Between Hippocrates and God: Ugandan mental health professional's views on suicide

A negative attitude towards suicide is generally assumed to be predominant in low-income countries. In order to understand the negative attitude in general it is necessary to look at how religion and morality influence the attitudes. Our aim in this qualitative interview study was to investigate what attitudes professional mental health workers in Uganda bear towards suicide and suicidal persons. The professionals argue for their attitude by employing religious, communal and medical ethics arguments, which draw both in a negative and positive direction. The professionals are in general unambiguously negative towards suicide and positive towards suicidal people who are mentally ill. In cases other than mental illness non-accepting attitudes surface. This is discussed against previous research showing that effective treatment of suicidal people is to be based on a trusting and accepting relationship.     

The Role and Function of Criminologists within the Criminal Justice and Private Sector

Criminology gained prominence as an academic area of study because of the constant threat of crime and the social problems it highlights. Nonetheless, much doubt and criticism exists among professionals within social and human sciences regarding the role, application, value and contributions of criminologists. Criminology is informed by a combination of theory and empirical research enfolded into a body of knowledge on crime as a social phenomenon. In South Africa, criminologists have acquired a more practically oriented role in enhancing service delivery within the criminal justice and private sectors. This article aims to highlight the current (and potential) shift in practice for criminologists in South Africa.     

Personality,social support and burnout among human service professionals in India

Recent research has investigated the relationship between personality and social support in predicting various forms of adjustment. This study explores this relationship in a sample of 137 human service professionals engaged in post‐degree clinical skills training at the Christian Counselling Centre in Vellore, India. The impact of certain forms of social support on burnout was examined, after controlling for the effect of the personality trait of anxiety. As hypothesized, perceived social support was negatively associated with burnout, even after controlling for the effects of anxiety. This pattern was strongest for the males in this sample. Emotional exhaustion and depersonalization were the components of burnout most strongly related to perceived support. The perception of support received from ‘work‐related’ and ‘other’ relationships made a stronger contribution than did ‘family’ or ‘social’ ties with respect to burnout. Implications for future cross‐cultural investigation of the relationships among personality, social support and adjustment are discussed. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Emotional Intelligence and resilience in mental health professionals caring for patients with serious mental illness

Emotional Intelligence (EI) and resilience may be considered as prerequisites for mental health professionals caring for patients with serious mental illness (SMI), since they are often exposed to severe emotional stress during daily work. Accordingly, this cross-sectional study assessed both EI and resilience and their interrelationship in 61 individuals belonging to an assertive outreach team for patients suffering from SMI compared 61 control subjects without healthcare-related working conditions. EI was assessed by means of the German version of the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso-Emotional-Intelligence Test (MSCEIT), resilience was assessed using the German version of the Resilience Scale. Both groups showed an average level of EI in all categories of the MSCEIT and indicated high levels of resilience. They did not differ significantly from each other, neither in terms of EI nor resilience. Correlation analysis revealed a positive association between EI and resilience, albeit small in magnitude. Our results suggest that mental health professionals are not more resilient and therefore not more ‘protected’ from stressors than the general population. Though this finding warrants cautious interpretation, the positive correlation between EI and resilience suggests that EI may be a potential target for education and training in order to strengthen resilience even in healthy individuals and vice versa.     

Evaluating the “possums” health professional training in parent–infant sleep

Infant sleep problems are among the most common issues reported by parents in the postnatal period. Yet, infant sleep and infant sleep interventions remain controversial. This study evaluated health professional training in a novel approach to parent–infant sleep: the Possums Sleep Intervention. Health professionals (n = 144) completed a short survey before and after the training, which focused on the sleep component. The Possums Sleep Intervention training included the following topics: sleep science, cued care, sleep hygiene, relaxation for parents and babies, problem solving, and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). Health professionals reported: improvements in knowledge on infant sleep regulation, the mother–infant relationship and ACT; improvements in health professionals’ own sleep quality; improvements in psychological flexibility; and a reduction in professional burnout and secondary traumatic stress. Moreover, the health professional training was received positively. Overall, this study is supportive of the Possums Sleep Intervention health professional training.     

