My Glorious Opportunity: How My Dementia Has Been a Gift

This article is a personal reflection on the experience of living with dementia. Jennifer Bute is a former family practitioner who has early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. The article presents some basic principles for living well with dementia and offers some deep and personal reflections on what it means, how it can be understood theologically, and how all of us together can help one another to live well with dementia.     

Moral Stress in International Humanitarian Aid and Rescue Operations: A Grounded Theory Study

Humanitarian aid professionals frequently encounter situations in which one is conscious of the morally appropriate action but cannot take it because of institutional obstacles. Dilemmas like this are likely to result in a specific kind of stress reaction at the individual level, labeled as moral stress. In our study, 16 individuals working with international humanitarian aid and rescue operations participated in semistructured interviews, analyzed in accordance with a grounded theory approach. A theoretical model of ethical decision making from a moral stress perspective was developed. The practical implications of the study are discussed.     

Ethical Considerations in Crisis and Humanitarian Interventions

The need for professionals to volunteer their time in crisis situations and to reach across time and culture in the service of humanitarian interventions will likely not abate in the near future. This article provides readers with multiple venues for considering the ethical dimensions present in crisis and humanitarian interventions. Core ethical concerns common to helping situations are magnified in crisis work. In addition, issues unique to the nature of volunteer and crisis work must also be considered. Using hypothetical case examples, bioethical principles, and ethical decision-making models, helping professionals are encouraged to go beyond their particular ethical codes in contemplating ethically and clinically sensitive volunteering.     

Mind-wandering and negative mood: Does one thing really lead to another?

Mind-wandering is closely connected with negative mood. Whether negative mood is a cause or consequence of mind-wandering remains an important, unresolved, issue. We sought to clarify the direction of this relationship by measuring mood before and after mind-wandering. We also measured the affective content, time-orientation and relevance of mind-wandering to current concerns to explore whether the link between mind-wandering and negative mood might be explained by these characteristics. A novel experience-sampling technique with smartphone application prompted participants to answer questions about mind-wandering and mood across 7 days. While sadness tended to precede mind-wandering, mind-wandering itself was not associated with later mood and only predicted feeling worse if its content was negative. We also found prior sadness predicted retrospective mind-wandering, and prior negative mood predicted mind-wandering to current concerns. Our findings provide new insight into how mood and mind-wandering relate but suggest mind-wandering is not inherently detrimental to well-being.     

Exploring gender differences in body image,eating pathology,and sexual harassment

This study examines the relationship between body image (weight/shape concerns), eating pathology, and sexual harassment among men and women (N = 2446). Hierarchical regressions controlling for depression revealed main effects of gender such that women reported greater weight/shape concerns, eating pathology, dietary restraint, eating concerns, and binge eating compared to men. Main effects for sexual harassment indicated that as harassment increased, participants reported increased weight/shape concerns, eating pathology, dietary restraint, eating concerns, binge eating, and compensatory behaviors. There were small but significant interactions between gender and harassment for eating pathology total score (which included each of the domains listed above), weight/shape concerns, dietary restraint, and eating concerns such that the relationship between increased harassment and increased pathology was stronger for women compared to men. The largest interaction was found for compensatory behaviors, such that while women and men's scores both increased as harassment increased, the relationship was stronger for men.     

Cancer survivors’ and partners’ key concerns and quality of life

Objective: Understanding the concerns of cancer survivors is essential for effective interventions. This study was designed to identify the primary concerns of dyads coping with cancer, how concerns differed by role and sex, and whether concerns expressed during counselling were associated with survivors’ psychosocial well-being and adjustment.

Design: Forty-three dyads with breast and prostate cancer (N = 86 participants) were enrolled in an interpersonal telephone counselling intervention. Audio recordings of 228 counselling sessions were transcribed and content analysed qualitatively to identify major themes and key concerns. A total of three 30-min sessions were coded for each study participant. Quantitative data and statistical analyses were used to predict changes in survivors’ quality of life.

Main Outcome Measures: Participants completed psychosocial well-being measures (depression, positive/negative affect, and relationship satisfaction), pre- and post-counselling.

