It's normal to experience a confusing range of emotions when dealing with bereavement. Here are some suggestions for dealing with the grieving process.
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Dr. Sabiha Alam Choudhury is currently working as the Head of Department of Psychology and Counselling at School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Assam Don Bosco University, Tapesia, India.
Her research areas are Positive Psychology, Counselling & Psychotherapy, and Marriage and Family Counselling. |
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Grief: Read this if you (or someone you know) lost a loved one
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COACHING IN THE WORKPLACE CAN BE A GAME CHANGER
Rohan de Jongh believes SACAP's Coaching in the Workplace online short course has helped catapult his work performance to the next level.
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Layers and Layers of Grief upon Grief: The Epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women
By Iva GreyWolf, PhD, and Charlotte McCloskey, PhD
As Native American psychologists, we appreciate the opportunity to share little known information about our communities of origin with our fellow psychologists. We are privileged and honored to give voice to the facts of a heartbreaking epidemic impacting indigenous communities throughout the United States.
Native American people are often overlooked, considered extinct, romanticized, forgotten, ignored and bear the burden of negative stereotypes. Belonging to a socially invisible community has consequences beyond being misunderstood and stereotyped. It can lead to much more dire outcomes – specifically, the public disregard of the epidemic of violence against Native American women and girls reflects passive cultural genocide.
According to the Urban Indian Health Institute’s 2018 report, data from the National Crime Information Center shows that there were 5,712 reports of missing American Indian and Alaska Native women and girls in 2016. However, the US Department of Justice’s federal missing persons database, NamUs, only logged 116 cases. In addition, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported murder as the third-leading cause of death among American Indian and Alaska Native women and that rates of violence on reservations can be up to ten times higher than the national average.
Data on missing and murdered indigenous women is hard to find in part because communication between tribal, state and federal agencies is not coordinated and there is often mislabeling or lack of documentation. Overall, data on this epidemic is grossly under-reported, under-examined, under-researched, and under-prosecuted.
In 2018, the Society of Indian Psychologists published a white paper regarding missing and murdered indigenous women. The following is a quote from this statement:
“In the past three decades, over 1000 Indigenous women and girls in Canada were murdered or disappeared without a trace (Royal Canadian Mounted Police, 2014; Mt. Pleasant, 2016). In 2004, Amnesty International released the first comprehensive report on violence against Indigenous women called No More Stolen Sisters: A Human Rights Response to Discrimination and Violence Against Indigenous Women in Canada. In 2016, the Government of Canada initiated a National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls; however, across the socially constructed Canadian and United States (U.S.) border, NO comparable accountability system exists to accurately document the missing or lost lives of Indigenous Women and Girls. The limited availability of U.S. statistics on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls reflects their experiences with violence are not being fully recognized, understood, legitimized, or communicated to policymakers. This violence has affected and profoundly unsettles entire Indigenous communities, including the often-forgotten men (Innes, 2015; Dylan et al., 2008), transgendered, and Two-Spirited peoples.”
The invisibility of women of color pervades the media. Their experiences with violence are often overlooked, underreported, or not reported at all. Perhaps, the experience of violence for women of color is expected and no longer considered newsworthy by the mainstream media if it is noticed at all. Perhaps, this reflects the long-lasting effects of colonialism on indigenous women.
The SIP statement continues…
“According to Senator Mark Daines (2017), “American Indian women face murder rates that are more than ten times the national average murder rate.” Homicide is the third leading cause of death among American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) women and girls between the ages of 10 and 24 (Daines, 2017). In a 2016 Department of Justice report, Rosay (2016) indicated in the lifetime of AI/AN women, 56.1% have experienced sexual violence, 84% physical violence, and 53.6% severe physical violence. Of those Indigenous women, 66% had experienced psychological violence and 49% had experienced stalking (Rosay, 2016). Of the women reporting experiencing violence in their lifetime, 97% reported at least one incident of violence perpetrated by a non-AI/AN and 96% reported at least one incident of sexual violence perpetrated by a non-AI/AN (Rosay, 2016)…. We want our Indigenous Women and Girls to be recognized as daughters, mothers, grandmothers, sisters, aunties, and nieces and the crimes against them documented and addressed.”
We live in a democracy and when the people take note of these human rights violations, it can lead our representatives to strengthen laws to protect the vulnerable.
