Leveraging Mindfulness to Build Resilience and Professional Quality of Life in Human Service Professionals

Objective: Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) have shown promise in cultivating resilience and are widely accepted as efficacious in the treatment of a range of psychological disorders. This paper explores the feasibility of a Mindful-Awareness and Resilience Skills Training (MARST) program to enhance mindfulness and resilience, as a means of increasing psychological well-being and alleviating burnout and compassion fatigue in human service professionals. Method: In this randomised control trial, 46 human service professionals were randomly allocated to either a MARST group or to a no intervention, control group. Results: Multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA), with pre-test scores as the covariates, revealed that the MARST intervention resulted in significant improvements in mindfulness, resilience, compassion satisfaction, and psychological well-being, and significant reductions in burnout and compassion fatigue; at post-intervention. These results were maintained at one month follow-up, with the exception of compassion satisfaction which was non-significant. Mediation analysis using a bootstrap resampling method indicated that mindfulness fully mediated changes in resilience and psychological well-being, as a result of the MARST intervention. Self-reported reductions in burnout following the intervention were mediated by mindfulness and resilience, and decreased compassion fatigue was mediated by resilience. Conclusions: The results of this study suggest that the MARST program may assist in developing resilience and ameliorating burnout and compassion fatigue in human service professionals. The study also provides evidence for the potential of mindfulness-based approaches to enhance resilience.</jats:p

PUNK ROCK'S IMPACT ON THE FALL OF COMMUNISM IN EAST GERMANY

The fall of the Berlin Wall in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany or GDR) on November 9, 1989, marked the symbolic end of the Cold War and the demise of communism in Europe. Although many would argue this was due to the triumphs of Western capitalism, the Eastern Bloc collapsed from the inside amid the cognitive dissonance of the oppressed lives of its citizens. Most notable among these were the youth of the punk rock subculture. Thus, this study aims to uncover the significant role that the East German punk movement, or Ostpunk, had on the collapse of the party-state. This study explores how a group of GDR youths who were dissatisfied with their government took to the streets with their music, fashion, and do-it-yourself attitude and contributed to change across Europe. This thesis examines the expectations of life under socialist rule, the punks’ resistance to the societal norms, and the party-state’s brutal methods used in an attempt to destroy the subculture. This study finds that the persistent protests of East German punks contributed to shaping the political environment that facilitated the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Relevant in the 2020s, the historical understanding of Ostpunk can inform the impacts that cultural movements, such as Black Lives Matter in the U.S. and the neo-Nazi movement in Europe, have on geopolitics.Lieutenant, United States NavyApproved for public release. Distribution is unlimited

Barriers to Prescribing Exercise in Clinical Practice to Treat Mild-to-Moderate Depression

The benefits of incorporating physical activity to moderate the effects of various chronic diseases have been well documented; however, some settings of clinical practice fail to utilize these benefits to treat conditions such as mild-to-moderate depression. To improve the integration of physical activity as a prescribing practice to treat depression, a better understanding of patient attitudes towards physical activity is needed. Various barriers exist when attempting to prescribe exercise for patients diagnosed with depression. Due to the symptoms of depression, patients often report various barriers and difficulty to engaging in exercise such as deficits in motivation, low energy levels and fear of injury. This scoping review will address these barriers to facilitate the development of effective exercise strategies, thereby increasing exercise adherence rates for patients looking to manage their mild-to-moderate depression without the use of pharmacotherapy; as the safety and efficacy of these drugs have been heavily debated when attempting to treat mild-to-moderate depression

Socio-Economic Mobility of Youths: Factors, Obstacles, and Potential Solutions

From early childhood to young adulthood, there are several key obstacles to the ability of a young person to improve his or her socioeconomic status. These include availability of quality early childhood education, level of peer support during adolescence, secondary school funding and quality, and skills development and job matching as a young adult. This article explores the dynamics of these critical obstacles, analyzes initiatives that are successfully helping young people overcome these obstacles around the world, and makes policy suggestions to create a society in which young people have strong opportunities to fulfill their potentials and advance socioeconomically. The article focuses on socioeconomic mobility of young people specifically in the United States, though it draws on examples of successful models from all over the globe.Andrew Leon Hanna completed this work in an independent study course under the supervision of Dr. Anirudh Krishna in 2013. A condensed version of the work has been accepted for publication in a journal of youth and adolescent development, and parts of the work have contributed to Andrew's honors thesis on "The Global Youth Unemployment Crisis.

AI-Enabled Smartphone-Based Intervention Mental Health Application for University Students

The novel COVID-19 outbreak has resulted in lockdowns and university campus closure which affected the mental health of university students negatively. This was reflected in mental disorders, with emotional, physical fitness, exercise, and studying are the most affected aspects during the pandemic. The design and development of a smartphone application is the objective of this paper. The app\u27s goal is to assist university students in improving their mental health and overall quality of life by answering a structured questionnaire at first then the app uses artificial intelligence for sentiment analysis of a user’s social interaction. Then the app connects the user with random peers who share similar mental sentiments to chat with and if there is no peer available, a chatbot is used. In case of significant loneliness, the app connects the user with caregivers, community volunteers, and health professionals

Compositional nanodomain formation in hybrid formate perovskites

We report the synthesis and structural characterisation of three mixed-metal formate perovskite families [C(NH$_2$)$_3$]M$_{1-x}$Cu$_x$(HCOO)$_3$ (M = Mn, Zn, Mg). Using a combination of infrared spectroscopy, non-negative matrix factorization, and reverse Monte Carlo refinement, we show that the Mn- and Zn-containing compounds support compositional nanodomains resembling the polar nanoregions of conventional relaxor ferroelectrics. The M = Mg family exhibits a miscibility gap that we suggest reflects the limiting behaviour of nanodomain formation.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure