Kerry Chamberlain

Effect of melatonin on jet lag after long haul flights.

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether doses of the pineal hormone melatonin alleviate jet lag. DESIGN: Double blind, placebo controlled crossover trial. SETTING: Long haul return flights from Auckland, New Zealand, to London and back. SUBJECTS: Twenty volunteers with experience of transcontinental flights (eight women and 12 men aged 28 to 68). INTERVENTIONS: Melatonin (or placebo) 5 mg three days before flight, during flight, and once a day for three days after arrival. END POINT: Symptoms of jet lag. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: Visual analogue scale for feelings of jet lag and tiredness; profile of moods states questionnaire for vigour-activity and fatigue-inertia; and retrospective ratings 10 days after arrival of sleep pattern, energy, and daytime tiredness. Feelings of jet lag were less for subjects taking melatonin (mean score 2.15 v 3.4); these subjects took fewer days than the placebo group to establish a normal sleep pattern (2.85 v 4.15), to not feel tired during the day (3.0 v 4.6), and to reach normal energy levels (3.25 v 4.7). Results for fatigue-inertia and vigour-activity were similar. For all subjects jet lag was more severe on the return (westward) than the outward (eastward) journey. CONCLUSIONS: Melatonin can alleviate jet lag and tiredness after long haul flights.

Methodolatry and Qualitative Health Research

The increasing turn to qualitative research in health psychology raises a number of issues about the appropriate use and relevance of qualitative methods in this field. In this article I raise concerns about methodolatry: the privileging of methodological concerns over other considerations in qualitative health research. I argue that qualitative researchers are in danger of reifying methods in the same way as their colleagues in quantitative research have done for some time. Reasons for the pre-eminence of methods are discussed briefly and their consequences considered. The latter include: a concern with ‘proper’ or ‘correct’ methods; a focus on description at the expense of interpretation; a concern with issues of validity and generalizability; an avoidance of theory; an avoidance of the critical; and the stance of the researcher. I offer some suggestions for avoiding methodolatry and some opinions on how we might develop and use qualitative research more effectively in health psychology.

Measuring meaning in life: an examination of three scales

Abstract Meaning in life is an important construct for psychological theory which has received little empirical investigation, partly because of uncertainty about measurement scales. This paper examines the factor structure of three scales to measure meaning in life, the purpose in life (PIL) test, the life regard index (LRI) and the sense of coherence (SOC) scale. Results suggest that meaning in life can be regarded as a multidimensional construct, with meaning able to be attained in several different ways. Oblique factor solutions were accepted, and higher-order analyses conducted for all three scales. A general second-order meaning in life dimension was identified only for PIL and it is suggested that this scale may be the best general measure of the construct. It is concluded that further work should be undertaken to explore the specific dimensions of meaning in life.

Religiosity, life meaning and wellbeing: Some relationships in a sample of women.

In recent years considerable interest has been focused on the relationship between religiosity and psychological wellbeing. This article examines religiosity as a predictor of different components of wellbeing, in the context of several measures of meaning in life, with a sample of women. It is proposed that religiosity may show different relationships to the major wellbeing dimensions of life satisfaction, positive affect, and negative affect. The results demonstrate the religion-wellbeing relationship to be variable. The pattern of results was not consistent, with specific results finding direct (zero-order) and mediated, suppressed, or interactive (second-order) associations between religiosity and specific components of wellbeing, when life meaning was taken into account. The findings support earlier research in demonstrating that the religiosity-wellbeing relationship, where it does occur, is positive but small.

On the structure of subjective well-being

This paper reviews literature on the structure of subjective well-being, and examines the support for a number of proposed well-being dimensions. It is considered that a distinction between cognitive and affective dimensions is conceptually useful, but poorly researched. Clear support, however, is available for a distinction between positive and negative affective dimensions, as well as for a general second-order dimension of subjective well-being. Proposals for a distinction between inner and outer dimensions of well-being are considered promising but speculative at present. Although the intensity and frequency of affective experience are clearly distinct, it is considered that affect intensity should not be regarded as a dimension of well-being. Three issues related to the dimensionality of well-being, the time focus of assessment, attempts at cross-classification of dimensions, and research on the stability of well-being structure, are also discussed. Although considerable research into subjective well-being exists, the structure of well-being is not yet well established or researched.