Mental Health Professionals' Perceptions of Women's Experiences of Family Violence

This study explored perceptions of 92 mental health professionals regarding violent families. They were asked to answer the questions on the Family Environment Scale as they thought women who lived in homes where they and their children were physically and/or psychologically abused would respond. Their scores were compared to those of 28 mothers in battered women's shelters. They differed significantly in their perceptions of violent family dynamics with regard to levels of cohesion, expressiveness, independence, intellectual-cultural orientation, active-recreational emphasis, and moral-religious emphasis. They believed the women to have lower levels on these constructs than the women actually reported. Implications suggest that mental health professionals could be more aware of the dynamics of violent families in order to efficiently uncover the violence during therapy sessions and provide appropriate services.     

Interdisciplinary Knowledge Translation: Lessons Learned from a Mental Health: Fire Service Collaboration

Collaborative approaches are being increasingly advocated for addressing a variety of health, mental health and social needs for children, youth and families. Factors important for effective knowledge translation of collaborative approaches of service delivery across disciplines, however, have not been rigorously examined. TAPP-C: The Arson Prevention Program for Children is an intervention program for child and adolescent firesetters provided collaboratively by fire service and mental health professionals. The present study examined the adopter, innovation, and dissemination characteristics associated with TAPP-C implementation, protocol adherence and extent of collaboration by 241 community-based fire service professionals from communities across Ontario. Results revealed that dissemination factors are particularly important for understanding program implementation, adherence and cross-discipline collaboration. Moreover, the findings of this study show significant benefits to both within discipline (intra-disciplinary) and across discipline (interdisciplinary) knowledge translation strategies.     

Les dispositifs groupaux à l’hôpital et en EHPAD durant la crise de la Covid-19. Quelles demandes,quelles offres,quels apports ?

IntroductionThe COVID-19 crisis has exacerbated the demand for group arrangements dedicated to healthcare professionals and more widely hospital and medicosocial staff.ObjectiveThis article attempts to shed light on the issues at stake in the opening of group settings, between supply and demand, as well as their main organizational and psychological contributions and limitations, through the synthesis of multiple feedbacks from group arrangements carried out by clinical psychologists and researchers during the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodSix female researcher-clinicians met to discuss their experiences in setting up group care facilities. The analysis of the feedback used the concepts of work psychodynamics and group psychoanalysis, making it possible to bring out the organizational and psychological characteristics of group arrangements dedicated to professionals in the healthcare sector.ResultsOur results show that the group arrangement, by allowing the sharing of experiences, helps the mutual recognition between professionals, and thus new identifications in order to avoid the fragmentation of work collectives. The most central point seems to be the capacity of group arrangements to deal with the aggressiveness and anger felt when facing the powerlessness to act in crisis situations. The limits of these groups concern their difficulty in allowing individual rather than collective words to be expressed, and the risk of being the site of a repetition of the trauma for the professionals who sometimes attack or flee from these mechanisms, for fear of what they might bring back to the surface.ConclusionSeveral points of vigilance and recommendations from the experiences reported in this article are explained, in order to enlighten and guide future group facilitators when offering group arrangements built with and for professionals in the healthcare field.     

Virtual morality in the helping professions: Simulated action and resilience

Recent advances in virtual technologies have allowed the investigation of simulated moral actions in aversive moral dilemmas. Previous studies have employed diverse populations to explore these actions, with little research considering the significance of occupation on moral decision-making. For the first time, in this study we have investigated simulated moral actions in virtual reality made by professionally trained paramedics and fire service incident commanders who are frequently faced with and must respond to moral dilemmas. We found that specially trained individuals showed distinct empathic and related personality trait scores and that these declined with years of experience working in the profession. Supporting the theory that these professionals develop resilience in moral conflict, reduced emotional arousal was observed during virtual simulations of a distressing dilemma. Furthermore, trained professionals demonstrated less regret following the execution of a moral action in virtual reality when compared to untrained control populations. We showed that, contrary to previous research, trained individuals made the same moral judgements and moral actions as untrained individuals, though showing less arousal and regret. In the face of increasing concerns regarding empathy decline in health care professionals, we suggest that the nature of this decline is complex and likely reflects the development of a necessary emotional resilience to distressing events.