The Impact Of Psychological Characteristics On The Effectiveness Of Motivational Interviewing Based Psychological Counseling

It is well known that in order to control the morbidity and mortality of cardiovascular disease patients, their lifestyle should be taken into account (American Heart Association, 2012; Klumbiene et al., 2002). Studies of various disease patients’ manners (Knight et al., 2006; Thompson et al., 2011) confirm that motivational interviewing (Miller & Rollnick, 2013) is an effective method for changing unhealthy behavior. Nevertheless, our practical experience of motivational interviewing based psychological counseling with rehabilitation hospitals’ cardiac patients’ (Sinkariova et al., 2015) revealed noteworthy observations about some participants lack of motivation to change unhealthy behavior. This observation encouraged us to start a study with the aim to find out if cardiac rehabilitation participants’ personality traits and emotional state are related to the effectiveness of motivational interviewing based psychological counseling. The study used a quasi-experiment where cardiac rehabilitation patients were assigned to control (regular rehabilitation, n=55) or experimental (rehabilitation plus motivational interviewing based psychological counseling intervention, n=64) groups. A total of 119 participants (male=83, female=36, M age=60.47, SD=8.762) attended a survey, which included NEO-FFI, HADs, and “Readiness to change questionnaire” at the beginning and end of cardiac rehabilitation. Nonparametric data analysis showed that patients’ personality traits are not related to the effectiveness of motivational interviewing based counseling, whereas depression is positively related to the effectiveness of intervention to change alcohol consumption. Conclusions/Implications: Depression as an expression of emotional state is an important feature for the effectiveness of motivational interviewing based counseling to change cardiac patients’ alcohol consumption. Further understanding of relationships between psychological characteristics and the effectiveness of intervention could help to improve cardiac diseases prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation

Do Green Spaces Matter? the Associations between Parenting Stress, Child Mental Health Problems and Green Spaces

AbstractParenting stress is among the contextual factors that have been subject to vigorous research in terms of its effect on parenting behaviors and on child development. There is convincing evidence linking parenting stress related to reports of child behavioral and emotional problems, adjustment difficulties, and internalizing or externalizing problems (Abidin, 1995; Berllinger, 1994; Haskett et al., 2006; Bayer et al., 2006; Costa et al., 2006; Ashfort et al., 2008; Crnic et al., 2005). On the other hand, green spaces are associated with better child mental health (Strife et al., 2009; Louv, 2005). The purpose of this study was to examine the associations between parenting stress, children mental health and green spaces. Methods. Data were obtained from Kaunas cohort study (Kaunas KANC, Lithuania). Distance to natural water pond and green spaces was based on spatial land cover data sets for Kaunas city which were obtained from the municipality and were processed using ArcGIS 10 software. 645 women filled in Simplified version of Parenting Stress index – short form (S – PSI/SF, Abidin, 1995; Yeh et al., 2001), Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire Lithuanian version (SDQ, Gintilienė et al., 2004). We used regression analysis to examine a model of these associations. Findings and Results. The linear regression analysis showed that parenting stress was significantly predicted by the distance to natural water pond, child mental health problems, and child physical health. The best model of associations was when all predictors were included. However, the distance to green spaces was not a significant predictor. Conclusions and recommendations. We conclude that not only child mental health problems or physical health matter in predicting parenting stress, but the distance to natural water pond such as river is important factor too. Our recommendation is in other research to take a deeper look in these associations

Impact of residential greenness on preschool children's emotional and behavioral problems

This study investigated the effects of the proximity to city parks and the influence of residential greenness on children’s emotional and behavioral problems. This cross-sectional study included 1,468 mothers of children (ages 4 to 6) who were residents of the city of Kaunas, Lithuania. The mothers and their children were enrolled in the FP7 PHENOTYPE project study. The mothers reported on their parenting stress and their children’s mental health. Residential greenness was characterized as an average of the satellite-derived normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) in a 300 m buffer around each home address, and the proximity to city parks was defined as the distance from the subject’s residence to the nearest park. Linear regression models were used to investigate the association among the residence distances from city parks, greenness and children’s mental health problems. Farther residential distance from city parks was associated with worse mental health (except for the emotional problems subscale) in children whose mothers had a lower education level. More residential greenness was associated with worse mental health (more conditional problems and less prosocial behavior) in children whose mothers had a higher education level. These relationships have important implications for the prevention of emotional and behavioral problems in children