Resilience in Adolescents Who Survived a Suicide Attempt from the Perspective of Registered Nurses in Inpatient Psychiatric Facilities

The number of deaths by suicide has increased over the last few years. The purpose of this qualitative study is to explore components of resilience in adolescents who survived a suicide attempt from the perspective of nine psychiatric nurses. Resilience was used as a guiding conceptual framework which proposes that resilience is the interplay between risk and protective factors. Three categories emerged including risk factors, protective factors, and future recommendations of suicide prevention strategies. The perspectives gained from this study will help develop nursing interventions for adolescents to overcome risk factors and to build on their protective factors

Risk and Protective Factors in the Lives of Caregivers of Persons With Autism: Caregivers’ Perspectives

PURPOSE The purpose of this descriptive exploratory study is to understand the experience of being a caregiver of a person with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in the light of the resilience theory. METHODS Qualitative data were collected as a part of a larger quantitative study. Ninety-three caregivers completed this qualitative study and responded to the two open-ended questions. In the parent study, subjects were recruited by convenience sampling from the Interactive ASD Network (IAN). FINDINGS The identified categories appeared to reflect three distinct categories consistent with the resilience theory, labeled as follows: risk factors, protective factors, and overlapping factors. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS These findings help to inform the planning of tailored interventions to enhance caregivers’ resilience

Beyond ology

This is a documentation of the journey of an artist tracing her steps to produce art that speaks to the cause of the environment. Scientific research continues to spotlight the impact humans have on the demise of the environment. Contemporary art is a visual stimulus that is often used to draw attention to specific issues including those involving science and the environment. The juxtaposition of scientific data with images from nature functions to highlight the fragility, beauty and destructiveness of this interaction. The goal of this thesis exhibition was to create visually seductive work that: contained information about the environment, generated a dialog between the artwork, the issues and the viewer, and explored a range of processes and media. The media utilized in this body of work included glass, ephemeral materials, mixed media and non-toxic printmaking

Mediating Effects of Positive Thinking and Social Support on Suicide Resilience

Suicide has been the second leading cause of death for 18- to 24-year-olds in the United States since 2011. The stress experienced by undergraduate college students has the potential to increase one’s risk for suicide. Resilience theory was used as a theoretical framework to examine the interplay between risk and protective factors. A cross-sectional and correlational design was used to assess the mediating effects of positive thinking and/or social support on suicide resilience in 131 college students 18 to 24 years old who completed an online survey. The study found an indirect effect of self-esteem on suicide resilience through positive thinking and social support indicating that as self-esteem increases, positive thinking and social support also increase, which leads to an increase in resilience. The study also found a direct effect of self-esteem, positive thinking, and social support on suicide resilience. The findings inform the development of tailored interventions to build suicide resilience in college students

The Educational Semantic Web: Visioning and Practicing the Future of Education

Abstract: I (Terry) first became interested in the semantic web from reading Berners-Lee's original works and following first generation developments of semantic web technologies in information science, e-business and health fields. I then began including the ideas in talks I gave at various conferences and forums in 2003. Naturally, I became curious about what other educators were doing with the semantic web and so Googled the term, "education semantic web". Much to my surprise and disappointment, I found that most of the references were to my own admittedly introductory and visionary comments made in these speeches. Where was the real work, innovation and actual prototype development? Fortunately, we were able to locate this type of work and we believe that most of the leading researchers in the area of the educational semantic web have contributed to this special issue. Of course, if we have missed your work, we welcome comments and URLs in the discussion areas of the special issue. Editors: Terry Anderson and Denise Whitelock

The Mediating Effects of Positive Thinking and Social Support on Suicide Resilience Among Undergraduate Students

Suicide has been the 2nd leading cause of death for 18-24-year-olds in the US since 2011. The stress experienced by undergraduate college students has the potential to increase ones’ risk for suicide. Resilience theory was used as a theoretical framework to examine the interplay between risk and protective factors. A cross-sectional and correlational design was used to assess the mediating effects of positive thinking and/or social support on suicide resilience in 131 college students 18-24 years old who completed an online survey. An indirect effect of self-esteem on suicide resilience was found through positive thinking and social support indicating that as self-esteem increases, positive thinking and social support also increase, which leads to an increase in resilience. The study also found a direct effect of self-esteem, positive thinking, and social support on suicide resilience. The findings inform the development of tailored interventions to build suicide resilience in college students

Preparing students for Applied Learning: Assessment of Mentor Training

Applied learning plays an integral role in social work education. From the beginning of the program, social work majors complete a required 30 hour applied learning in a school setting where they mentor children. In order to better prepare the social work and other majors for the learning opportunity, this semester a 2 hour mentor training (that is offered to community members who mentor in the Kankakee School District) was required at the start of the semester. This presentation compares the post applied learning feedback from last semester and this semester (preliminary) to determine the impact of the training on the students overall learning outcomes and general experience

Learning technology in Scottish higher education ‐ a survey of the views of senior managers, academic staff and ‘experts’

As part of an evaluation of the Scottish Learning Technology Dissemination Initiative (LTDI), a survey was conducted of the views of academic staff, members of computer‐assisted learning and staff development units, and senior managers in all Scottish higher education institutions (HEIs). Most respondents across all subject areas and types of institutions (including those who rated themselves as less experienced with use of C&IT in teaching than their colleagues) believed that learning technology (LT) had moderate to very high potential for improving the way in which students learn. Awareness of the various agencies which have been established to promote its use in HEIs was very high, with few staff being unaware of any of them. Senior staff largely agreed that the value of these approaches lay in the improvement or maintenance of quality rather than in creating efficiency gains. Whilst there was a mostly positive view of the value of learning technology there are still significant barriers to its uptake by staff, the most important being lack of time, infrastructure, software and training, plus a failure (perceived or actual) of institutions to value teaching. The rather pessimistic view of ‘experts’ of the willingness of their less committed colleagues to make use of learning technology contrasted with the generally positive responses obtained from a broad group of 1,000 academic staff on their awareness of and attitudes to it. An analysis of the SHEFC's Teaching Quality Assessment reports during 1992–6 revealed substantial variability between and within subject assessments as to whether specific comments were made about IT provision and its use in learning and teaching

“There Was More Out There than Our Street”: Exploring Summer Camp Programming as a Context to Foster Social Capital and Civic Engagement after Camp

The social capital and civic engagement literature indicate a similar concern: Americans today are less connected to their communities than in the recent past. The purpose of this study was to explore intentional summer camp programming as a possible avenue to engendering social capital and civic engagement in campers\u27 home communities. Eight campers and their parents were interviewed at least three months after the campers participated in a structured camp program designed to increase campers\u27 civic engagement and social capital. Campers experienced post-camp gains in their motivation for civic engagement and their bonding and bridging social networks; however, not all of these gains were sustained after the camp experience. Further, the camp program displayed some of the features recommended in the civic engagement and social capital literatures for contexts wishing to foster those outcomes. Practice implications and future research directions are explored

Married women´s labor force participation in developing counties: The case of México

This study investigates the effect of cultural and structural features of Mexico on women's labor force determination. Our findings show that the major factors influencing married women's participation in the formal sector in Mexico are similar to those affecting married women's participation in industrialized countries. However, the study indicates that factors driving the decision Mexican women to work in the informal sector may be different from those driving decisions to work in the formal sector. An important result is that the reservation wage for married women appears to be higher in Mexico than in more industrialized countries.