- Several bipartisan bills have been introduced: Not Invisible Act, Savanna’s Act, Justice for Native Survivors of Sexual Violence Act.
- Most recently, on May 7th, 2019 a group of U.S. Senators, led by Tom Udall (D-N.M) brought attention to this epidemic of violence against women in Indian Country. Here is a video of the Senators calling on their fellow lawmakers to take action on #VAWA and the crisis of missing and murdered indigenous women: https://www.facebook.com/senatortomudall/videos/805772936461027/.
- On April 4, 2019, the House of Representatives voted to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) which included additional protections for Native American women.
While these signs are encouraging, there is more work to do. Here is how you can help missing and murdered Native American women:
- Seek out the facts and share them within your circles of influence. Resources are provided below. This should not be a conversation that remains within Native American communities. Giving voice to those that have been silenced honors their humanity and begins the healing. This is not just a Native women’s issue; it is a human rights issue and it will take all of us to come to a solution to save lives and promote healing.
- Serve those impacted by this violence. Legal protections are a beginning, but psychologists are needed to help those impacted in the wake of this epidemic, from the rare survivors of trafficking to the motherless children to the grieving families and communities. It is of paramount importance to gather and share the facts on the magnitude of missing and murdered Indigenous women to garner support for psychological services for the many that have been wounded by these losses. Psychologists can also identify or conduct relevant and culturally respectful research on complex trauma and impart culturally relevant counseling services for complex trauma.
- Support service providers. Our few providers for this underserved population are bombarded with messages of tragedy and loss on an almost daily basis. We need to implement strategies of support for the providers as well as the many struggling with grief. We need to address the layers of grief, historical trauma, intergenerational trauma and present-day traumas and losses that are compounded by the intersectionality of culture, race, and poverty. The time to act is now.
To learn more, follow #MMIW and #JusticeForNativeWomen on social media.
Additional resources:
House Committee on the Judiciary (n.d.) The Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2019 https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/democrats.judiciary.house.gov/files/documents/VAWA%20fact%20sheet%203.7.19%20final.pdf?utm_source=phplist1079&utm_medium=email&utm_content=HTML&utm_campaign=House+passage+of+VAWA2019
Ross, R. J., GreyWolf, I., Tehee, M., Henry, S. M., & Cheromiah, M. (2018). Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. Society of Indian Psychologists. doi: 10.17605/OSF.IO/4KMNS https://nebula.wsimg.com/574224b01991d73a1364b46ad4eea0a5?AccessKeyId=3BBC34B5002E1951E7BE&disposition=0&alloworigin=1
Turner, S. (May 12, 2019). Lawmakers seek protections for Native women, children. Albuquerque Journal: https://www.abqjournal.com/1314628/lawmakers-seek-protections-for-native-women-children.html
Urban Indian Health Institute (2018). Missing and murdered indigenous women and girls: A snapshot of data from 71 urban cities in the United States. Retrieved from: https://www.uihi.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Missing-and-Murdered-Indigenous-Women-and-Girls-Report.pdf
Biographies:
Iva GreyWolf, PhD, has 40 years of experience delivering behavioral health services primarily to Native people in rural and remote areas. She is committed to serving the underserved. She is a trainer/consultant nationally and internationally on a variety of behavioral health issues such as complex trauma, co-occurring disorders, grief, clinical supervision and resilience. Dr. GreyWolf has served as a member and chair of the American Psychological Association Committee on Ethnic Minority Affairs and as a member and chair of the APA Committee on Rural Health, as a commissioner on the Alaska Commission for Behavioral Health Certification and on the Alaska Board of Psychologists. GreyWolf is an APA fellow. She currently serves on CEMRRAT2, the APA Commission on Ethnic Minority Recruitment Retention and Training. Dr. GreyWolf is president–elect of the Society of Indian Psychologists.
Charlotte McCloskey, PhD, is the KCVAMC Local Recovery Coordinator and a staff psychologist in the outpatient Mental Health Clinic. She is also the chair of the Multicultural Committee. Dr. McCloskey has interests in research and assessment, as well as special interests in issues related to diversity. She is currently an adjunct research faculty member of the Center for American Indian Community Health at the University of Kansas Medical Center. She has VA provider status in Prolonged Exposure for PTSD, Cognitive Processing Therapy, Interpersonal Psychotherapy for Depression, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia and is experienced in providing Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Anxiety and/or Depression, as well as other evidence-based treatments. Dr. McCloskey’s theoretical orientation is integrative and reflects multicultural awareness, Psychodynamic and Cognitive Behavioral Theory. Dr. McCloskey received her postdoctoral training at the Kansas City VA Medical Center and has also previously worked in the KCVAMC Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Clinical Team (PCT). Dr. McCloskey is also a member of the APA Committee on Women in Psychology.
