An exploration of the benefits of animal‐assisted activities in undergraduate students in Singapore

The rise in psychological problems, attrition, and suicide rates of university students has been linked to the stressful challenges faced during university life. To buffer this, animal assisted activities (AAA) may assist in improving psychological and physiological well‐being in students, however, to date, there is little empirical evidence for their effectiveness. Consequently, this study explored the psychological and physiological benefits of AAA in a sample of undergraduate students. Sixty‐two students from two local universities participated in an hour‐long AAA session delivered by Therapy Dogs Singapore. Measures of perceived stress, anxiety, state self‐esteem, and blood pressure (BP) were taken before and after the sessions. The results indicated that students experienced significant decreases in state anxiety, systolic, and diastolic BP post AAA, and when compared to a quiet reading comparison session. State self‐esteem increased post AAA and, further, was found to moderate the change in anxiety in addition to perceived stress, whereby perceived anxiety reduced more in those with low state self‐esteem and high perceived stress. These results suggest that AAA can be an effective intervention for stress among undergraduate students, which utilizes a novel, easy to implement and enjoyable approach for Singaporean students.     

Resilience and suicide ideation: Coping mediator-moderator effects among adolescent learners

The current study aimed to investigate the influence of coping on the relationship between resilience and adolescent suicide ideation among secondary learners in the Free State Province, South Africa (n = 495; female = 61.6%; black = 55%, white = 27%, other = 18%; mean age = 13.99 years; SD = 0.83 years). The learners completed the Suicide Ideation Questionnaire (SIQ), the Revised Coping Schema Inventory (RCSI), and the Resiliency Scale for Children and Adolescents (RSCA). Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were conducted to predict resilience-mediated suicide ideation from coping. Results suggested higher resilience scores on sense of mastery (SoM) and sense of relatedness (SoR) to predict lower suicide ideation risk among the teenagers. By contrast, higher scores on emotional reactivity (ER) predicted higher risk for suicide ideation. Religious coping (RC) moderated the relationship between resilience (sense of relatedness) and suicide ideation so that RC scores with SoM were associated with lower suicide ideation scores. Personal dispositions seem to explain risk for suicide ideation among adolescents.     

Family Conflict and Forgiveness Among Survivors of Suicide

This study explored the lived experiences of immediate family members who were left behind and their intra- and interpersonal struggles with other family members and their coping efforts to overcome these struggles. We used interpretative phenomenological analysis for data collection and analysis and conducted in-depth interviews with 11 participants in Korea. Two superordinate themes, with two ordinate themes in each, were identified: (a) family conflict after a family member’s suicide (“discordant grieving” and “suicide loss as a catalyst for family conflict”) and (b) forgiveness (“struggling to forgive other family members, the deceased, and themselves” and “the process and importance of forgiveness”). The implications of these findings are discussed.     

An exploratory analysis of the contexts and circumstances of filicide‐suicide in Chicago, 1965–1994

Filicide is the killing of a ward by a parent. Relative to many other types of homicide, filicide is an infrequent event. Filicide followed by the offender's suicide is less frequent still. The contexts and circumstances surrounding filicide‐suicide may nevertheless provide insight into parental psychology. Some research suggests, for example, that filicidal genetic parents are more likely to commit suicide than are filicidal stepparents. Five hypotheses are tested for this study, using a database that includes incident‐level information on over 22,000 homicides committed in Chicago during the years 1965–1994. Findings do not support the hypothesis of differential risk of suicide following filicide by genetic parents and stepparents. Previous work is replicated, indicating that: (1) filicides that include multiple victims are more likely to end in the offender's suicide than are filicides that include a single victim, (2) parents are more likely to commit suicide following a filicide of an older child than a filicide of a younger child, (3) older parents, relative to younger parents, are more likely to commit suicide following filicide, and that (4) fathers, relative to mothers, are more likely to commit suicide following filicide. Discussion suggests future directions for research that can inform our understanding of filicide and of filicide‐suicide. Aggr. Behav. 00:000–000, 2005. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Living on a Slippery Slope

