Aileen M. Pidgeon

Does parental attributional retraining and anger management enhance the effects of the Triple P-Positive Parenting Program with parents at risk of child maltreatment?

Ninety-eight parents experiencing significant difficulties in managing their own anger in their interactions with their preschool-aged children were randomly assigned either to an enhanced group-administered behavioral family intervention program based on the Triple P-Positive Parenting Program that incorporated attributional retraining and anger management (EBFI) or a standard behavioral family intervention program (SBFI) that provided training in parenting skills alone. At post-intervention, both conditions were associated with lower levels of observed and parent-reported disruptive child behavior, lower levels of parent-reported dysfunctional parenting, greater parental self-efficacy, less parental distress, relationship conflict and similarly high levels of consumer satisfaction. EBFI showed a significantly greater short-term improvement on measures of negative parental attributions for childrens misbehavior, potential for child abuse and unrealistic parental expectations than SBFI. At 6-month follow-up both conditions showed similarly positive outcomes on all measures of child abuse potential, parent practices, parental adjustment, and child behavior and adjustment; however, EBFI continued to show greater change in negative parental attributions. Implications for tailoring early-intervention programs to the needs of parents at risk of child maltreatment are discussed.

The direct and indirect benefits of dispositional mindfulness on self-esteem and social anxiety

Abstract The current study investigated relationships between dispositional mindfulness, self-esteem, and social anxiety using self-report measures. Correlational data were collected from 205 Australian undergraduate students who completed the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS), the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES), and the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (SIAS). Mindfulness significantly predicted high levels of self-esteem and low levels of social anxiety. Mediation analysis supported the role of self-esteem as a partial mediator between mindfulness and social anxiety. Clinical implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Evaluating the effectiveness of enhancing resilience in human service professionals using a retreat-based Mindfulness with Metta Training Program: A randomised control trial

This paper explores the feasibility of a brief Mindfulness with Metta Training Program (MMTP), targeting the enhancement of mindfulness and self-compassion in a retreat format, as a means of increasing resilience in human services professionals. In this randomised control trial, 44 human services professionals were randomly allocated either to a MMTP retreat group or to a control group. Following the MMTP intervention, no significant differences between the retreat and control groups were found on resilience, mindfulness and self-compassion variables. However, significant improvements were observed over time for the retreat group for mindfulness and self-compassion at one and four months and for resilience at four-months post MMTP intervention. The results of this pilot study show that MMTP in a retreat format is a promising method of increasing resilience, mindfulness and self-compassion in human services professionals.

RESILIENCE ATTRIBUTES AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTRESS, SLEEP DISTURBANCES AND MINDFULNESS

Jamaica Kincaids novel Lucy (1990) is a coming-of-age story, or a Kunstlerroman to be more specific in the tradition of James Joyces A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1917), that simply revolves around a young woman artist, who learns much from the school of life and personal experiences other than from ordinary education at academic institutions. The eponymous protagonist breaks away from such forces as colonial and patriarchal mores, which eventually contributes to her construction of her own hybrid identity and inaugurates her maturity. This struggle is established perfectly well through her apparent resistance to the constraints primarily imposed on her race and gender by both the Eurocentric society, which she has just left behind at home, and the androcentric society she encounters in diaspora. Surprisingly enough, Lucy, who is chastened towards the end of the book, creates her rite of passage towards development and independence through her valiant efforts to overcome such confines at any cost. The aim of the present article is to analyse the young artists character formation and growth both at home and in diaspora from a postcolonial perspective. This way, it intertwines discussions of transition from innocence to experience along with such elements as androcentrism, colonial and postcolonial rebellion, and questions of identity, hybridity, diaspora and cultural displacement, which are all inextricably linked with the postcolonial discourse.

Exploring resilience and mindfulness as preventative factors for psychological distress burnout and secondary traumatic stress among human service professionals

BACKGROUND Human service professionals are concerned with the intervention and empowerment of vulnerable social populations. The human service industry is laden with employment-related stressors and emotionally demanding interactions, which can lead to deleterious effects, such as burnout and secondary traumatic stress. Little attention has been given to developing knowledge of what might enable human service workers to persist and thrive. Cultivating and sustaining resilience can buffer the impact of occupational stressors on human service professionals. One of the psychological factors associated with cultivating resilience is mindfulness. OBJECTIVE The aim of this current research is to improve our understanding of the relationship between resilience, mindfulness, burnout, secondary traumatic stress, and psychological distress among human service professionals. METHODS The current study surveyed 133 human service professionals working in the fields of psychology, social work, counseling, youth and foster care work to explore the predictive relationship between resilience, mindfulness, and psychological distress. RESULTS The results showed that higher levels of resilience were a significant predictor of lower levels of psychological distress, burnout and secondary traumatic stress. In addition, higher levels of mindfulness were a significant predictor of lower levels of psychological distress and burnout. CONCLUSIONS The findings suggest that cultivating resilience and mindfulness in human service professionals may assist in preventing psychological distress burnout and secondary traumatic stress. Limitations of this study are discussed together with implications for future research.