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Insomnia treatment: The natural & medical remedies used in 2019
Although most of us know what insomnia is, few seek medical advice, and many people remain unaware of the behavioural and medical options available to them.
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How You can Cope with Depression Successfully
Are you struggling with depression? If you are, please remember that you don’t have to bear the burden alone. By doing accurate research you can learn more about the condition and discover how your friends and family can help you to cope. So keep reading, the help you need is right here.
In the United States, major depression is one of the most prevalent mental health issues. As of 2019, it affects roughly 16.1 million American adults each year. Although major depression can occur at any age, people with the condition are more likely to experience onset during puberty. Some of the common signs and symptoms of major depressive disorder are outlined below.
Symptoms of Major Depression
Shashank Pandey, who offers an assignment help Sydney service with TFTH, says major depression goes beyond mere feelings of sadness or emptiness. In fact the symptoms of major depression can leave you unable to function in your everyday life, and contribute to negative physical and emotional changes may last for weeks, months, or years. These symptoms include:
- Crying frequently over trivial matters or issues that do not usually make you sad.
- Overwhelming sadness
- Feeling worthless
- Constant self-doubt
- Significant changes in your sleep patterns
- Feeling hopeless
- Lack of motivation
- Anger or irritability
- Changes in your eating patterns that lead to significant weight gain or weight loss
- No involvement in activities that usually give you pleasure
- Psychosomatic complaints such as headaches, muscle aches, and gastrointestinal distress
- Lack of concentration
- Repetitive thoughts of suicide
Atharv Pathak, who provides the service ‘Do My Economics Homework’ with a reputable online homework provider, agrees that symptoms of major depression may hinder your ability to carry out your day to day activities. These symptoms can have a negative impact on your schooling, employment, social functioning or your relationships with your partner, parents, or friends. Due to this, it can often be challenging for people with depression to seek help or follow through with professional treatment.
How to Find Help
Sujata Krishnamurthy, who works with Essaywriter4u–an online portal wherein you can Buy Essay Online–says major depression is highly treatable. However, for best results the right treatment course must be employed. This means care should be sought from a licensed therapist. Usually, the length and success of treatment depends on the severity of the condition.
Treatment
As each person is unique, depression treatment may vary from individual to individual. However, there are common treatments that tend to work well with most people who have depression. These include:
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
- Process-oriented talk therapy
- Family therapy
- Medication
- Hospitalization (if necessary)
- Residential treatment (if necessary)
In addition to these therapeutic approaches, there are certain alternative treatments which may also be helpful. These include meditation, following a healthier diet, getting more physical exercise and employing mindfulness strategies.
How to Find the Right Therapist
Abhay Yadav, an expert who offers accounting assignment help, says it is easier for you to develop a connection with a therapist you trust. It is important that you communicate with your therapist to find out if he or she is the right mental health professional for you. Asking the right questions can help you to learn more about your therapist and what is involved in treatment. Here are some potential questions you can ask:
- Are you a specialist in working with families, adults, children, or all three?
- Do you accept my insurance?
- What is your experience in treating depression?
- Do you have the authority to prescribe medicine or can you refer me to someone who does?
- What is your recommended course of treatment?
- Do you suggest medicine or therapy or both?
- What are your credentials?
- Will you be able to help me overcome my depression? And if yes, how?
- How long is treatment expected to last?
- What will happen if I don’t feel any better even after treatment?
- Can you suggest things to do on my own to make myself feel better?
- How many sessions in a month do you usually provide?
- What happens if I can no longer afford the cost of treatment?
- Do you also offer sliding scale rates?
If you suspect you are experiencing major depression, it is a good idea to first seek help from your doctor. The reason for this is there are some medical issues that have similar symptoms. If your physician rules out medical or physical causes, you can ask him or her for a referral to a therapist. You may also get a referral from outpatient clinics, local hospitals, your health insurance provider, or you can find a therapist online.
