Government-mandated warnings on cannabis legally sold for recreational use

Background: Frequent cannabis use can pose risks to health and safety. Multiple governments have legalized the sale of cannabis for recreational use and mandated health and safety warnings for recreational cannabis packages or signs at sales locations. The purposes of this study were to identify common themes across warnings and to compare the actual warnings with those previously recommended by cannabis experts and cannabis users.Methods: We searched Google and Google Scholar for online lists of governments that allow or will soon allow the sale of cannabis for recreational use. Using the online lists we found, we searched for laws mandating the warnings, using the search terms “mandated warnings for recreational use marijuana” in addition to the name of the jurisdiction under review. We evaluated the content of the warnings and compared them with warnings recommended by cannabis experts and by users of recreational cannabis.Results: Each search led to millions of results. Within the top results of each of the searches there were website links to official legislative websites, databases and documents of the jurisdiction under review. We used these official documents. The search revealed that 11 U.S. states and two countries allow the recreational use of cannabis and that 10 U.S. states and Canada mandate warnings on legally sold recreational cannabis. The mandated warnings can be categorized as focusing on one of nine risks: (1) negative health effects on the user, (2) harm to children or fetuses, (3) risks related to driving or operating machinery, (4) risks of habit formation leading to over-use, (5) risks relating to over-use on a single occasion, especially with regard to edible cannabis, (6) developmental risks for young people, (7) harm caused by secondary smoke, (8) risks of effects lasting several hours, and (9) risks specific to using cannabis topicals. The warnings include no graphic images and no phone number to call for help quitting.Conclusions: The warnings, as a group, parallel most warnings recommended by cannabis experts and a sample of recreational users of cannabis. The effects of the warnings are unknown, but prior research findings on warnings for cannabis and for other substances suggest potential for positive effects in raising awareness of risks and decreasing the risks. The warnings could be used in public health campaigns. Public health professionals may find it possible through research to help improve the warnings, either in presentation or in content. Cannabis researchers can use the list to identify additional risks suitable for inclusion in mandated warnings

Increasing Emotional Intelligence through Training: Current Status and Future Directions

Emotional intelligence consists of adaptive emotional functioning involving inter-related competencies relating to perception, understanding, utilising and managing emotions in the self and others. Researchers in diverse fields have studied emotional intelligence and found the construct to be associated with a variety of intrapersonal and interpersonal factors such as mental health, relationship satisfaction, and work performance. This article reviews research investigating the impact of training in emotional-intelligence skills. The results indicate that it is possible to increase emotional intelligence and that such training has the potential to lead to other positive outcomes. The paper offers suggestions about how future research, from diverse disciplines,can uncover what types of training most effectively increase emotional intelligence and produce related beneficial outcomes

Employee Health and Fitness Programs Within Educational Settings: An Examination of Job Satisfaction and Intent to Stay

Teachers are at the frontline of education and student learning; districts and schools are investigating innovated, yet cost-effective, ways to positively address organizational variables such as job satisfaction and immediate intent to stay. The implementation of employee health and fitness program could be a relatively simple way to not only address these issues but also positively impact the health and overall well-being of all employees. Even with the supporting research regarding employee health and fitness programs, gaps and contradictions still exist; future research is necessary in order to draw conclusions regarding program value and justification. The present study therefore sought to contribute to the knowledge base regarding the correlation between employee health and fitness programs and job satisfaction and intent to stay in the public school settings. A number of district level directors and school level principals from public school districts in the state of Colorado completed an electronic questionnaire regarding the existence of an employee health and fitness program, details about such a program, reasons for sponsoring or not sponsoring such a program and whether or not incentives are linked to such a program. Descriptive statistics and correlations were computed to test several hypotheses. In general, employees in districts and school sites that sponsor employee health and fitness programs seem to have higher job satisfaction than those who work in district and/or school sites that do not sponsor such programs. There was no correlation between a sponsored employee health and fitness program and immediate intent to stay in education. School districts that sponsor health and fitness programs seem to have higher job satisfaction than employees of school sites that sponsor health and fitness programs. School districts and school sites that sponsor employee health and fitness programs have found a valuable way to impact job satisfaction among their employees. These findings have important implications for school districts and school sites considering sponsoring and implementing a health and fitness program for their employees

Can psychological interventions increase optimism? A meta-analysis

Greater optimism is related to better mental and physical health. A number of studies have investigated interventions intended to increase optimism. The aim of this meta-analysis was to consolidate effect sizes found in randomized controlled intervention studies of optimism training and to identify factors that may influence the effect of interventions. Twenty-nine studies, with a total of 3319 participants, met criteria for inclusion in the analysis. A significant meta-analytic effect size, g = .41, indicated that, across studies, interventions increased optimism. Moderator analyses showed that studies had significantly higher effect sizes if they used the Best Possible Self intervention, provided the intervention in person, used an active control, used separate positive and negative expectancy measures rather than a version of the LOT-R, had a final assessment within one day of the end of the intervention, and used completer analyses rather than intention-to-treat analyses. The results indicate that psychological interventions can increase optimism and that various factors may influence effect size

Preliminary Experimental Evaluation of a Behavioral-Cognitive Method of Increasing Life Excitement

This randomized controlled trial with 113 adults evaluated the effects of a behavioral-cognitive method developed to increase life excitement. The intervention included encouraging participants to (1) do something new, (2) go somewhere new, (3) act spontaneously, (4) take on a new challenge, (5) learn something new, (6) interact with exciting individuals, (7) engage in romantically or sexually exciting behaviors, (8) read, watch, or listen to something suspenseful or stimulating, (9) take a (reasonable) risk, (10) engage in stimulating exercise or sport, (11) accomplish something new, (12) pursue their own interests, (13) talk with others about exciting experiences, (14) think about past exciting activities, or (15) plan future exciting activities. Participants reported level of excitement-aimed behavior, positive affect, and life satisfaction at pre-intervention and post-intervention. Experimental-group members also reported their outcome levels three months after the end of the intervention. At pre-intervention, excitement-aimed behavior was significantly associated with positive affect and life satisfaction. The intervention had significant between-groups effects on excitement-aimed behavior and positive affect. The experimental group maintained significant pre-post improvements on these variables through a three-month follow-up. The results provide initial support for a new method of increasing positive affect

Beliefs around luck : confirming the empirical conceptualization of beliefs around luck and the development of the Darke and Freedman beliefs around luck scale

The current study developed a multi-dimensional measure of beliefs around luck. Two studies introduced the Darke and Freedman beliefs around luck scale where the scale showed a consistent 4 component model (beliefs in luck, rejection of luck, being lucky, and being unlucky) across two samples (n = 250; n = 145). The scales also show adequate reliability statistics and validity by ways of comparison with other measures of beliefs around luck, peer and family ratings and expected associations with measures of personality, individual difference and well-being variables

The Nature of Well-Being: The Roles of Hedonic Processes, Eudaimonic Processes, Emotional Intelligence, and Cultural Orientation

The first part of the present project reconceptualised the role of hedonic (pleasure) and eudaimonic (engagement) functions as satisfaction "processes" and distinguished them from well-being "outcomes". Well-being "outcomes" cover the full spectrum of human well-being by encompassing life satisfaction, positive affect, psychological well-being, social well-being, general physical health and absence of depression, anxiety, and stress. It was hypothesised that adaptive emotional functioning as operationalised by emotional intelligence would mediate the relationship between satisfaction "processes" and well-being "outcomes", and that cultural orientation would moderate the relationship among satisfaction processes, emotional intelligence, and well-being outcomes. Participants were university students from both Australia and India. Path analysis using structural equation modelling showed that emotional intelligence fully mediated the relationship between hedonic and eudaimonic satisfaction processes and well-being outcomes. Multi-group analyses showed that cultural orientation did not moderate this mediation model. An experimental study explored the effect of expressive writing about positive satisfaction experiences with a focus on emotional functioning on the overall well-being of an individual. Participants in the experimental condition wrote about meaningful activities that provide them with an intense sense of enjoyment and pleasure and how satisfaction derived from such activities can be increased by strengthening emotions associated with them. The control group participants were asked to write about their daily activities. Results indicated that writing about positive satisfaction experiences in the context of adaptive emotional functioning led to a significant increase in well-being at post-test as compared to writing about daily activities

Characteristic emotional intelligence and emotional well-being

Both theory and previous research suggest a link between emotional intelligence and emotional well-being. Emotional intelligence includes the ability to understand and regulate emotions; emotional well-being includes positive mood and high self-esteem. Two studies investigated the relationship between emotional intelligence and mood, and between emotional intelligence and self-esteem. The results of these studies indicated that higher emotional intelligence was associated with characteristically positive mood and higher self-esteem. The results of a third study indicated that higher emotional intelligence was associated with a higher positive mood state and greater state self-esteem. The third study also investigated the role of emotional intelligence in mood and self-esteem regulation and found that individuals with higher emotional intelligence showed less of a decrease in positive mood and self-esteem after a negative state induction using the Velten method, and showed more of an increase in positive mood, but not in self-esteem, after a positive state induction. The findings were discussed in the light of previous work on emotional intelligence, and recommendations were made for further study

The Development of an Internet Course as an Integral Component of Face-to-Face Treatment of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD)

The study tested the feasibility of a self-learning interactive online course on Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) as a component in an intervention for the treatment of participants with mild or moderate levels of major depressive disorder (MOD). The course provided a means for participants to learn cognitive behavioural skills through an interactive website with email and if necessary telephone support by the writer. The intervention included individual face-to-face sessions, which participants arranged as they felt the need during or after completion of the course. The sessions concentrated on the application of skills learnt in the course and overcoming difficulties encountered in learning aspects of the course. Nine participants scoring in the mild and moderate levels on the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) were selected for the study. The existence of MOD was verified by a clinical interview based on the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS). Participants were retested with the BDR on completion of the intervention, the face-to-face phase and three months following the end of treatment. The BDI scores were compared with those of individuals in studies of face-to-face treatment and online treatment only, to identify significant differences in effect sizes or improvement rates. At the same time as the BOI testing participants completed interview questionnaires on the extent to which they were using skills learnt in the intervention and also provided feedback on the treatment process. Case study methodology was used to provide information on changes in functioning as participants advanced through the treatment process. The results are tentative because the study has several limitations including the smallness of the sample, the lack of control groups and the nature of the relationship between the researcher and the participants. Much more research is required before the effectiveness of the intervention can be accepted