Barbara Lopes

Differences Between Victims of Bullying and Nonvictims on Levels of Paranoid Ideation and Persecutory Symptoms, the Presence of Aggressive Traits, the Display of Social Anxiety and the Recall of Childhood Abuse Experiences in a Portuguese Mixed Clinical Sample

BACKGROUND Bullying has been considered as a traumatic experience that can lead to paranoid ideation in students (Campbell and Morrison, 2007). This study aimed to explore differences concerning experiences of childhood trauma, the display of social anxiety behaviours, paranoid ideation, and aggressive traits and behaviour in a mixed clinical population with and without persecutory delusions, between individuals who reported being victims of bullying versus those who did not. METHOD A total of 61 individuals with diagnoses of paranoid schizophrenia and social anxiety disorder were given a battery of questionnaires that measured bullying experiences, childhood abuse and experiences of threat and subordination, paranoid ideation, social anxiety behaviours, shame, and aggressive traits and behaviours. RESULTS Data on the differences between the victims of bullying and non-victims, in terms of recalling being bullied, showed higher scores on childhood abuse, experiences of threat and subordination within the family, aggressive traits and higher display of persecutory symptoms and less social anxiety behaviours. CONCLUSION Bullying is a traumatic phenomenon that is reported by people who suffer from persecutory delusions to a higher degree than those who do not. This study, thus, gives support to the idea that childhood abuse within the family is associated with bullying experiences and that a traumatic infancy may lead to the use of aggressive traits and behaviours to deal with a threatening environment (Bentall and Fernyhough,). This argument raises clinical issues regarding anger management and addressing bullying experiences in individuals with persecutory ideation.

Inductions Buffer Nurses’ Job Stress, Health, and Organizational Commitment

Nurses suffer disproportionate levels of stress and are at risk of sickness-absence and turnover intentions, but there is a lack of research clarifying preventions. This study investigated the impact of inductions (job preparation courses) about mental health for nurses’ job stress, general health, and organizational commitment. Data from 6,656 nurses were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM), showing that mental health inductions increase nurses’ job satisfaction, which reduces their occupational stress and improves their health. SEM showed that these occupational health benefits increase the nurses’ commitment to the organization. Job satisfaction (feeling valued, rewarded) also had a direct effect on nurses’ intentions to continue working for the organization. Mental health inductions are therefore beneficial beyond job performance: they increase occupational health in the nursing profession.

Orientations can avert psychosocial risks to palliative staff

Key points 1. Personnel in palliative care wards and hospices are at risk of chronic stress, burnout, anxiety, depression and substance/alcohol abuse because working in end-of-life care involves frequent grief, death anxiety and feelings of professional helplessness. 2. This commentary discusses the reported labour shortage in palliative care, and why some occupations are particularly at risk of quitting (e.g., care workers). 3. Most healthcare organizations are not providing palliative staff with training or orientations (inductions) about how to cope with the psychosocial risks of the profession. 4. This commentary discusses evidence that training interventions trialled on palliative staff are effective solutions. 5. The conclusion is a call on healthcare organizations to implement orientation or training programmes that help palliative personnel cope. Keywords: cancer; oncology; psychosocial risks; staff inductions; workplace coping.

How Do Non-Clinical Paranoid and Socially Anxious Individuals React to Failure? The Role of Hostility and State Anxiety

Background: Theoretical models of persecutory delusions have emphasized the impact of negative emotion namely anxiety at the early stages of symptom formation. Also, studies on persecutory delusions have discovered that trait anger is associated to the presence of paranoid delusions. Method: We did a quasi experimental study that induced social stress. Firstly we constituted three groups based on standardized cut off scores for measures of paranoia, social anxiety and depression: a paranoia group vs. a socially anxious group vs. a control group. We then measured the psychological characteristics of the three groups by self-report at time 1 (before the experiment). Participants were randomly assigned to the conditions of success vs. failure of personal performance in a computer game task. After the experience (time 2) participant’s positive vs. negative emotional reactions to performance and their levels of multidimensional paranoid ideation, anger and anxiety were measured by self-report. Results: A MANCOVA revealed a statistically significant interaction between group x condition for the emotional reactions to performance but not for the paranoid ideation at time 2. Results further revealed that hostility acted as a vulnerability factor, presenting a main statistically significant effect on paranoid reactions (time 2) and interacted with the independent variables of group belonging and experimental condition for an increase on the frequency of paranoid ideation, whereas anxiety interacted with group and condition for an increase of the distress of paranoid ideation. Conclusions: The importance of temperamental hostility and anxiety suggest clinical interventions that would help individuals to deal with their anger and anxiety preventing the development and maintenance of paranoid ideation.