Treatment fearfulness and distress as predictors of professional psychological help-seeking

Abstract Only a small proportion of people who experience psychological distress seek professional psychological help. Treatment fearfulness is one of a number of factors thought to influence peoples tendency to seek or avoid mental health treatment. The aim of the present study was to provide additional validity information on the Thoughts About Therapy Survey (TAPS) (Kushner & Sher, 1989), and to determine whether fear of therapy and psychological distress were predictive of help-seeking. A non-clinical student sample completed measures of their treatment fears, expectations, anxiety, psychological distress and help-seeking likelihood. Concurrent and construct validity was confirmed for TAPS. Image Concerns, Stigma Concerns, Coercion Concerns and psychological distress were related to the likelihood that subjects would seek professional psychological help. Results are discussed in relation to educational approaches for reducing treatment fearfulness and the potential for increasing appropriate professi...

Critical Health Psychology

Health psychology is concerned with applying psychological knowledge to all aspects of physical health and illness. Traditionally dominated by positivist approaches, in recent years critical perspectives have been increasingly employed. These focus on understandings of health and illness as socially, culturally, politically and historically situated and contributing to enhanced health and well-being. Critical health psychology approaches are sensitive to issues of power and benefit from theoretical and methodological pluralism. Key areas in critical health psychology include exploring people’s experiences of health and illness; working with people in marginalised or vulnerable groups to provide insights; achieving change and social justice in communities through interventions and activism; engaging with arts-based approaches to researching health and illness; examining how health is understood in everyday life; and highlighting how the physical, psychosocial and economic environments in which we live dramatically influence our health.

Stability and change in subjective well-being over short time periods

Recent research has reported high stability for subjective well-being over periods as long as 9 years, concluding that well-being is essentially unaffected by environmental change. Other research has suggested well-being is responsive to change in life circumstances, and appropriate for use as an adaptational outcome variable. The present research examined the stability of well-being over short periods (3–6 months) using a range of well-being measures. Two different samples, mothers with young children and elderly persons, provided assessments of well-being and every day stressors (hassles) on three occasions, three months apart, as well as the personality measure, sense of coherence. Results demonstrated high consistency in well-being, but also found it to be influenced by environmental events and personality. With prior well-being controlled, current well-being was predicted by current hassles but not by past hassles. Coherence explained limited variance in current well-being with pror well-being controlled. Of the three factors, prior well-being, current hassles, and coherence, prior well-being was the strongest predictor of present well-being. These findings were consistent across the range of well-being measures, and replicated across the samples. Implications for the use of well-being as an adaptational outcome are discussed.

A trip to the library: homelessness and social inclusion

This article explores homeless mens visits to a public library. It shows how homeless men identified the library as a space for safety and social participation, at a time when the regional newspaper published an item questioning the appropriateness of their presence in the library. The news report promotes universal narratives that would exclude homeless people, showing the intimate relationship between the symbolic space of news, the material space of the local library, and the lifeworlds of homeless men. We report fieldwork in which we interviewed homeless men, library staff and patrons. In addition, we worked with journalists on follow-up articles foregrounding the positive function of the library in homeless mens lives, and to challenge existing news narratives that advocate the exclusion of ‘the homeless’ from prime public spaces.

‘Near and Far’ Social Distancing in Domiciled Characterisations of Homeless People

For domiciled individuals, homeless people provide a disturbing reminder that all is not right with the world. Reactions to seeing homeless people frequently encompass repulsion, discomfort, sympathy and sometimes futility. This paper considers domiciled constructions of homeless people drawn from interviews with 16 participants recruited in the central business district of a New Zealand city. It documents how, when trying to make sense of this complex social problem, domiciled people draw on shared characterisations of homeless people. The concept of ‘social distance’ is used to interrogate the shifting and sometimes incongruous reactions evident in participant accounts. ‘Social distancing’ is conceptualised as a dynamic communal practice existing in interactions between human beings and reflected in the ways that domiciled people talk about their experiences with homeless individuals.