Cultivating a resilient response to stress through mindfulness and cognitive re-appraisal: A pilot randomised control trial.

The capacity for human service professionals to replenish resilience is important to their health and psychological wellbeing. The current study evaluated a brief Mindful Awareness and Resilience Skills Training (MARST) program designed to enhance mindfulness and positive re-appraisal as psychological mechanisms for increasing resilience, decreasing psychological distress and perceived stress. This program was informed by the Mindful-Cognitive Model of Cultivating Resilience. A sample of 46 human service professionals were randomly allocated to a MARST group or control group. Short term and follow-up training effects were examined using MANOVA. At post-training, the MARST group reported significantly higher levels of resilience, mindfulness and positive re-appraisal compared to the control group. At one-month follow-up, the MARST group reported significantly higher levels of resilience, mindfulness, and positive re-appraisal, and significantly lower levels of perceived stress and psychological distress relative to the control group. The findings provide preliminary support for the efficacy of the MARST program to increase resilience and decrease levels of psychological distress and perceived stress among human services professionals.

Self-esteem and body image in females: The mediating role of self-compassion and appearance contingent self-worth.

Body dissatisfaction is a major source of suffering among women of all ages. One factor that has the potential to mitigate body dissatisfaction, as well as promote a positive body image and psychological wellbeing, is self-compassion. This study explored sources of positive and negative body image by investigating the relationship between self-esteem, self-compassion, and appearance contingent self-worth in conceptualizing body image avoidance behaviors. The multiple mediation model assessed the responses of 222 female participants from the general community. Self-compassion and appearance contingent self-worth were both found to partially mediate the relationships between self-esteem and body image avoidance behaviors. The findings are discussed in light of clinical interventions and directions for future research in the body image field.

Effectiveness of a School-Based Emotional Freedom Techniques Intervention for Promoting Student Wellbeing

In academic settings, fear of failure and associated emotional difficulties are common and often result in maladaptive behaviours, which often lead to failure or lowered scholastic achievement. Higher levels of self-esteem and resilience have been shown to protect against fear of failure and emotional difficulties, and predict improved academic outcomes in students. However, few studies have investigated the efficacy of group intervention methods aimed at improving self-esteem and resilience. This non-randomised universal intervention represents the first Australian study of the efficacy of a group Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) treatment program within high schools, aimed at increasing student self-esteem and resilience, and decreasing fear of failure and emotional difficulties. The EFT intervention groups (N = 204) were drawn from two different school cohorts. Results showed a significant improvement in fear of failure, whereby fears were significantly lower from pre-intervention to 12-month follow-up. Findings also indicated a significant main effect of time for emotional and behavioural difficulties, however post hoc tests indicated no statistically significant changes between the time points measured. No significant changes were observed in measures of self-esteem or resilience. The results suggested that EFT might be an effective group intervention for some students decreasing their fear of failure; however, further research is required.

