Effects of a brief media intervention on expectations, attitudes, and intentions of mental health help seeking

This study examined the effects of a mass-media video intervention on expectations, attitudes, and intentions to seek help from professional mental health care services. A public service announcement-style, mass-media video intervention was developed, with prior empirical research on help-seeking behaviors organized according to the theory of reasoned action/planned behavior. In total, 228 participants were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 conditions: (a) the media-exposed intervention group, who watched programming in which the media intervention was inserted, and (b) the control group, who watched the same programming without the media intervention. The media intervention was not influential on expectation and belief-based barrier variables. However, the media intervention was effective at increasing positive attitudes toward help seeking. Findings regarding the intervention's ability to increase help-seeking intentions for interpersonal problems were complex. Implications of these findings for future research are discussed.     

Trainees Looking Through the Lens of a Supervisor: Remediation and Gatekeeping Responses to Hypothetical Problems of Professional Competency

This study investigated MFT trainees' perspectives of competency problems as they imagine themselves as supervisors. Trainees read seven vignettes and selected from 17 remediation responses (N = 21) originally designed for licensed supervisors (Russell, Beggs, Peterson, & Anderson, 2007). Consistent with the literature, respondents endorsed talking with the trainee as their first line of remediation and reserved dismissal for competencies related to dishonesty/fraud. Contrary to past research, trainees identified late case notes as a dismissible offense and were more lenient with untreated mental illness. Supervisors might consider orienting trainees to ethical decision making and remediation policies/strategies prior to their work in the field.     

Protestantism in North Korea: An exploration

Abstract

This article provides an overview of one of the fields of religiosity that have so far remained outside the main scope of scholarly research on postcommunist societies. In the West heterodox religiosity, the most common form of which is constituted by so called ‘esoteric’ world views, has already been studied for several decades, since it has been able to manifest itself more or less freely through specialised media, books and events organised by its engaged practitioners. In Russia in communist times, however, it had to keep silent so as to avoid persecution by the government. It was not until the regime change in 1991 that heterodox religiosity was suddenly free to spread widely and quickly. Now that time has passed and the situation stabilised somewhat, it is interesting to look back at how this kind of religiosity evolved in Russia during the last century and especially during the challenging transition years. The article examines the situation today with the use of selected results from a recent representative population survey. These results suggest that at the moment heterodox forms of religiosity are at least as widely spread among Russians as traditional ones, if not even more widely. This evidence might provide interesting input for further development of theoretical knowledge on religious transformations in modern societies.