account. Significant contributions of specific leisure coping dimensions were found as well.     

The Use of Mental Health Services Among Victims of Partner Violence on College Campuses

The present study investigated the relationship between past victimization of different types of intimate partner violence (IPV; physical, psychological, and sexual) and the likelihood of using mental health services. Results indicate 86% of participants reported experiencing some form of IPV, but only 16% of those victims used mental health services to address emotional problems. The participants reported embarrassment, expense, ineffectiveness, and social stigma as the most prominent barriers to seeking help from a mental health professional. The study also found that participants who experienced physical and psychological IPV, but not sexual IPV, reported using mental health services. Sexual IPV may elicit different barriers in help-seeking behaviors. Implications for college IPV prevention programs and mental health services are discussed.     

Dynamic orientation cues decrease the viewpoint cost of mental rotation

Mental rotation, as a covert simulation of motor rotation, could benefit from spatial updating of object representations. We are interested in what kind of visual cue could trigger spatial updating. Three experiments were conducted to examine the effect of dynamic and static orientation cues on mental rotation, using a sequential matching task with three-dimensional novel objects presented in different views. Experiment 1 showed that a rotating orientation cue with constant speed reduced viewpoint costs in mental rotation. Experiment 2 extended this effect with a varied-speed rotating orientation cue. However, no such benefit was observed with a static orientation cue in Experiment 3. These findings indicated that a visually continuous orientation cue is sufficient to elicit spatial updating in mental rotation. Furthermore, there may be differences in the underlying mechanisms of spatial updating on the basis of constant-speed rotating cues and varied-speed rotating cues.     

Les interventions préventives en santé mentale du jeune enfant vues par leurs bénéficiaires : l’exemple du projet CAPEDP

ObjectiveHome-visiting programs have become one of the most popular early childhood interventions, though their impact on parents and children remain uncertain. Outcomes measures often rely on experimental quantitative design and little space is offered for the voices of those served by these interventions. This paper presents the results of a qualitative protocol performed by the research team with participants in the CAPEDP project which took place in France from 2005 to 2011.MethodAll 184 women who had accepted at least one home visit in the CAPEDP programme were contacted and invited to participate. Individual and group interviews were conducted with the first 16 who accepted to participate. The semi-structured interview schedule addressed their overall appreciation of the project, their initial concerns, the quality of their relationship with their home visiting psychologist, positive and negative aspects of the intervention and any recommendations they might have for future interventions. Interviews were recorded, transcribed and anonymised. An inductive categorical thematic analysis was performed by the research team.ResultsParticipants expressed overall satisfaction with the CAPEDP intervention, underlining the quality of the relationships with the home visitors, usefulness of parental guidance, the fact that the intervention could be adapted to suit their own personal agenda, routine and needs, the importance of learning how to accept help and give help to others. Less positive aspects included the fact that the home visitors were not mothers themselves and that they lacked technical experience, the difficulty ending the relationship at the end of the 27-month project, insufficient integration of fathers, the difficult and time-consuming evaluation protocol and the lack of interaction with other parents during the intervention.ConclusionAlthough mothers who accepted to participate in the qualitative interview schedule may have had a more positive overall experience of the CAPEDP project than those who declined to participate, participants’ points of view provide potentially useful indications for adapting future home-visiting programs to the French context.     

The recognition of mental states from dynamic and static facial expressions

The ability to recognize mental states from facial expressions is essential for effective social interaction. However, previous investigations of mental state recognition have used only static faces so the benefit of dynamic information for recognizing mental states remains to be determined. Experiment 1 found that dynamic faces produced higher levels of recognition accuracy than static faces, suggesting that the additional information contained within dynamic faces can facilitate mental state recognition. Experiment 2 explored the facial regions that are important for providing dynamic information in mental state displays. This involved using a new technique to freeze motion in a particular facial region (eyes, nose, mouth) so that this region was static while the remainder of the face was naturally moving. Findings showed that dynamic information in the eyes and the mouth was important and the region of influence depended on the mental state. Processes involved in mental state recognition are discussed.     

Demands,resources, and work ability: A cross-national examination of health care workers

Understanding work ability, with the goal of promoting it, is important for individuals as well as organizations. It is especially important to study work ability in health care workers, who face many work-related challenges that may threaten work ability. We studied various job demands, job resources, and interactions of demands and resources relating to work ability using the Job Demands–Resources model as a framework. Acute care health care workers from six nations (US, Australia, UK, Brazil, Croatia, and Poland) completed a survey. Role demands related to work ability in the Australia sample only, and supervisor support related to work ability in the Australia sample only. Yet, high levels of supervisor support significantly moderated (buffered) negative relationships between physical demands and work ability in the US sample, along with negative relationships between role demands and work ability in both the Croatia and UK samples. Skill discretion related to work ability in every nation sample, and therefore appears to be particularly important to work ability perceptions. In addition, skill discretion moderated (buffered) a negative relationship between role demands and work ability in the Australia sample. We therefore recommend that interventions to help preserve or improve work ability target this important job resource.