POSITIVITY AND POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER (PTSD) IN COVID-19 SURVIVORS: MEDIATING ROLE OF RUMINATION AND FEAR OF COVID-19

Background: COVID-19 pandemic, which still continues to affect the whole world, has led to an increase in PTSD symptoms in societies, especially individuals who have been diagnosed with the disease and recovered are at significant risk for PTSD have been reported. Although it has been observed that PTSD symptoms of individuals who were infected in the past epidemics such as SARS and Ebola continued for a long time even after the epidemic, it is noteworthy that the studies conducted during the COVID-19 process do not focus enough on people who survived the COVID-19 disease. The purpose of this study is to determine the direct and indirect impact of positivity on PTSD symptoms of individuals who have recovered from COVID-19 and the role of rumination and fear of COVID-19 as potential mediators in this effect. Subjects and methods: In the study, the Impact of Event Scale-Revised, Ruminative Response Scale, Positivity Scale, and Fear of COVID-19 Scale were applied to 551 Turkish participants, who survived the COVID-19 disease. SEM-based mediation analysis was used to test hypothesized relationships. Results: Mediating roles of fear of COVID-19 and rumination between positivity and PTSD were tested. Results indicated that rumination and fear of COVID-19 had a full mediating role in the relationship between positivity and PTSD. Conclusion: These findings pointed out that positivity might be an indirect protective disposition against COVID-19-related PTSD and might reduce risk factors associated with PTSD among COVID-19 survivors. Mental health practices for COVID-19 patients should aim to increase positive thinking, since they have ruminative thoughts about transmission of the virus and hospitalization process and these thoughts may lead to negative mental health conditions. In this sense, positive psychology-focused implementations can be organized for COVID-19 patients and survivors

Forgiveness Interventions for Children and Adolescents: Systematic Review

Along with the increasing popularity of positive mental health understanding, the concept of forgiveness has attracted the attention of many researchers working within the field of psychology and mental health. Studies aiming to identify variables related to forgiveness have also increased. After determining that forgiveness is associated with psychological health, studies for enhancing positive attitudes toward forgiveness has gained importance. In the current study, the aim was to systematically review the studies examining the effectiveness of forgiveness group interventions for children and adolescents. In line with this aim, the keywords of "forgiveness intervention", "forgiveness group", "forgiveness therapy", "forgiveness education" and "forgiveness program" were searched in the databases of the Wiley Online Library, Taylor and Francis, Springer Link, Scopus, Science Direct, Sage Journals, EBSCOhost and TR Index in Turkish and English for 2010-2019. The resulting 529 articles from the literature search were evaluated according to the PRISMA guide and the selection criteria determined for this research. Among all the articles, the six that met the required criteria have been included in the research. The selected articles have been examined in terms of research method, research group, features of applied program, instrument used, and effectiveness of the applied program. According to results, all investigated interventions have been found effective to produce forgiveness. Besides this, the selected studies contributed to decreasing of anger, depression and anxiety; increasing of empathy, hope and life satisfaction. It was determined that the group interventions based on the forgiveness process model produced positive results. Consequently, the selected studies showed that forgiveness intervention for children and adolescents enhanced forgiveness and positively affected psychological health. In the light of the obtained results, it is suggested that, forgiveness group interventions for children and adolescents should be used in schools as a part of preventive and interventional psychological counseling services

The mediating role of solution focused thinking in relation between mindfulness and psychological well-being in university students

Psychological wellbeing is an important factor for university students in order to achieve their goals and reach their potentials while they are in a significant transition period. Being mindful and being solution-focused increases university students' psychological wellbeing. This study aims to examine the mediating role of solution-focused thinking in the relationship between mindfulness and psychological wellbeing of university students. Mindful Attention Awareness Scale, The Flourishing Scale, Solution-focused Inventory, and a demographic information questionnaire were used to collect data from 543 (356 female, 184 male, and 3 unanswered) undergraduate students at a state university in Turkey. The results showed that mindfulness (present moment attention and awareness) predicted psychological wellbeing, goal orientation and resource activation dimensions of solution-focused thinking positively and problem disengagement dimension of solution-focused thinking negatively. Similarly, psychological wellbeing was predicted by goal orientation and resource activation positively and problem disengagement negatively. The mediation analyses revealed that mindfulness affected psychological wellbeing indirectly through solution-focused thinking. This study starts a discussion about negative predictive roles of problem disengagement on psychological wellbeing. Thus, different predictive effects and mediating roles of solution-focused thinking's sub-dimensions were discussed