Counsellors' perceptions of their role in working with people who are HIV positive or have aids

A critical review of the literature shows little evidence of the benefits of counselling for people infected with the HTV virus and rigorous follow-up studies are generally lacking. Authors reviewed in the literature urge the need for training in counselling. However, whether counseling training is a necessity in the context of HFV/AIDS is debatable as no evidence has yet suggested that trained counsellors are more effective than untrained ones. Therefore, it is necessary to know-how counsellors perceive their role in relation to people with HTV/AIDS. It is also essential to know what skills and training they regard as necessary for working with this group of clients. This thesis reports the results of two separate studies. Twelve questionnaires were returned and 3 interviews were conducted in the preliminary study among a small sample of people responsible for counselling women with HTV/AIDS. The results demonstrated that most counselling for this group of clients was not carried out by trained counsellors. It was concluded that counselling was not a central response to those clients. Acknowledgement of the limitations of this preliminary’ study led to the main study which was conducted among experienced and student counsellors on the perceptions of their role in working with people with HTV/AIDS.A number of significant differences were found between the perceptions of 30 experienced counsellors and 46 students in the questionnaire survey of the main study. However, experienced counsellors did not appear to feel better prepared than students in working with people with HIV/AIDS. Inconsistent results were found which suggested no agreement about whether counselling for people with HIV/AIDS required different skills and training to counselling other groups of clients. Furthermore, inconsistency between responses to different questions suggested that although respondents acknowledged a role in reducing the spread of HIV infection, they had not adequately thought through the implications of this for their counselling practice. The implications for counsellor training and supervision were discussed

The Relationship between Secondary School Students’ Emotional Intelligence and Learning Motivation

In recent years, emotional intelligence has been highly regarded because of its ability to control emotions, develop talented potential, build high-quality relationships, and have leadership skills. Learning motivation is the motivation of achievement in learning, a psychological need for individuals to pursue success, and also one of the main factors affecting learning achievement. Both of them are very important to young adults. However, rare studies discuss the correlation between middle school students’ emotional intelligence and learning motivation. The purposes of this study were to explore the relationships between secondary school students’ emotional intelligence and learning motivation. Participants were 877 secondary school students selected from central Taiwan. A questionnaire was applied to collect data. Data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics, Pearson’s product-moment correlation, and multiple regression analysis. The findings of this study were as follows: First, the students’ perception of the current situations of emotional intelligence and learning motivation were above a moderate level. Second, there was a positive correlation between emotional intelligence and learning motivation. Third, emotional intelligence could predict learning motivation and the level of self-motivation was the best predictor. Conclusion and discussion were also included in this study. Keywords: Secondary school student, Emotional intelligence, Learning motivation DOI: 10.7176/JEP/12-5-02 Publication date: February 28th 202

Does unemployment have asymmetric effects on suicide rates? Evidence from the United States: 1928–2013

This study applied the recently developed asymmetric causality test and asymmetric generalised impulse-response method to demonstrate the dynamic relationship between unemployment and suicide rates in the U.S. over the period of 1928–2013. The results suggest that there exist asymmetric effects of unemployment on suicide rates. An economic recession (in terms of an increase in unemployment rate) is more likely to increase the suicide rate among an old age group (55–64 years old) than among other age groups, while an economic expansion (in terms of a decrease in unemployment rate) is more likely to reduce the suicide rate of young (15–24 and 25–34 years old) and middle age groups (35–44 and 45– 54 years old) than their counterpart. Therefore, policy implications generated from our results include the following: that intervention to prevent suicidal behaviour should be directed more towards the older age group during economic recession and that we may expect that an economic expansion may not result in a great reduction of suicide rates for the old age (55–64 years) group