Towards an Italian model of therapeutic community

In this paper the author reflects on research undertaken by the Association Myth and Reality in the context of the psychiatric reforms in Italy which resulted in the closure of the asylums and the organisation, over the last 20?years, of a network of services in the community. These include thousands of residential units operating on a rehabilitative model. The focus of this paper is on the concept of the therapeutic community as a dynamic evolutionary path, individually tailored to people with different diagnoses and different ages – e.g. psychosis; borderline; adolescents and children. The therapeutic – and more specifically the environmental – factors are presented here. This includes the aesthetics of living and the sensory/emotional climate in relation to the care of the self and protection, regulation and safety, transitional playful climate, everyday life and the sharing implicit in relationships. The emotional climate is a fundamental component that transverses and intersects all the other factors. Treatment is central to the group with its potential for containment and dynamism in relation to relationships, cohesion, belonging, integration of the self in the community and connections with social networks outside the group aimed at reintegration into society of the resident as a citizen. A system of evaluation through peer reviews between therapeutic communities in Italy is being built in order to continuously improve the quality of service delivery.     

Positive organizational behavior and safety in the offshore oil industry: Exploring the determinants of positive safety climate

Much research has now documented the substantial influence of safety climate on a range of important outcomes in safety critical organizations, but there has been scant attention to the question of what factors might be responsible for positive or negative safety climate. The present paper draws from positive organizational behavior theory to test workplace and individual factors that may affect safety climate. Specifically, we explore the potential influence of authentic leadership style and psychological capital on safety climate and risk outcomes. Across two samples of offshore oil-workers and seafarers working on oil platform supply ships, structural equation modeling yielded results that support a model in which authentic leadership exerts a direct effect on safety climate, as well as an indirect effect via psychological capital. This study shows the importance of leadership qualities as well as psychological factors in shaping a positive work safety climate and lowering the risk of accidents.     

Can you forgive? It depends on how happy you are

This paper examined how individual group status and happiness influence forgiveness. In Study 1, happiness was treated as a trait difference: highly happy people, compared with very unhappy people, were found to be more willing to forgive murderers. More important, an interaction effect between happiness and group status on forgiveness was found, that is, highly happy people tended to be more forgiving when either ingroup or outgroup members were killed; unhappy people, however, tended to be less forgiving about murder when ingroup rather than outgroup members were killed. In Study 2, happiness was treated as an emotional state difference: happiness, rather than sadness, was found to bring greater forgiveness. Moreover, consistent with the interaction effect displayed in Study 1, happy participants tended to forgive more when ingroup or outgroup members were hurt; sad participants tended to forgive less when ingroup members rather than outgroup members were hurt. Implications for connections between happiness, group membership, and forgiveness are discussed.     

SCHOLARS,AMATEURS, AND ARTISTS AS PARTNERS FOR THE FUTURE OF RELIGION AND SCIENCE

We recommend that the future of religion and science involve more partnerships between scholars, amateurs, and artists. This reimagines an underdeveloped aspect of the history of religion and science. Case studies of an undergraduate course examining religious ritual and technology, seminarians reflecting on memory and identity in light of Alzheimer's disease, environmentalists responding to their guilt and shame about climate change, and Chicagoans recognizing the presence of nature in the city show how these partnerships respect insights and experiences of our varied partners, identify and resolve community problems, and advance scholarship. Sourdough starter, a new metaphor, describes these collaborative, nourishing partnerships.     

Forgiveness and mental health practice

Forgiveness has become a very popular topic in recent years. To this end, various definitions and practices have been offered to facilitate it in counselling. This article seeks to provide some specific resources to the mental health counsellor when utilising forgiveness in counselling. By reviewing various psychological and theological definitions of forgiveness, guidelines will be offered to assist the spiritually sensitive counsellor to facilitate forgiveness that fosters further participation in the reign of God from a Christian spiritual perspective. Specifically, counsellors approaching the therapeutic use of forgiveness from Fowler's perspective address some of the concerns using forgiveness mainly as a therapeutic intervention.     

When Does a Proactive Personality Enhance an Employee’s Whistle-Blowing Intention?: A Cross-Level Investigation of the Employees in Chinese Companies

To identify the boundary conditions for proactive employees making whistle-blowing decisions, we developed a cross-level model comprising employee proactive personality and two types of whistle-blowing intentions that incorporates the influences of organizational- and individual-level attributes. Analyses of data collected from 432 Chinese employees in 32 companies indicated that proactive personality was positively related to internal whistle-blowing intention and even more positively related to external whistle-blowing intention when individuals were working in organizations characterized by an instrumental ethical climate and employees with a high level of moral identity.     

Do hotter temperatures increase the incidence of self-harm hospitalisations?

A relationship between air temperature and the incidence of suicide has been established in a number of previous studies. Interestingly, the relationship between geographical variation in temperature and suicide incidence has generally been found to be negative, while the relationship between temporal variation in temperature and suicide incidence has generally been found to be positive. It is less clear, however, how temperature relates to the incidence of self-harm. This topic is of particular importance given the presence of ongoing global warming. This study investigated the relationship between temperature and the incidence of self-harm resulting in hospitalisation in New Zealand. Self-harm hospitalisations by date and district for 1993–2009 were obtained from the Ministry of Health. Meteorological data was obtained from NIWA. Generalised linear mixed models were used to estimate the effects of three different components of variation in temperature: geographical, seasonal and irregular. Irregular (random) daily variation in temperature had a modest positive relationship with the incidence of acts of self-harm resulting in hospitalisation, with about 0.7% extra incidents for every 1 °C increase in temperature. However, there was no strong evidence for a positive effect of either seasonal or geographical variation in temperature. We conclude that temperature does appear to bear some relation to the incidence of self-harm, with irregular daily variation in temperature having a positive effect. However, inconsistencies in the effects of different components of variation in temperature make it challenging to accurately predict how global warming will influence the incidence of self-harm.     

Climate as situational strength: Safety climate strength as a cross-level moderator of the relationship between conscientiousness and safety behaviour

Extant research on climate strength has frequently invoked situational strength in passing. Given this, it is surprising that the fundamental prediction from the situational strength literature—namely, that strong situations attenuate personality–behaviour relationships—has thus far never been tested empirically using climate strength as an operationalization of situational strength. Consequently, in the present study, we tested this fundamental prediction by positing that organizational safety climate strength moderates the relationships between employee conscientiousness and two forms of employee safety behaviour, such that those relationships are attenuated in strong climates. Using a multilevel design consisting of 964 Korean employees nested within 17 manufacturing organizations, we found support for these cross-level interaction hypotheses. These findings legitimize the frequent invocation of situational strength by climate strength researchers, contribute to the theoretical foundation underlying climate strength, and yield important implications for future research and practice.     

Le rôle médiateur de la réflexivité et du climat entre la distance de pouvoir et l’efficacité d’une équipe de travail

In this study, we investigate the mediating role of reflexivity (West, 1996) and climate to innovation (Anderson & West, 1998) between power distances and effectiveness of work teams of engineers training. Regression analysis (Baron & Kenny, 1986) reveals a total mediation of climate and a partial mediation of reflexivity. These results are discussed from a practical perspective.