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5 Ways to Help Your Child Become More Independent
As children grow older, they should be given more responsibility. You’re not doing your children any favors when you perform basic tasks for them. In fact, …
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Teens Who Struggle To Differentiate Their Negative Emotions Are More Prone To Stress-Induced Depression
By Emma Young
The first step to dealing with a negative emotion is to identify it. If you’re feeling irritated, restless or guilty, the most effective way to start feeling better will be different in each case. The trouble is, if your sense of your own emotions is not that fine-grained – if you feel just “bad” or “upset” – you may struggle to identify the cause of your distress, making it tricky to self-regulate your emotions.
Plenty of studies have linked a poor ability to differentiate between negative emotions (known as “low Negative Emotion Differentiation” or “low NED” for short) to depression. But this work has mostly been conducted at a single point in time (i.e. having a “cross-sectional” design), making it impossible to tell whether difficulties with emotional differentiation cause depression or vice versa. The research has also overwhelmingly involved adults, and yet it is adolescence that is most marked by low NED (even more than in early childhood) and depression. This mismatch in the literature motivated Lisa Starr at the University of Rochester and her colleagues to conduct a longitudinal study on adolescents, published recently in Emotion. They looked not only at teenagers’ NED and depressive symptoms over time, but also their experience of minor daily hassles and more serious stressful life events.
The team studied 233 healthy American boys and girls aged between 14 and 17. They first interviewed the adolescents for depression and exposure to discrete stressful events (such as serious problems at school or parental separation) over the past 12 months. Then four times a day for the next seven days, the teens used a smartphone questionnaire to describe their current mood using a choice of 12 negative emotion words and 5 positive emotion words (these responses allowed the researchers to score the teens’ ability to distinguish their negative emotions). The phone surveys also allowed the teens to note any daily hassles (such as an argument with a parent or a parking ticket) they’d experienced during the preceding five hours, including rating their severity.
Eighteen months later, the same teen participants were again assessed for levels of depression and also exposure to stressful life events during this period.
The researchers found that the adolescents who during the week-long survey period were relatively poor at differentiating between negative (but not positive) emotions were also more likely to suffer a transiently depressed mood after a minor hassle. Eighteen months on, they also had higher levels of depressive symptoms – but only if their exposure to stressful life events during that period had been high.
The finding that low NED on its own, without stress, did not predict depression over time is a “critical finding”, the researchers write. They add that it is “to our knowledge, unique to the literature”.
Why might an inability to distinguish between negative emotions function as a risk factor for depression only in the context of high levels of stress? “People with difficulties discriminating between and labelling [negative emotions] may fail to orient to the causes and consequences of their emotional responses to stressors, leaving them less prepared to effectively down-regulate [negative emotions],” the researchers write. Such deficits in emotion regulation may in turn “make the emotional aftermath of stressors more difficult to manage and lead to the development of depressive symptoms,” they added.
Adolescents experience all kinds of changes, both in their neurobiology and in their social relationships, which put pressure on their emotional functioning. At the start of this study, 15 per cent of the sample had clinically significant symptoms of depression and 4 per cent met the formal psychiatric criteria for a diagnosis of depression. At the second time point, when any depressive symptoms over the past 1.5 years were considered, these rates had jumped to 37 per cent and 16 per cent, respectively. If, as the new findings suggest, low NED in combination with stress is a risk factor for depression, this suggests a particularly effective way to address depression in adolescence might be via a process known as “affect labelling”.
This process involves teaching people to understand and recognise a broader range of emotions (usually negative ones). It has been shown to lessen the intensity of negative emotions and encourage appropriate responses – and the researchers suggest, given their new data, that it may also protect against the development of depression. “Moreover, our finding that NED interacts with environmental stress to predict depression suggests it is especially important to target interventions at high-risk, stress-exposed youth,” they conclude.
Emma Young (@EmmaELYoung) is Staff Writer at BPS Research Digest
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We’re seeking a writer to join our team!
The British Psychological Society’s Research Digest, which keeps hundreds of thousands of people abreast of the latest exciting findings in psychology, is seeking an additional writer.
Psychology Blogger
Permanent:
Part Time: 14 hours per week
Grade 6: £33,996.00 (pro-rata)
Although based remotely, you’ll work closely with the Research Digest editor to produce engaging reports on new psychology studies each month, in a style that entertains and educates. You will show readers how the findings are relevant to their lives, but without resorting to hype. Where appropriate, you should have the confidence and competence to criticise studies.
