Feeling Beyond Words: Exploring the Relationship between Mothers with Eating Disorders and their Toddlers

Literature on mothers with an eating disorder diagnosis has focused almost exclusively on identification of deficits, for both the mother and the infant. This literature suggests that, from conception through to the postnatal period, a mother with an eating disorder may experience challenges. These may be difficulty conceiving or problems with mood and eating disorder behaviours, both in the pre- and post-natal period. However, few studies provide a context in which to understand the challenges identified for mothers and their infants. This study aimed to counter this by exploring the intersubjective experience of the relationship between mothers with eating disorders and their toddlers. This qualitative psychosocial study conducted three in-depth case studies with mothers with eating disorders and their toddlers. Using psychoanalytic research methods, two infant observations and one free association narrative interview were analysed and interpreted against the backdrop of a robust supervision structure. The case study findings suggest that each mothers’ eating disorder can be understood as a response to relational isolation early in life. Despite these difficulties, each mother found ways to cope with motherhood, and to maintain a ‘good enough’ relationship with their toddlers. Specific aspects of parenting appeared difficult for mothers. These related to underlying difficulties manifested in their eating disorder presentation, and were often seen in interactions around food. These findings have clear clinical implications to rethink training for health professionals as well as supporting the benefits of taking a holistic and inclusive family focused approach to interventions for the treatment of eating disorders

Self-Reported Personal Problems of Adventist Academy Students

Problem. Adolescence is a time fraught with many challenges. There are no current studies prior to this one for Adventist academy students concerning the whole range of their personal problems. Method. A survey of students in 14 Adventist academies was conducted in the regular classroom setting using the Personal Problems Checklist for Adolescents (PPC-A). The data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Data were tested with one-way, two-way, and, three-way ANOVA and correlation coefficients to determine differences between males and females, age groups 13/14 to 18/19, and in three different settings of day, boarding, and self-supporting Adventist academies. Results. Among the top 10 problems of Adventist academy students were: poor study habits, worry about future job or college, not enough money, not enough exercise, tired and having no energy, no time to relax, poor sleeping habits, bored in school, having trouble concentrating, and being shy. There were differences found among the three types of academies and between male and female students and among age groups. Self-supporting academies had more frequent problems reported; females reported an average of eight more problems than males and the tendency was for problems to increase by age, with 18-year-olds experiencing greater problems. All 13 scales of problems on the PPC-A were significantly correlated. Highest correlations were between emotions and social, emotions and parent, emotions and school, emotions and health, emotions and religion, and emotions and crisis problems. Conclusions. Adventist academy students are in need of intervention, particularly for emotional problems and lack of balance between physical, mental, emotional, and social aspects of their education. Many students are experiencing crisis and are in need of help to know how to cope better with critical life events they are facing

Crossing the ‘threshold of risk’: a study of local secure accommodation decision making in Scotland.

Secure accommodation is locked residential child care for children, usually under the age of 16, who may represent a risk to themselves and/ or others. This thesis examines the findings of a study into decision making processes which determine the provision and legitimacy of secure accommodation for young people in one local authority area in Scotland. The thesis begins by investigating the legislative and policy context, arguing that policy confusion in this area means secure accommodation is likely to face an uncertain future. It goes on to provide an overview of relevant research and contends that there is a need to better understand the processes and factors influencing local decision making. The case study methodology employed is explicated which included the use of interviews, questionnaires, observations, and focus groups in order to gain the perspectives of managers, social workers, children’s panel members, residential workers and young people. The thesis explores the range of factors which were found to influence local decision makers including: their role in the decision making system and the operation of that system; their use of legislation and guidance; their subjective understanding of risk and risk assessment; their personal and collective ‘thresholds of risk’ which were linked to ideas about gender, age and vulnerability; the quality of ‘evidence’ about risks and needs which was influenced by who and how this ‘evidence’ of risk was presented; available resources and perceptions about the suitability of those resources to meet the needs of particular young people and the resident group already in secure placement. Participant conceptualisations of risk are analysed. In contrast to adult decision makers, this thesis demonstrates that young people often understand their own ‘risky’ behaviour as an attempt to communicate with social work systems within which they feel disempowered. The thesis concludes by making a number of recommendations for improvements to decision making policy and practice, including the need for greater transparency in relation to decision making systems and processes and more opportunities for service user participation at every level of local decision making

Psychological well-being in young women working in the promotional marketing industry: the role of body image factors

For young women working in some industries their judged physical attractiveness is directly related to their employment. This study investigated the role of objective physical status, societal influences on body image, and self-appraisals of personal appearance in determining the psychological well-being of young women employed in the promotional industry. Participants were 132 women (mean age = 22 years) with a Body Mass Index in healthy or underweight categories. Both depression and global self-esteem scores were in the normal range. The group reported high levels of stress and self-liking but low levels of anxiety and self-competence. The body image factors significantly predicted variance in anxiety, stress, self-competence, and self-liking. Appearance Evaluation and Appearance Orientation scores were the strongest predictors of psychological well-being. These results suggest that while social comparison can result in self-enhancement effects for those who have achieved the thin-ideal, maintaining such a physique results in ongoing stress and pressure

Do Potential Fields Develop Current Sheets Under Simple Compression or Expansion?

