Crying in Psychotherapy: The Perspective of Therapists and Clients

Eighteen U.S.-based doctoral students in counseling or clinical psychology were interviewed by phone regarding experiences of crying in therapy. Specifically, they described crying as therapists with their clients, as clients with their therapists, and experiences when their therapists cried in the participants’ therapy. Data were analyzed using consensual qualitative research. When crying with their clients, therapists expressed concern about the appropriateness/impact of crying, cried only briefly and because they felt an empathic connection with their clients, thought that the crying strengthened the relationship, discussed the event with their supervisor, and wished they had discussed the event more fully with clients. Crying as clients was triggered by discussing distressing personal events, was accompanied by a mixture of emotions regarding the tears, consisted of substantial crying to express pain or sadness, and led to multiple benefits (enhanced therapy relationship, deeper therapy, and insight). When their therapists cried, the crying was brief, was triggered by discussions of termination, arose from therapists’ empathic connection with participants, and strengthened the therapy relationship. Implications for research, training, and practice are presented

Is Acropora Palmata recovering? A case study in Los Roques National Park, Venezuela

Eight years ago (2007), the distribution and status of Acropora palmata was quantified throughout Los Roques archipelago in Venezuela. The aim was to produce a baseline study for this species which combined population genetics with demographic data. The results highlighted that A. palmata had the potential to recover in at least 6 out of 10 sites surveyed. Recovery potential was assumed to be high at sites with a relatively high abundance of the coral, low disease prevalence, high genetic diversity, and high rates of sexual reproduction. However, as noted, Zubillaga et al. (2008) realized recovery was still strongly dependent on local and regional stressors. In 2014 (this study), the status of A. palmata was re-evaluated at Los Roques. We increased the number of sites from 10 in the original baseline study to 106. This allowed us to assess the population status throughout the entirety of the MPA. Furthermore, we also identified local threats that may have hindered population recovery. Here, we show that A. palmata now has a relatively restricted distribution throughout the park, only occurring in 15% of the sites surveyed. Large stands of old dead colonies were common throughout the archipelago; a result which demonstrates that this species has lost almost 50% of its original distribution over the past decades. The majority of corals recorded were large adults (∼2 m height), suggesting that these older colonies might be less susceptible or more resilient to local and global threats. However, 45% of these surviving colonies showed evidence of partial mortality and degradation of living tissues. Interestingly, the greatest increase in partial mortality occurred at sites with the lowest levels of protection (${X}_{o}^{2}=5.4> {X}_{c}^{2}=4.5$; df = 4, p {X}_{\mathrm{cri}}^{2}=1 5.5$; df = 8; p < 0.05) in the density of A. palmata in sites that had previously been categorized as having a high potential for recovery. One explanation for this continued decline may be due to the fact that over the past 10 years, two massive bleaching events have occurred throughout the Caribbean with records showing that Los Roques has experienced unprecedented declines in overall coral cover. We therefore conclude that although local protection could promote recovery, the impacts from global threats such as ocean warming may hamper the recovery of this threatened species

Climate warming, marine protected areas and the ocean-scale integrity of coral reef ecosystems

Coral reefs have emerged as one of the ecosystems most vulnerable to climate variation and change. While the contribution of a warming climate to the loss of live coral cover has been well documented across large spatial and temporal scales, the associated effects on fish have not. Here, we respond to recent and repeated calls to assess the importance of local management in conserving coral reefs in the context of global climate change. Such information is important, as coral reef fish assemblages are the most species dense vertebrate communities on earth, contributing critical ecosystem functions and providing crucial ecosystem services to human societies in tropical countries. Our assessment of the impacts of the 1998 mass bleaching event on coral cover, reef structural complexity, and reef associated fishes spans 7 countries, 66 sites and 26 degrees of latitude in the Indian Ocean. Using Bayesian meta-analysis we show that changes in the size structure, diversity and trophic composition of the reef fish community have followed coral declines. Although the ocean scale integrity of these coral reef ecosystems has been lost, it is positive to see the effects are spatially variable at multiple scales, with impacts and vulnerability affected by geography but not management regime. Existing no-take marine protected areas still support high biomass of fish, however they had no positive affect on the ecosystem response to large-scale disturbance. This suggests a need for future conservation and management efforts to identify and protect regional refugia, which should be integrated into existing management frameworks and combined with policies to improve system-wide resilience to climate variation and change

Disturbance and the Dynamics of Coral Cover on the Great Barrier Reef (1995–2009)