As one of our writers, you’ll have the satisfaction of seeing your work reach our large international audience and get picked up by the world’s biggest publications, from The Guardian to New York Magazine; and published via our partnerships with other prestigious outlets including Aeon, Big Think, VICE, and others.
You must already have experience writing about psychology research for news outlets or magazines (online or print) aimed at the general public.
You must have an undergraduate degree in psychology or an equivalent related qualification.
Visit the British Psychological Society’s website for a full job description.
We will also need to see documentation that demonstrates your right to work in the UK; further information can be found on the Job Vacancies page on the Society website.
The closing date for applications is noon on Monday 19th August 2019. Interviews will be held via telephone at a date and time to be confirmed.
To apply we need your CV and covering letter, outlining how your skills and experience meet the job criteria. Please also include a Research Digest-style item, covering a published study, which you have written either for another outlet or for this process. Send to the Human Resources team at the British Psychological Society: personnel@bps.org.uk.
PLEASE NOTE APPLICATIONS RECEIVED WITHOUT A COVERING LETTER WILL NOT BE CONSIDERED.
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How Freud’s psychoanalysis theories shaped modern-day psychology
While many question the effectiveness of Freud's methods, few can deny his profound influence on the field of psychology, and Western culture as a whole.
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This Diary Study Suggests It’s Probably Not A Good Idea To Use Cannabis To Help You Sleep
By Poor sleepers may be hoping that with the gradual liberalisation of marijuana laws around the world, a new drug to help them sleep will soon become legally available. Bad news, then, from a new diary study, published in Health Psychology, of people who take cannabis as a sleep aid. While the drug seemed to improve some aspects of sleep, it also led people to feel more tired the next day.
Most past work on the effects of marijuana on sleep has compared those who use the drug with those who abstain, which doesn’t reveal much about how an individual’s experiences change with marijuana use. So Patricia Goodhines and colleagues at Syracuse University examined how 83 university students’ sleep was affected on days when they did and didn’t take the drug over a two-week period.
Each day, the students filled in questionnaires asking how often they had used marijuana or alcohol the previous day, and their reasons for taking the drug (such as “because it makes a social gathering more fun” or “to help sleep”). Participants also rated the quality and duration of their sleep that night, and how fatigued they felt during the day.
The team found that 29 of the students used cannabis specifically as a sleep aid on at least one night of the 14-day study period (the highest frequency was 13 nights). Using the drug was related to longer duration of sleep and less time spent awake during the night, suggesting that there are some elements of sleep that cannabis may improve. But importantly, the drug didn’t help participants get to sleep any faster or improve their perceived quality of sleep – and worse, it actually increased their levels of fatigue the following day.
Alcohol use, on the other hand, had no positive or negative effects on sleep. But in this case, the study was severely underpowered: only 6 participants reported using alcohol as a sleeping aid, preventing the researchers from drawing any real conclusions.
The researchers write that their results “highlight daytime fatigue as a potential adverse short-term outcome of cannabis sleep aid use, despite its proximal sleep-related benefits”. The study period was too short to look at the longer-term consequences of cannabis use on sleep, but this is an area that is ripe for future research. It’s possible that fatigue produced by cannabis could lead participants to take more of the drug in an attempt to sleep better, for example, resulting in a vicious cycle.
Cannabis and alcohol use for sleep aid: A daily diary investigation
Matthew Warren (@MattbWarren) is Staff Writer at BPS Research Digest
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Mandela Day 2019: The psychology behind compassion
The message behind Mandela Day is simple – each individual has the ability and the responsibility to make a positive difference in the lives of others. But what is it that impels us give money to the homeless or to volunteer at an animal shelter? Is compassion, as we have long believed, a learned trait, or is it in fact, as growing evidence suggests, a natural instinct?
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Polyamory Offers A “Unique Opportunity” To Enjoy Prolonged Passion And Closeness In Romantic Relationships
By Emma Young
As everyone knows, the nature of romantic relationships usually changes over time. An early period of intense attraction tends to develop into a less fiery, deeper attachment bond. According to evolutionary arguments, the early stage, which typically lasts a few years, gives the pair the time and proximity that’s required for developing a deeper nurturing, supportive – and predictable – relationship. While this type of attachment is important for rearing children, and for ongoing wellbeing, it’s not necessarily great news for passion.