Our actions, individually and collectively, inevitably affect others, ourselves, and our institutions. They shape the people we become and the kind of world we inhabit. Sometimes those consequences are positive, a giant leap for moral humankind. Other times they are morally regressive. This propensity of current actions to shape the future is morally important. But slippery slope arguments are a poor way to capture it. That is not to say we can never develop cogent slippery slope arguments. Nonetheless, given their most common usage, it would be prudent to avoid them in moral and political debate. They are often fallacious and have often been used for ill. They are normally used to defend the moral status quo. Even when they are cogent, we can always find an alternate way to capture their insights. Finally, by accepting that the moral roads on which we travel are slippery, we become better able to successfully navigate them.     

A Standard of Care for the Assessment of Suicide Risk and Associated Treatment: The Florida State University Psychology Clinic as an Example

The Florida State University has established a set of guidelines to be used as a standard of care for suicide. This standard of care guides therapists through a suicide risk assessment that focuses on key variables related to suicidal behavior that are among the best predictors of completed suicide. This standard of care includes necessary components of suicide risk assessment, critical steps to follow to ensure the safety of suicidal patients, treatment recommendations, and guidelines for minimizing the legal risk of the therapist. Though this standard of care was developed in a research and training clinic, these principles may be applied to all clinicians offering psychological services to patients, regardless of the nature of the clinic or setting.     

“One Size Fits All”: An Existential-Constructivist Perspective on the Crisis Intervention Approach with Suicidal Individuals

The empirical data on the relationship between suicide and suicide attempts are interpreted as suggesting that the contemporary assessment and intervention approaches to suicidal individuals are, by and large, ineffective. In support of our argument, we focus on the crisis intervention model as one example and suggest that the crisis intervention approach to responding to suicidal individuals is at best, ineffective and, at worst, can be viewed as exacerbating suicidal risk through its distancing, marginalizing, and stigmatizing effects. Additionally, we hypothesize that the mechanics of the crisis intervention model contribute to the societal message that a meaning and contextual-based discussion of suicidality is taboo and that this message tends to continue into more long-term psychotherapeutic approaches. Along these lines, we present an alternative to the crisis intervention model grounded in an existential-constructivist theory of suicidal behavior and the principles of therapeutic and feminist assessment philosophies as an heuristic intended to stimulate the development of new and innovative approaches to working with suicidal individuals.     

“自杀”：一个重要的伦理问题

自杀现已成为人类死亡十大原因之一 ,而且呈现出低龄化的趋势 ,越来越引起社会的关注。因而 ,从政治、经济、社会、疾病、文化等多视角来寻找自杀的外部原因 ,对探究这个重要的伦理问题是有益的。     

Religion and suicide acceptability: a cross-national analysis

Four perspectives (moral community thesis, religious integration, religious commitment, and social networks) guide the selection of variables in this study. Data are from the combined World Values/European Values Surveys for 2000 (50,547 individuals nested in 56 nations). The results of a multivariate hierarchical linear model support all four perspectives. Persons residing in nations with relatively high levels of religiosity, who are affiliated with one of four major faiths, are religiously committed, and are engaged with a religious network are found to be lower in suicide acceptability. The religious integration perspective, in particular, is empirically supported; affiliation with Islam is associated with low suicide acceptability. The findings provide strong support for an integrated model and demonstrate the usefulness of the moral community thesis in understanding suicide acceptability.     

有自杀意念大学生的内隐态度探析

该文结合Greenwald开创的内隐联想测验,自编IAT程序,对有自杀意念大学生的内隐态度进行了相关研究。结果显示,有自杀意念大学生较无自杀意念大学生的内隐态度对自杀类词语敏感等。家庭所在地为农村对有自杀意念大学生的内隐态度有显著性影响。