The recent demonstration of current singularity formation by Low et al. assumes that potential fields will remain potential under simple expansion or compression (Low 2006, 2007; Janse & Low 2009). An explicit counterexample to their key assumption is constructed. Our findings suggest that their results may need to be reconsidered.Comment: Submitted to AP

Shifts in microbial communities in soil, rhizosphere and roots of two major crop systems under elevated CO2 and O3

Rising atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and O3 are key features of global environmental change. To investigate changes in the belowground bacterial community composition in response to elevated CO2 and O3 (eCO2 and eO3) the endosphere, rhizosphere and soil were sampled from soybeans under eCO2 and maize under eO3. The maize rhizosphere and endosphere α-diversity was higher than soybean, which may be due to a high relative abundance of Rhizobiales. Only the rhizosphere microbiome composition of the soybeans changed in response to eCO2, associated with an increased abundance of nitrogen fixing microbes. In maize, the microbiome composition was altered by the genotype and linked to differences in root exudate profiles. The eO3 treatment did not change the microbial communities in the rhizosphere, but altered the soil communities where hybrid maize was grown. In contrast to previous studies that focused exclusively on the soil, this study provides new insights into the effects of plant root exudates on the composition of the belowground microbiome in response to changing atmospheric conditions. Our results demonstrate that plant species and plant genotype were key factors driving the changes in the belowground bacterial community composition in agroecosystems that experience rising levels of atmospheric CO2 and O3

A low-cost solution for documenting distribution and abundance of endangered marine fauna and impacts from fisheries

Fisheries bycatch is a widespread and serious issue that leads to declines of many important and threatened marine species. However, documenting the distribution, abundance, population trends and threats to sparse populations of marine species is often beyond the capacity of developing countries because such work is complex, time consuming and often extremely expensive. We have developed a flexible tool to document spatial distribution and population trends for dugongs and other marine species in the form of an interview questionnaire supported by a structured data upload sheet and a comprehensive project manual. Recognising the effort invested in getting interviewers to remote locations, the questionnaire is comprehensive, but low cost. The questionnaire has already been deployed in 18 countries across the Indo-Pacific region. Project teams spent an average of USD 5,000 per country and obtained large data sets on dugong distribution, trends, catch and bycatch, and threat overlaps. Findings indicated that >50% of respondents had never seen dugongs and that 20% had seen a single dugong in their lifetimes despite living and fishing in areas of known or suspected dugong habitat, suggesting that dugongs occurred in low numbers. Only 3% of respondents had seen mother and calf pairs, indicative of low reproductive output. Dugong hunting was still common in several countries. Gillnets and hook and line were the most common fishing gears, with the greatest mortality caused by gillnets. The questionnaire has also been used to study manatees in the Caribbean, coastal cetaceans along the eastern Gulf of Thailand and western Peninsular Malaysia, and river dolphins in Peru. This questionnaire is a powerful tool for studying distribution and relative abundance for marine species and fishery pressures, and determining potential conservation hotspot areas. We provide the questionnaire and supporting documents for open-access use by the scientific and conservation communities

Microbial Community Field Surveys Reveal Abundant Pseudomonas Population in Sorghum Rhizosphere Composed of Many Closely Related Phylotypes

While the root-associated microbiome is typically less diverse than the surrounding soil due to both plant selection and microbial competition for plant derived resources, it typically retains considerable complexity, harboring many hundreds of distinct bacterial species. Here, we report a time-dependent deviation from this trend in the rhizospheres of field grown sorghum. In this study, 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing was used to determine the impact of nitrogen fertilization on the development of the root-associated microbiomes of 10 sorghum genotypes grown in eastern Nebraska. We observed that early rhizosphere samples exhibit a significant reduction in overall diversity due to a high abundance of the bacterial genus Pseudomonas that occurred independent of host genotype in both high and low nitrogen fields and was not observed in the surrounding soil or associated root endosphere samples. When clustered at 97% identity, nearly all the Pseudomonas reads in this dataset were assigned to a single operational taxonomic unit (OTU); however, exact sequence variant (ESV)-level resolution demonstrated that this population comprised a large number of distinct Pseudomonas lineages. Furthermore, single-molecule long-read sequencing enabled high-resolution taxonomic profiling revealing further heterogeneity in the Pseudomonas lineages that was further confirmed using shotgun metagenomic sequencing. Finally, field soil enriched with specific carbon compounds recapitulated the increase in Pseudomonas, suggesting a possible connection between the enrichment of these Pseudomonas species and a plant-driven exudate profile