Coral reef ecosystems worldwide are under pressure from chronic and acute stressors that threaten their continued existence. Most obvious among changes to reefs is loss of hard coral cover, but a precise multi-scale estimate of coral cover dynamics for the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is currently lacking. Monitoring data collected annually from fixed sites at 47 reefs across 1300 km of the GBR indicate that overall regional coral cover was stable (averaging 29% and ranging from 23% to 33% cover across years) with no net decline between 1995 and 2009. Subregional trends (10–100 km) in hard coral were diverse with some being very dynamic and others changing little. Coral cover increased in six subregions and decreased in seven subregions. Persistent decline of corals occurred in one subregion for hard coral and Acroporidae and in four subregions in non-Acroporidae families. Change in Acroporidae accounted for 68% of change in hard coral. Crown-of-thorns starfish (Acanthaster planci) outbreaks and storm damage were responsible for more coral loss during this period than either bleaching or disease despite two mass bleaching events and an increase in the incidence of coral disease. While the limited data for the GBR prior to the 1980's suggests that coral cover was higher than in our survey, we found no evidence of consistent, system-wide decline in coral cover since 1995. Instead, fluctuations in coral cover at subregional scales (10–100 km), driven mostly by changes in fast-growing Acroporidae, occurred as a result of localized disturbance events and subsequent recovery

27 years of benthic and coral community dynamics on turbid, highly urbanised reefs off Singapore

Coral cover on reefs is declining globally due to coastal development, overfishing and climate change. Reefs isolated from direct human influence can recover from natural acute disturbances, but little is known about long term recovery of reefs experiencing chronic human disturbances. Here we investigate responses to acute bleaching disturbances on turbid reefs off Singapore, at two depths over a period of 27 years. Coral cover declined and there were marked changes in coral and benthic community structure during the first decade of monitoring at both depths. At shallower reef crest sites (3–4 m), benthic community structure recovered towards pre-disturbance states within a decade. In contrast, there was a net decline in coral cover and continuing shifts in community structure at deeper reef slope sites (6–7 m). There was no evidence of phase shifts to macroalgal dominance but coral habitats at deeper sites were replaced by unstable substrata such as fine sediments and rubble. The persistence of coral dominance at chronically disturbed shallow sites is likely due to an abundance of coral taxa which are tolerant to environmental stress. In addition, high turbidity may interact antagonistically with other disturbances to reduce the impact of thermal stress and limit macroalgal growth rates

Empirical Models of Transitions between Coral Reef States: Effects of Region, Protection, and Environmental Change

There has been substantial recent change in coral reef communities. To date, most analyses have focussed on static patterns or changes in single variables such as coral cover. However, little is known about how community-level changes occur at large spatial scales. Here, we develop Markov models of annual changes in coral and macroalgal cover in the Caribbean and Great Barrier Reef (GBR) regions

The α1-adrenergic receptors: diversity of signaling networks and regulation

The α1-adrenergic receptor (AR) subtypes (α1a, α1b, and α1d) mediate several physiological effects of epinephrineand norepinephrine. Despite several studies in recombinant systems and insightfrom genetically modified mice, our understanding of the physiological relevance and specificity of the α1-AR subtypes is still limited. Constitutive activity and receptor oligomerization have emerged as potential features regulating receptor function. Another recent paradigm is that βarrestins and G protein-coupled receptors themselves can act as scaffolds binding a variety of proteins and this can result in growing complexity of the receptor-mediated cellular effects. The aim of this review is to summarize our current knowledge on some recently identified functional paradigms and signaling networks that might help to elucidate the functional diversity of the α1-AR subtypes in various organs

Predicting Coral Species Richness: The Effect of Input Variables, Diversity and Scale

Coral reefs are facing a biodiversity crisis due to increasing human impacts, consequently, one third of reef-building corals have an elevated risk of extinction. Logistic challenges prevent broad-scale species-level monitoring of hard corals; hence it has become critical that effective proxy indicators of species richness are established. This study tests how accurately three potential proxy indicators (generic richness on belt transects, generic richness on point-intercept transects and percent live hard coral cover on point-intercept transects) predict coral species richness at three different locations and two analytical scales. Generic richness (measured on a belt transect) was found to be the most effective predictor variable, with significant positive linear relationships across locations and scales. Percent live hard coral cover consistently performed poorly as anindicator of coral species richness. This study advances the practical framework for optimizing coral reef monitoring programs and empirically demonstrates that generic richness offers an effective way to predict coral species richness with a moderate level of precision. While the accuracy of species richness estimates will decrease in communities dominated byspecies-rich genera (e.g. Acropora), generic richness provides a useful measure of phylogenetic diversity and incorporating this metric into monitoring programs will increase the likelihood that changes in coral species diversity can be detected