PRELIMINARY OUTCOMES OF FEASIBILITY AND EFFICACY OF BRIEF RESILIENCE STRESS TRAINING: A PILOT STUDY OF THE MARST PROGRAM

Domestic violence in itself is one of the most difficult, specific and wide-spread social-legal problems containing the number of signs of violation. Conflict directly concerns people connected with coexistence; it has the local, exclusive character and the fight against it is less effective in accordance with common practice of fight against the crime. Specificity of the fight against the crime of this category is expressed in both complexity of its revealing and in effective and lawful choice of coercive measures against it. The issue of domestic violence has been tabooed in many countries for a long time, because the disclosure of such issues was considered as interference in people’s private life. Although the society has gradually realized that the problem of domestic violence must not be ignored as violence endangers people’s health and life. Domestic violence is not only the problem of separate individuals, it has negative effect on the other members of the family, especially on minors and leads to distortion of their psyche and consciousness which, in its turn, leads to the formation of an unhealthy situation in the society.The author analyzes the results of the four stages of victimization surveys and Unified Crime Reports prepared by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia in 2010-2013. The results of victimization surveys and statistics reports related to indexes and structure of crime became important after the parliamentary elections held in October 1, 2012, resulted by defeating of the ruling political party “National Movement” which was in power for the last 9 years. The new coalition “Georgian Dream”, headed by the billionaire B. Ivanishvili, radically changed political climate and announced the acceleration of democratization of the country and adopted the legislation decriminalization policy. According the new policy, the government of the country carried out the general amnesty, and released more than 60% of all prisoners from the custody. Such policy became the object of serious criticism from the part of the oppositions and some experts. They have expressed concerns about the criminal situation and decreasing level of security in the country predicted anarchy and disorganizations. This article is an attempt to assess the real situation in Georgia and the level of real threat to stability posed by criminality.Everything has his pros and cons. Debtor’s rights and obligations during court order enforcement, causes of problems that may arise. This problem is in the whole country, not just in one city or in one social class. A very large number of families from everywhere around Georgia have been affected. How and where it started will be discussed below in the text. Rights of creditors and debtors overlap in many aspects. We need to be very careful when sorting out this issue. We cannot under any circumstances make a decision with a benefit of one party while the other party will suffer losses. Georgian law on “Law Enforcement” does not support in any ways rights of debtors and all the procedures highlighted are towards forcing the debtor to pay off the debt. At this stage based on the current law, current socio-economic problems, statistics, ways on sorting out the problem, this object of studies is very important and has a very high intrinsic value in its theoretical part as well as in its practical part. If the right approach is taken it is possible to minimise the need to protect rights of creditors or debtors in the futures, because every party will be fully aware of their abilities and punishments for failures to fulfil their obligations, before signing the contractThe article includes detailed employment and uniploymant analysis in each municipality. In the analysis we use results from household survey conducted by the National Statistics Service. More specific information about the labour market at the municipal level was collected through cooperation with local municipalities. For the analysis we used information from municipalities’ web pages, telephone conversations with stakeholders, personal meetings with experts and so on. It should also be noted that a certain part of the data obtained from municipalities and from administrative territorial units have an approximate nature, but based on these information it is possible to gain some valuable conclusions and make assumptions. Terms and reality of employment analysis is carried out not only at the level of the municipality but on the country and regional ones as well.This project aims to apply learning of operations research and optimizing resources to practical cases. The aim of this problem is to maximize the the fairness of the schedule , while respecting all the constraints . In regards with the results obtained after some tests ILP has found a very good solution to our problem . Better values of the penalties associated to the shifts could be defined in order to represent the reality more accurately especially by taking into account the length of the shifts. The models can also be solved by means of optimization software. As shown in this paper, the current schedules can benefit from this work. My problem is NP-hard that it means unsolvable.My objective is to do the objective values ( diff =0.1) . The ideal must be 0 but it is impossible.there is shown in the table in 5 shifts , 20 nurses 10 weeks. We see that when we increase the number of shift the objective value is decreasing. It is fact that when we add a shift the software must do more iterations but the penalty is decreasing. We see that with the same number of iterations the penalty is smaller when we add a shift.For the welfare of modern society and any state`s correct function it is very important to have straightened working court system and to ensure every person`s court accessibility. Each step of court case management is detailed in civil procedure code. The legislation of civil procedure of Georgia foresees some mechanisms and opportunities of the restriction of court accessibility, which must be studied. The meaning of this study is stipulated by huge importance of court accessibility itself and by need of due caution during its restricting. The access to the court right is reserved not only by national, but also by international law, as evidenced by Article 42 of the Constitution [1], ``The UN Convention for Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms`` Article 6 [3]. As any study issue, this one also needs scientific, systemic approach. For fully demonstrating the issue it is advised to classify and define court accessibility restriction mechanisms. Here presented work is about this matter.The Administrative Law is a part of public law, as it is depended on the subordinate principle. It aims to realize public interest. On the other hand, Enforcement Law is part of administrative space, which regulates the rules and procedures of the enforcement process for different court’s decisions as well as other acts. As administrating effects our everyday lives, it is a public interest that this process should be kept in the legal borders. This is exactly what the Administrative Law is all about. It regulates the social relations in which were government and other administrative bodies play a major role. It is true that Enforcement Law provides us with the norms, rules and procedures of the legal administration, but it is still court’s responsibility to assess the legal quality of it. This is why we need effective justice, to have the competent court ruling practice and to enforce them properly.Collision issues are discussed in family law such as conditions of marriage, results of marriage, annulment of marriage, duty of maintenance, relations between parents and children, relations related to child’s origin, conditions of adopting, guardianship and tuition. I discuss issues of guardianship and tuition in mentioned work, which I think is very interesting and actual.

Resilience in Non-Offending Mothers of Children Who Have Reported Experiencing Sexual Abuse

ABSTRACT Growing evidence shows that non-offending mothers experience significant loss and trauma following their child reporting experiencing sexual abuse. Maternal support offered to sexually abused children following disclosure can be a crucial factor in children’s recovery. Although mothers are often seen as playing a central role in facilitating the recovery of their sexually abused child, there has been little focus on their own needs and profiles. This present study aimed to increase our understanding of the diversity of profiles of non-offending mothers of sexually abused children by exploring the differences in psychosocial traits of non-offending mothers (N = 68; age range 28–67 years) reporting higher and lower resilience. The mediating role of these psychosocial factors on the relationship between resilience and psychological distress will also be explored. Results found that non-offending mothers in the higher resilience group reported higher levels of positive reappraisal, self-compassion, social support, and significantly lower levels of psychological distress compared to non-offending mothers in the lower resilience group. Additionally, multiple mediation analysis indicated positive reappraisal, self-compassion, and social support to be significant mediators of the relationship between resilience and psychological distress. Increased levels of self-compassion and social support were found to be predictive of lowered psychological distress, while increased positive reappraisal predicted increased psychological distress. The findings of the present study provide support for the targeting of the psychosocial factors such as self-compassion, social support, and positive reappraisal in interventions for non-offending mothers in an effort to promote resilience.