How can Respectfulness in Medical Professionals be Increased? A Complex but Important Question.

Respectfulness is demanded of doctors and predicts more positive patient health-related outcomes but research is scarce on ways to promote it. This study explores two ways to conceptualize unconditional respect from medical students, defined as respect paid to people on the basis of their humanity, in order to inform strategies to increase it. Unconditional respect conceptualized as an attitude suggests that unconditional respect and conditional respect are additive, whereas unconditional respect conceptualized as a personality trait suggests that people who are high on unconditional respect afford equal respect to all humans regardless of their merits. One-hundred and eighty one medical students completed an unconditional respect measure then read a description of a respect-worthy or a non-respect-worthy man and indicated their respect towards him. The study found a main effect for unconditional respect and a main effect for target respect-worthiness but no interaction between the two when respect paid to the target was assessed, supporting the attitude-based conceptualization. This suggests that unconditional respect can be increased through relevant interventions aimed at increasing the relative salience to doctors of the human worth of individuals. Interventions to increase unconditional respect are discussed

Cancer patients’ respect experiences in relation to perceived communication behaviours from hospital staff: analysis of the 2012-2013 National Cancer Patient Experience Survey

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.DOI 10.1007/s00520-015-2973-5Purpose: Respect experiences are poorly understood despite respect being central to professionalism in healthcare and patient well-being, and needed for optimal patient care. This study explores which patient-perceived communication behaviours from hospital staff contribute most to cancer patients’ respect experiences and account for variation in their experience by socio-demographic and clinical characteristics. Methods: Secondary analysis of data from the 2012-2013 National Cancer Patient Experience Survey of 45191 patients with a primary cancer diagnosis treated in English National Health Service trusts providing adult acute cancer services who provided data on experienced respect and dignity. Results: Both autonomy-supportive and caring/emotionally sensitive behaviours were associated with reported respect, although the latter showed stronger associations and accounted for most differences in reports of respect between patient groups. Differences in respect were found by gender, race/ethnicity, age, the presence of long-standing conditions, treatment response, time since first treated for cancer (p<.001), employment and type of cancer (p<.05). Conclusions: The study questions the tendency to conceptualise respect primarily in terms of autonomy-supportive behaviours and shows the relative contribution of autonomy-supportive and caring/emotionally sensitive behaviours in explaining disparities in respect experiences. More attention should be paid to affective communication behaviours from hospital staff to reduce disparities in respect experiences

Results of the COVID-19 mental health international for the general population (COMET-G) study.

INTRODUCTION: There are few published empirical data on the effects of COVID-19 on mental health, and until now, there is no large international study. MATERIAL AND METHODS: During the COVID-19 pandemic, an online questionnaire gathered data from 55,589 participants from 40 countries (64.85% females aged 35.80 ± 13.61; 34.05% males aged 34.90±13.29 and 1.10% other aged 31.64±13.15). Distress and probable depression were identified with the use of a previously developed cut-off and algorithm respectively. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS: Descriptive statistics were calculated. Chi-square tests, multiple forward stepwise linear regression analyses and Factorial Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) tested relations among variables. RESULTS: Probable depression was detected in 17.80% and distress in 16.71%. A significant percentage reported a deterioration in mental state, family dynamics and everyday lifestyle. Persons with a history of mental disorders had higher rates of current depression (31.82% vs. 13.07%). At least half of participants were accepting (at least to a moderate degree) a non-bizarre conspiracy. The highest Relative Risk (RR) to develop depression was associated with history of Bipolar disorder and self-harm/attempts (RR = 5.88). Suicidality was not increased in persons without a history of any mental disorder. Based on these results a model was developed. CONCLUSIONS: The final model revealed multiple vulnerabilities and an interplay leading from simple anxiety to probable depression and suicidality through distress. This could be of practical utility since many of these factors are modifiable. Future research and interventions should specifically focus on them

Holistic individualism in the age of aquarius: Measuring individualism/collectivism in new age, Catholic, and atheist/agnostic groups

The New Age has been reported to be an exemplary religion of modernity, that emphasizes the importance of autonomy and self-development. Attempts to establish whether New Age ideas and practices were oriented toward self-transcendence or if, instead, they reinforced secular individualistic values and behaviors have become a central point of debate among researchers. In order to bring some new light to this debate we compared New Age with Roman Catholic and atheist/agnostic participants on a battery of social-psychological measures, including values, self-concepts, and individualism/collectivism. Results indicate that New Age individuals adopt an individualist outlook similar to that of nonreligious people, but also define themselves using a set of abstract holistic self-concepts, show avoidance of competitive goals, and stress values of universalism. We call this pattern "holistic individualism" for its fusion of an individualistic value orientation with highly abstract holistic perceptions of the self. © 2008 Society for the Scientific Study of Religion

Respect for others and its effects on social relations.

Respect for people has often been considered a fundamental aspect of our dealings in the social world. One indication of its importance is the frequent demand for respect made by people in many aspects of our day to day interactions and in public life. In the studies proposed in this application we look at respect as a general attitude that ought to be engaged in all our dealings with people. This involves recognising a fundamental equality of people just because they are human beings, of recognising their physical and psychological integrity, taking them seriously and not "putting them down". We have developed a scale to measure differences between people on this general attitude. Our studies will relate individual differences in respect to interpersonal behaviour (for example, politeness); and to intergroup behaviour (for example, derogating the other group). We will also look at the factors underlying respect for our political opponents, which is a vital party of the viability of a democracy