Supervision in Community Mental Health: Understanding Intensity of EBT Focus

The goal of the present study was to examine clinician, supervisor, and organizational factors that are associated with the intensity of evidence-based treatment (EBT) focus in workplace-based clinical supervision of a specific EBT, Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT). Supervisors (n = 56) and clinicians (n = 207) from mental health organizations across Washington State completed online self-report questionnaires. Multilevel modeling (MLM) analyses were used to examine the relative influence of nested clinician and supervisor factors on the intensity of EBT focus in supervision. We found that 33% of the variance in clinician report of EBT supervision intensity clustered at the supervisor level and implementation climate was the only significant factor associated with EBT supervision intensity. While individual clinician and supervisor factors may play a role in EBT coverage in supervision, our results suggest that an implementation climate that supports EBT may be the most critical factor for improving intensity of EBT coverage. Thus, implementation efforts that address the extent to which EBTs are expected, rewarded, and supported within an organization may be needed to support greater coverage of EBT during workplace-based supervision.     

The Effect of Locus of Control on University Students' Mental Health: Possible Mediation through Self-Esteem and Coping

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of locus of control on university students' mental health and to examine possible mediational roles of self-esteem and coping. A total of 418 university students completed Rotters I-E Scale, Self-liking/self-competence Scale, Endlers Coping with Stressful Situations Scale and Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale. The results showed that external locus of control, lower self-liking and self-competence, as well as less problem-focused and more emotion-focused coping predict more symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress in university students. However, mediational analysis revealed that the effect of locus of control was fully mediated by self-esteem and coping, with self-liking and emotion-focused coping being the strongest mediators. Results suggest that beliefs about control affect beliefs about one's self-worth and coping strategies, which in turn can affect one's mental health.     

Self-Criticism,Neediness, and Distress in the Prediction of Suicide Ideation: Results from Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Studies

The aim of the present study was to test whether the maladaptive personality traits of self-criticism and neediness predict suicide ideation when controlling for general distress. Further, potential interactive effects on suicide ideation of the two traits and distress were also evaluated. Two studies with nonclinical samples were conducted. The first investigation was cross-sectional and involved a final sample of 202 community adults while the second study was longitudinal with a final sample of 207 college students. Results of Study 1 demonstrated that self-criticism, but not neediness, associated with suicide ideation and, in doing so, also interacted with distress. Neediness also tended to interact with self-criticism in the prediction of suicide ideation. Results from Study 2 were similar and confirmed the Study 1 results. Changes in self-criticism, but not changes in neediness, predicted changes in suicide ideation after statistically controlling for changes in distress. Changes in the interaction between self-criticism and distress predicted changes in suicide ideation and changes in the interaction between self-criticism and neediness tended to predict changes in suicide ideation. Results are discussed with regard to their implications for psychological intervention.     

Legacies of War: Asian American Women and War Trauma

ABSTRACT

Although Asian Americans are diverse in many ways, such as language, culture, ethnicity, religion, generational status, and more, many share a common experience: that of having experienced war first hand or being progeny of war survivors. World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cambodian genocide, along with centuries of oppressive and authoritarian rule, have brought experiences of trauma, directly and historically, to the lives of many Asians. Subsequent experiences of migration and resettlement, as well as life in the United States as an ethnic minority, have also compounded the layers of oppression for many Asian Americans. Sexism in our cultures of origin, as well as sexism in the U.S., represents additional realities and traumas faced by Asian American women. In this article, we explore the experiences of war and subsequent traumas in the lives of Asian American women. We present a brief review of the current state of mental health as it relates to the experiences of war trauma, with the goal of providing a crucial contextual backdrop for our review of the best practices in mental health services to Asian American women. We review some of the best practices and conclude with a narrative reflection based on our own involvement in a small professional women’s group that yielded insights, discoveries, healing, and empowerment from the legacy of war trauma.     

Auditory driving and affective influences

Past research has shown that variations in musical tempo influence the perceived rate of visual motion. The goal here was to investigate whether this effect is influenced by audiovisual affect. Participants were presented with montages (slideshows) of positive or negative scenes accompanied by positive or negative music whose rate was either the same as, or 15% faster or slower than that of the montage. The results of a subsequent recognition task showed a higher false alarm rate to faster and slower visual scenes in the presence of accelerated and decelerated soundtracks, respectively. Moreover, the magnitude of these effects significantly increased when music–montage pairs displayed a positive and negative affect, respectively. In contrast, variations in visual rate exerted no influence on auditory rate recognition. These findings have implications for audiovisual art forms as well as theories of cross‐modal perception.     

