Factors Facilitating Constructive Coping with Stress

This review focuses on coping with stress, with particular emphasis on mechanisms facilitating constructive coping with stress. An important area of contemporary research is the attempt to identify factors that make it possible to stay mentally healthy or preventing the weakening of the cognitive and social functioning. The currently prevailing approach to stress is the relational approach. According to this approach, the criterion for the occurrence of stress is the cognitive assessment of the situation made by an individual. This review presents the most recent proposals concerning the analysis of specific methods of coping with stress, in particular from the perspective of their adaptiveness. Particular attention is paid to meaningfocused coping. We also discuss the presence of positive emotions in difficult situations. Positive emotions may play many adaptive functions especially in long-term stress situations: they make it possible to rebuild physical, intellectual and social resources, and they also extend the scope of attention and action. Positive emotions may also, to a certain extent, mitigate psychological and physiological consequences of stressful events. Finally we discuss the main directions of research related to factors determining well-being and sample experiments aimed at intensifying the feeling of happiness

The Role of Stress in Assessing Life Satisfaction and Self-Efficacy Among Prison Officers

Stress is a major public health concern. It can be observed in all aspects of life, in everyday family life and work life. The focus of this article is work-related stress. Work stress can be observed in any work environment and in all professions. As a complex condition it affects different people in different ways. The study presented in this article was done on a sample of 59 prison officers who volunteered to participate. Among those 59 participants 34 were males and 25 were females aged between 25 to 52. Each participant received a survey to collect general information about the person and included three questionnaires: The Questionnaire of Stress in the Prison Service (KSSW), Generalized Self-Efficacy Scale (GSES), and Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS). The questionnaire took approximately 45 minutes. Results turned out to be rather surprising. Findings showedthat job stress of prison officers is not significantly correlated with the amount of time they spend among prisoners. The results also showed that being married or having a partner is not a protective factor against job stress for that sample. Results also showed that negative significant correlation between job stress and life satisfaction and job stress and self-efficacy were only found for particular subscales of KSSW not for the overall levels of stress.Further analysis of the results suggests that the very core of prison officers’ job is the most stressful factor. This is an interesting finding that may be a basis for further research for specific stressors and coping strategies that may help the officers

Identifying the Common Elements of Early Childhood Interventions Supporting Cognitive Development in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

Psychosocial interventions for infants and young children in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) have great potential, but there is a large and diverse range of techniques and procedures used within them, which poses challenges to evaluating and adapting them for scale-up. Our objective was to review psychosocial interventions conducted in LMICs to improve young children’s cognitive outcomes, and identify common techniques used across effective interventions. We systematically searched for relevant reviews using academic databases (PsycINFO, Web of Science, PubMed) and subject-specific databases (EPPI Centre, WHO Global Health Library, UNICEF Publications Database) for publications dated up to March 2021. Reviews of psychosocial interventions aimed at parents and children in LMICs, measuring child cognitive outcomes, were eligible. Study selection was performed in duplicate. Review characteristics and effectiveness data were extracted, with a proportion checked by a second reviewer. AMSTAR2 was applied to assess review strength. The PracticeWise coding system was used to distil practice elements from effective interventions. We included ten systematic reviews demonstrating evidence of effectiveness. Comprehensive interventions of higher intensity and longer duration yielded better results. From these reviews, 28 effective interventions were identified; their protocols and/or linked publications were coded for common practice elements. Six elements occurred in ≥ 75% of protocols: attachment building, play/pretend, psychoeducation, responsive care, talking to baby, and toys use. Interventions and reviews were highly heterogenous, limiting generalizability. LMIC-based psychosocial interventions can be effective in improving children’s cognitive development. Identifying common practice elements of effective interventions can inform future development and implementation of ECD programs in LMICs

Children with Asthma: What About the Quality of Life of Their Parents?

An increased frequency of asthma in children has been lately observed. The course of asthma depends not only on treatment. but also on the actions taken by the parents of a sick child. Design: A non-experimental cross-sectional design. Methods: In this study the Pediatric Asthma Quality of Life Questionnaire (PACQLQ) and Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) were administered to 60 parents of children with :asthma. Two groups of parents were compared. The first group consisted of parents of children who had been diagnosed with asthma less than three months before the beginning of the study. The second group consisted of parents of children who had been diagnosed at least one year previously. Results: It was observed that. in the group of parents aged 20-30 years, the level of life satisfaction was significantly higher for parents of children who had suffered from asthma for at least one year than for the parents of children recently diagnosed with asthma. There were no statistically significant differences in the other age groups. There was a positive correlation between the level of satisfaction with life and emotional functioning in the parents of children diagnosed recently. Conclusions: The results of the present study point to a general ability of parents to adapt to the situation of having an ill child. This may be related to the relative ease of access to information that enables parents to understand more about the condition

Quality of Life of Parents of Children with Asthma

An increased frequency of asthma in children has been lately observed. The course of asthma depends not only on treatment, but also on the actions taken by the parents of a sick child. Design: A non-experimental cross-sectional design. Methods: In this study the Pediatric Asthma Quality of Life Questionnaire (PACQLQ) and Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) were administered to 60 parents of children with asthma. Two groups of parents were compared. The first group consisted of parents of children who had been diagnosed with asthma less than three months before the beginning of the study. The second group consisted of parents of children who had been diagnosed at least one year previously. Results: It was observed that, in the group of parents aged 20-30 years, the level of life satisfaction was significantly higher for parents of children who had suffered from asthma for at least one year than for the parents of children recently diagnosed with asthma. There were no statistically significant differences in the other age groups. There was a positive correlation between the level of satisfaction with life and emotional functioning in the parents of children diagnosed recently. Conclusions: The results of the present study point to a general ability of parents to adapt to the situation of having an ill child. This may be related to the relative ease of access to information that enables parents to understand more about the condition

Interaction dependence of composite fermion effective masses

We estimate the composite fermion effective mass for a general two particle potential r^{-\alpha} using exact diagonalization for polarized electrons in the lowest Landau level on a sphere. Our data for the ground state energy at filling fraction \nu=1/2 as well as estimates of the excitation gap at \nu=1/3, 2/5 and 3/7 show that m_eff \sim \alpha^{-1}.Comment: 4 pages, RevTeX, 5 figure