“Though passion can still be experienced in the later stages, it tends to decline, on average,” note the authors of a new study, published in Social Psychology. They go on, however, to report that there is a group of people who experience higher sustained levels of both supportive warmth and nurturance and eroticism than is typical in relationships – only, they don’t get both from the same partner.
Rhonda Balzarini at York University, Canada and colleagues conducted the first empirical test of differences between eroticism and nurturance among participants who were in either a monogamous or a polyamorous relationship. Someone in a polyamorous relationship typically has a primary partner (they usually live with this person who is often their spouse and the co-parent of their children if they have any) and also, with the consent of that person, a secondary romantic partner. Relationships with secondary partners tend to last for at least a few years, allowing for some nurturance, as well as sex.
The researchers recruited their polyamorous participants – more than one thousand of them – from Facebook and Reddit groups dedicated to polyamory discussions. These individuals had been with their primary partner for an average of seven years, and with their secondary partner for two. They completed questionnaires that asked about levels of nurturance (to what extent they felt a strong sense of security, love, warmth, etc) and eroticism (including their felt levels of desire and lust, and sexual excitement) in each relationship, how close they felt to each partner, and also their levels of sexual satisfaction. The team also collected similar data on over two thousand monogamous people, who had been in an exclusive relationship for an average of 17 years.
As the researchers had predicted, the polyamorists enjoyed more nurturance from their primary than from their secondary, partners, on average, and gave higher eroticism ratings to their secondary relationships. Overall, their eroticism ratings were higher than for the monogamists. More surprisingly, their nurturance ratings for their primary relationship were higher than those reported by the monogamists. These differences held even when the researchers controlled for the differences in relationship length between the two groups.
There were also some differences in sexual satisfaction and closeness. Among the monogamous participants, eroticism and nurturance were both positively associated with sexual satisfaction and closeness. For the polyamorists, nurturance was similarly linked to feelings of closeness in both their relationships, but eroticism was only associated with sexual satisfaction and closeness in their secondary relationships,
“These findings have broad research implications for the study of romantic relationships,” the researchers write. “The belief that monogamy is superior to other relationship orientations is a fundamental and often unquestioned assumption underlying contemporary theories of the development of romantic relationships and intimacy.” And yet, they go on: “The findings suggest that polyamory may provide a unique opportunity for individuals to experience both eroticism and nurturance simultaneously.”
There are various caveats, however. An important one is that, when it comes to the nurturance data, someone who tolerates their partner having an ongoing relationship with somebody else is arguably likely to be a more supportive individual in the first place – and/or it’s likely that a deeper attachment is required for a primary partnership to be sustained during polyamory. The results can’t be seen to imply than any couple could decide to take on secondary partners and expect to enjoy the benefits reported by the polyamorists in this study.
Still, the research does highlight some possible benefits of being polyamorous, at least for some people. The researchers would now like to see work exploring whether relying on different partners to meet nurturance and erotic needs, rather than just one, could enhance life satisfaction and personal wellbeing.
Emma Young (@EmmaELYoung) is Staff Writer at BPS Research Digest
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4 Things to consider before making a career change
Career change used to be rare; in the future, it will be inevitable. But you should still think carefully before committing to a career change.
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7 Skills you need to be a life or business coach
From challenging negative thought patterns to providing effective feedback, these are some of the techniques coaches use to unlock a client's potential.
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How to become a clinical psychologist in South Africa
The nation needs clinical psychologists, whose services are essential to promoting healing and understanding of mental disorders. Here’s how you can answer the call.
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How to study: 10 expert tips on acing your next exam
’Tis the season to start studying and matric students all over the country are going into red-alert panic mode.
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Mentorship and how it can be used to uplift whole communities
"Mentoring relationships offer an opportunity for individuals to nurture seeds in others so they might become blossoms and blossoms might become fruit" So writes Dr Lois Zachary in her book "Creating a Mentoring Culture". SACAP educator George Phipps, who has 30 years international experience in developing leaders, discusses the power of mentorship, and the critical role it can play in empowering the nation.
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How A Mother’s Odour Helps Her Baby Develop A Sensitivity To Faces
By Emma Young
A newborn baby knows almost nothing about the world it comes into. To make sense of the onslaught of incoming sensory information, she or he must start to notice meaningful patterns and categorise them: that particular combination of visual data signifies a “face”, for example, while that noise is a “voice”. As the authors of a new paper in Developmental Science point out, “without this fundamental categorisation function, our nervous systems would be overwhelmed by the sheer diversity of our experience.”
It had been thought that infants form these categories using information from just one sense, whichever is the most relevant. Following this account, the category of “faces” results from an accumulation of visual information about what faces look like. However, an intriguing new study, involving four-month-old infants and their mothers’ smelly t-shirts, suggests that babies’ early acquisition of the faces category is a truly multi-sensory process.
Arnaud Leleu at the University of Burgundy, France, led the research involving 18 baby girls and boys aged four months. Before the testing started, the babies’ mothers wore the same T-shirt for three nights in a row, keeping it in a hermetically sealed bag at all other times. They and their infants were then taken into a quiet, odour-free lab space where the babies were shown a series of images. Some were of faces against natural backgrounds, while the majority featured animals, plants and manufactured objects. Each image was presented for only 167 milliseconds (less than a quarter of a second), meaning that perception had to happen at a glance.
Some of the time, the babies had their mother’s odorous T-shirt placed on their upper chest. (The T-shirt was folded so that the maximally-smelly underarm, breast and neck regions were closest to their nostrils.) Other times, they had a clean, unworn T-shirt placed near their noses. Throughout the experiment, the researchers used EEG (electroencephalography, which measures electrical activity via electrodes on the scalp) to monitor how the babies’ brains responded to the images.
The results were clear: the babies’ face-related brain activity in response to the images of faces was significantly greater when they could smell their mother’s well-used T-shirt at the same time, compared with when their mother’s odour was not present – suggesting that the odours strengthened their recognition of faces. The results provide strong support for the idea that multi-sensory, rather than single-sense, inputs drive our acquisition of categories, the researchers write.
Some earlier research findings lend support to this idea, in relation to faces, at least. Whenever you look at a face, neurons in a region of the visual cortex called the fusiform gyrus respond with a burst of activity (leading researchers to label this the “fusiform face area”). However, in 2009 a study showed that the smell of body odour, without any visual input, can also trigger activity in the fusiform gyrus. A region that had traditionally been thought to be responsive only to visual data is clearly receptive to other sensory signals when they indicate that a face is likely to be in the visual scene.
It makes sense that babies use odours to help them to spot faces, the researchers add. Odours are less fleeting than many visual stimuli, and of course body odours tend to co-occur with the appearance of a face.
The new work prompts many questions. Do babies rely more on smell than adults in their rapid recognition of faces? Does it matter to babies if the odour is their mother’s, or could it be someone else’s? (Only maternal odour was used in this study.) Which constituents of the body odour are most important for the effect? Do babies use smell to help them to form other “visual” categories? Only further research will tell.
The researchers also make this important point about the way that infant research is usually conducted: “Given that much evidence about visual categorization in infancy, and about virtually every neurocognitive process, has been obtained through testing infants seated on their parents’ lap, future studies should examine whether and how such parental sensory context, including body odour, mediates infants’ processing abilities.”
—Maternal odor shapes rapid face categorization in the infant brain
Emma Young (@EmmaELYoung) is Staff Writer at BPS Research Digest
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Credit- BPS Research Digest. Published by- Dr. Sabiha : www.drsabiha.blogspot.com
A Parent’s Guide to Screen-Free Activities for Kids
Teens in the United States are spending nearly nine hours a day using a digital device, according to a study conducted by Common Sense Media. For children between the ages of 8 and 12, the average screen time use is nearly six hours per day. As a parent, you want your kids to have access […]
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Credit- Parenting Today. Published by- Dr. Sabiha : www.drsabiha.blogspot.com
Self-development: 15 Easy ways to grow yourself every day
It’s a simple truth: Life only gets better when you do. Work on yourself and the rest will follow. And the good news is that you don’t need a complete makeover to improve yourself. Here’s 15 easy ways you can advance your self-development just a little each day.