The Roles of Socioeconomic Status, Occupational Health and Job Rank on the Epidemiology of Different Psychiatric Symptoms in a Sample of UK Workers

There is a considerable gap in epidemiological literature about community mental health showing how psychiatric symptoms are associated with job rank, socioeconomic status, and occupational health. We examine data from 4596 employees collected in the United Kingdom’s Psychiatric Morbidity among Adults Living in Private Households Survey. There were 939 workers in managerial jobs, 739 in supervisory jobs and 2918 employees in lower ranking jobs. Of the 4596 workers, 2463 had depressive symptoms and 2133 no depressive symptoms. Job rank, household gross income, social class, personal gross income and socio-economic group were significantly associated with general health, occupational health and depressive and avoidant symptoms. Job rank, occupational and physical health also explained the variance in paranoid and avoidant symptoms among the employees. This study shows that severe psychopathology is related to workers’ job rank.

Paranoia predicts out-group prejudice: preliminary experimental data

This article examines the relationships between exposure to terrorism news and state social paranoia, death anxiety and Islamophobia. In two experiments we show that, contrary to previous research in this area, the terrorism news condition did not significantly increase state social paranoia, death anxiety and prejudice towards Muslims, but that paranoid thinking was the sole predictor of Islamophobia. Trait paranoia is associated with both poor well-being and with negative perceptions of Muslim competitive players – a form of inter-relational prejudice. Results indicated that the frequency of paranoid thoughts mediates the relationship between death anxiety and anti-Muslim prejudice and trait paranoia is the main predictor of the negative perceptions of a Muslim competing player. This study elucidates new pathways to understanding terror management theory, by including paranoia as a type of thinking that predisposes individuals to be suspicious of salient out-groups.

Coping With Perceived Abusive Supervision: The Role of Paranoia

Two studies (a cross-sectional survey of 90 U.K. workers and an experiment with 100 U.K. workers) examined the cognitive and behavioral effects of abusive supervision. Both studies confirmed the hypothesis that workers who experience abusive supervision show paranoia and that makes them more prone to a type of cognitive error called the “sinister attribution error.” This is where workers misattribute innocent workplace events such as tripping over something or hearing colleagues laughing to malevolent motives such as wanting to harm or mock them. Study 1 also showed that abusive supervision is associated with lower well-being. Perceived organizational support buffers these effects, and this is associated with workers making fewer sinister attribution errors, thereby protecting well-being. Study 2 explored the role of contextual cues by exposing workers to images of abusive supervision. This increased their paranoia and contributed to workers making sinister attribution errors when they were asked to interpret workplace events. Moreover, depending on the types of contextual cues, workers were more likely to express the intention of workplace deviance after thinking about past experiences of abusive supervision. We recommend that corporate ethical responsibilities include training managers and workers about the negative cognitive and mental health effects of abusive supervision.

A structural equation model to predict pre-exposure prophylaxis acceptability in men who have sex with men in Leicester, UK

Pre‐exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is an effective HIV prevention tool for high‐risk men who have sex with men (MSM). However, acceptability and uptake have been variable. This study explored the factors that predict PrEP acceptability in MSM in Leicester, where HIV prevalence is double the national average.

Sexual abuse and HIV-risk behaviour among black and minority ethnic men who have sex with men in the UK

ABSTRACT Black and minority ethnic (BME) men who have sex with men (MSM) face a major burden in relation to HIV infection. It was hypothesised that sexual abuse would predict sexual risk-taking, and that this relationship would be mediated by victimisation and maladaptive coping variables. Four hundred and thirty-two BME MSM completed the survey; 54% reported no sexual abuse and 27% reported sexual abuse. Mann–Whitney tests showed that MSM with a history of sexual abuse reported higher frequency of drug use, and of homophobia and racism than those reporting no prior sexual abuse. A structural equation model showed that the experience of sexual abuse was positively associated with sexual risk-taking and that this relationship was mediated by victimisation variables: frequency of racism and frequency of homophobia and by the maladaptive coping variable: frequency of drug use. The findings can inform the design of psycho-sexual and behavioural interventions for BME MSM.

Who do you troll and Why: An investigation into the relationship between the Dark Triad Personalities and online trolling behaviours towards popular and less popular Facebook profiles

Abstract This experiment examined the influence of Dark Personalities in trolling behaviour towards popular and less popular Facebook profiles. One-hundred and thirty-five participants were recruited to view two fake Facebook profiles and rate how much they would agree with some trolling comments to each profile, as well as how they perceived themselves in comparison to each profile in terms of social acceptance and rank. In addition, participants completed the Short Dark Personality Questionnaire. Results suggested Psychopathy was positively associated with trolling behaviours while Narcissism was associated with a tendency to see oneself superior to others. Moreover, the higher the Psychopathy score the more likely the participants would troll the popular profile. On the other hand, the higher the Narcissism score the more likely participants were to perceive themselves as superior to the popular profile. These analyses revealed the different influence Dark Personality traits play on different behavioural tendencies. Dynamics among the Dark Personalities in relationship with online behaviours and the implications of the study are discussed.