The animacy advantage for free-recall performance is not attributable to greater mental arousal

People often demonstrate better memory for animate concepts (e.g., lion and sailor) than for inanimate concepts (e.g., hammer and mountain). Researchers have attributed this effect to an adaptive memory mechanism that favours information relevant for survival, including information about living things. In the present experiment, we examined the hypothesis that people demonstrate better free-recall performance for animate than inanimate words because animate words tend to be associated with greater mental arousal than inanimate words, a factor that was not controlled for in previous experiments on this topic. To this end, we matched animate and inanimate word lists on mental arousal (and several other factors), and compared participants’ free-recall performance for the two word types. We were able to replicate past findings that participants’ free-recall of animate words exceeds their free-recall of inanimate words, but we found no support for the possibility that the effect stems from differences in mental arousal between animate and inanimate concepts, as this effect maintained even when the word lists were matched on mental arousal. The present results therefore indicate that mental arousal cannot explain the effects of animacy on free-recall performance.     

THE PHYSICALIZED MIND AND THE GUT‐BRAIN AXIS: TAKING MENTAL HEALTH OUT OF OUR HEADS

As it becomes increasingly plausible that the mind–brain is explicable in naturalistic terms, science‐and‐religion scholars have the opportunity to engage creatively and proactively with facets of brain‐related research that better inform our understanding of human well‐being. That is, once mental health is recognized as being a whole‐body phenomenon, exciting theological conversations can take place. One fascinating area of research involves the “gut–brain axis,” or the interactive relationship between the microbiome in the gastrointestinal tract (i.e., gut bacteria), the central nervous system, and mental health. A growing body of literature explores the immensely significant interactions between the gut microbiome and mental health issues involving depression, anxiety, gene expression, and stress responses. One's mental health does not occur in a disembodied state, but in a complex physical environment that is strongly influenced by environmental factors, many of which we can control. This article argues that science‐and‐religion can welcome scientific research in this area, creatively incorporating such insights into a theology of mental health and physical well‐being.     

Jardin thérapeutique,outil de prévention du burnout

The aim of this research was to study the effect of the presence of a garden in a hospital care sector on caregiver burnout. Eighty-eight nurses and caregivers from 9 care sectors answered a questionnaire constructed from the theories and scales of Karasek and Theorell. Three types of services were compared (cognitive behavioral unit, palliative care, post-acute and rehabilitation care) with a garden adapted for therapeutic activities versus with a regular garden versus with no garden. The main result was a lesser incidence of burnout in care services with a garden that those without a garden, irrespective of the type of care service, along with an amplification of the benefit with specially-designed gardens. The feeling of strength, both physical and psychological, was less present when the care services did not have a garden. A trend toward an increase in musculoskeletal disorders in services with a therapeutic garden versus no garden was observed. Upon analyzing the results, the authors recommend particular attention in the designing of hospital gardens in order to facilitate the ergonomics of nursing work. The overall results advocate the use of the garden as a systemic structure conducive to work interactions in a specially-designed area.     

Modeling Nonstationary Emotion Dynamics in Dyads using a Time-Varying Vector-Autoregressive Model

Emotion dynamics are likely to arise in an interpersonal context. Standard methods to study emotions in interpersonal interaction are limited because stationarity is assumed. This means that the dynamics, for example, time-lagged relations, are invariant across time periods. However, this is generally an unrealistic assumption. Whether caused by an external (e.g., divorce) or an internal (e.g., rumination) event, emotion dynamics are prone to change. The semi-parametric time-varying vector-autoregressive (TV-VAR) model is based on well-studied generalized additive models, implemented in the software R. The TV-VAR can explicitly model changes in temporal dependency without pre-existing knowledge about the nature of change. A simulation study is presented, showing that the TV-VAR model is superior to the standard time-invariant VAR model when the dynamics change over time. The TV-VAR model is applied to empirical data on daily feelings of positive affect (PA) from a single couple. Our analyses indicate reliable changes in the male’s emotion dynamics over time, but not in the female’s—which were not predicted by her own affect or that of her partner. This application illustrates the usefulness of using a TV-VAR model to detect changes in the dynamics in a system.     

Changes in schemas of patients with severe borderline personality disorder: The Oulu BPD study

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a relatively common and severe psychiatric disorder that can impair quality of life in many ways. The aim of this study was to determine whether a combined treatment model for BPD patients, utilising major principles from schema‐focused therapy (SFT) and dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), could be more effective in relieving early maladaptive schemas of BPD patients, compared to treatment as usual (TAU). This study is a part of the Oulu BPD study conducted at mental health care services run by Oulu city social and health care services. The study is a multisite, randomized controlled trial conducted over a one year period, involving two groups of patients with severe BPD: (1) Community Treatment By Experts (CTBE) patients (n = 18) receiving the combined treatment model, and 2) TAU patients (n = 27). The patients' schemas were assessed using the Young Schema Questionnaire (YSQ‐L3a) before and after one year of treatment. The results reveal that CTBE patients who attended the combined treatment model showed a statistically significant reduction in eight out of 18 early maladaptive schemas, while patients receiving treatment as usual did not demonstrate any significant changes in schemas. The cognitive therapeutic treatment model can be applied for clinical use in public mental health settings using existing professionals, and appears to produce positive changes in patients with BPD.