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Credit- SACAP. Published by- Dr. Sabiha : www.drsabiha.blogspot.com
The Price Of Austerity – New Observational Research Suggests Lower Nurse-Patient Ratios Really Do Result In Poorer Health-Care Interactions
By guest blogger Lucy Maddox
The UK population continues to grow, while nursing numbers have remained static for several decades. Compounding matters, The King’s Fund and Nuffield Trust have reported a 25 per cent increase in nurses and midwives leaving the NHS from 2012 to 2018, from 27,300 to 34,100. In short, in the UK, we now have far fewer nurses relative to the general population than we used to.
What does this mean for patients’ care experience? The situation sounds bad, but how bad? Common sense would suggest that patients will experience poorer care when nurses are overstretched, and there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence to support that interpretation. But there are also positive stories, and claims about greater efficiency compensating for fewer staff.
Now a study in BMJ Quality & Safety provides direct observational evidence suggesting that lower nurse-patient ratios really do result in poorer health-care interactions.
Jackie Bridges at the University of Southampton and her colleagues observed how patient-staff interactions varied across six NHS physical healthcare wards in England depending on the ratio of nursing and healthcare assistants to patients. In total, the researchers carefully rated 238 hours of care, which included over 3000 interactions between 270 patients and healthcare staff.
Overall, 10 per cent of those interactions were rated as negative – specifically “negative restrictive”, such as patients being moved without warning or sworn at; and “negative protective”, such as patients having to wait for medication. Crucially, the researchers found that the odds of a negative interaction increased significantly as the number of patients per registered nurse increased.
Lower numbers of registered nurses working on a ward were associated with more negative interactions regardless of whether or not healthcare assistants (support staff without a nursing qualification) had been brought in to make up the numbers. Having more healthcare assistants on shift only helped if there were enough registered nurses to supervise them.
As this was a purely observational study, rather than experimental, some caution is required, as the authors note: “a causal inference [about staffing levels] cannot be directly made”. Nevertheless, this is such a helpful piece of research, that’s clearly consistent what nurses have been saying for years: that they need enough of them on shift to be able to ensure that patient care is high quality.
This isn’t to “do down” healthcare assistants, who are undervalued enough, but it is highlighting the importance of good quality supervision. It also doesn’t mean that nurses go round looking over the shoulders of their more junior colleagues, but is consistent with the argument that patient-carer interactions will be more universally positive when there are sufficient nursing staff to deal with queries, show more junior staff what to do, talk through dilemmas, model excellent patient care, and acknowledge difficult feelings that caring roles can bring up.
The study reminded me of the time I’ve spent working in mental health wards, a job which was adrenaline-fuelled and unpredictable but which I loved, and where I worked with brilliant nursing colleagues who were often rushed off their feet.
Media coverage of care quality in the NHS often blames individuals, and especially nursing staff, for failures. Poor care is never excusable or acceptable, but it is important to recognise that there are perfect storms of working condition which make it more likely. Negative cultures in organisations, lack of staff resources, destructive leadership, can all play their part.
The Francis Report, published in 2013, highlighted the devastating effects of a lack of compassionate care and the need to have cultures where people feel they can speak out about poor care, and where compassionate care is supported. Much has been done since to champion compassionate leadership and compassionate care, but this new study shows how, in the aftermath of austerity and with not enough staff to go round, it’s harder for these principles to be put into practice. For any of us – nurses included – if we are stressed, tired, under emotional pressure and not given enough time, we tend to behave less nicely. It’s not news that a lack of time has a negative impact on caring behaviours.
There’s been much about staff wellbeing in the papers recently, with initiatives to offer mindfulness, yoga, exercise classes and the like. Interventions on an individual level can be hugely helpful and useful to know about. At the same time, it’s not good enough to offer interventions to reduce unnecessary stress caused by an uncaring system.
High quality compassionate care in hospital settings requires sufficient nurses to deliver the care and to supervise their junior colleagues. Anything less is setting up staff to fail and setting up patients for a greater likelihood of negative care. Nurses need to be cared for too, by their employer and by their colleagues, and a bare minimum is making sure there are enough colleagues on shift for it to feel safe. This new research adds to a body of evidence that takes the blame off the nurse and squarely places the responsibility on the system to do better.
—Hospital nurse staffing and staff– patient interactions: an observational study
Post written by Dr Lucy Maddox (@lucy_maddox) for the BPS Research Digest. Lucy is a consultant clinical psychologist, lecturer and writer.
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Credit- BPS Research Digest. Published by- Dr. Sabiha : www.drsabiha.blogspot.com
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