Results: Survivors’ concerns focused on cancer- and treatment-related issues, whereas partners’ concerns centred on the well-being of their spouse/partner with cancer, and what they were doing to help their loved one cope with his/her illness. Key concerns for all consisted of relationship maintenance and communication issues. Further, discussion of these concerns was predictive of significant improvements in adjustment post-counselling for women with breast cancer.

Conclusion: Discussion of interpersonal concerns may play a more important role in the well-being of women, than men, coping with cancer.     

Ethical Guidelines for Mass Trauma and Complex Humanitarian Emergencies

Issues pertaining to trauma, especially mass trauma and complex humanitarian emergencies, are explored through the lens of ethical counseling guidelines. In mass trauma, particular attention must be paid to the experiences of both survivors and counselors to enhance understanding of ethical best practices and to emphasize the importance of contextual factors in framing effective responses to trauma and humanitarian crises. Recommendations regarding ethical guidelines for counseling practice, clinical involvement, and training are offered.     

Fear of crime and community concerns: Mediating effect of risk and pragmatic fear

This study investigates the relationship between community concerns (i.e., perceived crime, incivilities, and infrastructure) and fear of crime (FOC) while examining the mediating role of risk of victimisation and pragmatic fear. Gender and ethnic differences were also explored. Data were collected using a proportionate multistage random sample of 3,003 participants from a southern Caribbean island in 2015. The following self‐reported measures were used: risk of victimisation and FOC scales, a general (noncrime) fear scale measuring pragmatic fear, and a community concern scale. Data were analysed using path analysis, Sobel tests, and multiple group analysis. Findings revealed that perceived crime and incivilities significantly predicted FOC, whereas infrastructure was insignificant as a direct predictor. Females had higher FOC, and among ethnic groups, Indo‐Trinidadians had the highest FOC than Afro‐Trinidadians and Mixed participants. Risk of victimisation and pragmatic fear had significant mediating effects on community concerns and FOC. Findings are discussed in the context of the social psychology of social disorganisation and previous research.     

Prioritizing emergency shelter areas using hybrid multi‐criteria decision approach: A case study

Every year, more than 400 natural disasters affect global population. Adopting a resilient approach strengthens communities to survive and recover well from destabilizing events. Disasters destroy or damage houses and infrastructure, which calls for arrangement of temporary establishments to provide immediate evacuation and shelter to affected population. These sites are vital for an effective relief and must be strategically planned. Communities living in disaster‐prone areas should prepare themselves well in advance for any future catastrophic event. This study adopts a hybrid group decision support approach for emergency shelter site selection problem. Initially, relevant factors for locating potential sites are identified by reviewing extant literature and through consultation from a panel of disaster management experts. Next, fuzzy analytic hierarchy process theory and technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution have been used to prioritize identified criteria and to evaluate potential locations for displacement sites. A case study of the recent Nepal earthquake has been used to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed model. The model offers a resilience building approach to prepare communities for any future contingency by proposing and prioritizing a set of planned displacement sites.     

The company you keep: Fear of rejection in intergroup interaction

People use many cues to infer the likelihood of acceptance or rejection in intergroup interactions. Nearly all prior research has focused on personal cues directly given off by the potential interaction partner (e.g., eye contact and smiling). However, we argue that in the context of intergroup interactions, individuals may be especially sensitive to broader social cues, such as an interaction partner's social network. Across three experiments we explored differences in White participants' evaluations of a smiling Black man presented with a Black or White friend. When this Black man was featured with a Black friend, White participants reported greater rejection concerns and a greater inclination to reject this Black man compared to when he was featured with a White friend (Experiments 1-3) or featured alone (Experiment 2). Furthermore, when participants received a simple intervention designed to buffer against social rejection, the race of the Black man's friend no longer influenced participants' interests in befriending the Black man (Experiment 3). This research demonstrates the power of friendships in interracial interactions and provides evidence for a simple intervention to reduce the weight of rejection concerns in interracial interactions.