A naturalistic study of the relationship between the process of empowerment and mental health during adolescence

A qualitative study of 21 at-risk adolescents led to the development of a grounded theory which shows that mental health and resilience depends on the acceptance of teenagers experiences for their self-definitions and the power they exercise in the social discourse which constructs these defining labels. Using the metaphor of drift, this paper explores how teens seek acceptance for the most powerful personal labels accessible to them. The process of empowerment is conceptualized as a protective mechanism giving a young person power in the social construction of his or her identity. The young people in this study explained that participation in a process of empowerment which fosters mental health has three distinct elements: first, the empowerment process takes place within the context of relationships; second, it provides participants with experiences of control and power resulting in a say in the social discourse which defines the individual; and third, the empowerment process depends on access to experiences of competence which contribute to positive self-definitions. An extensive review of the literature helps to illustrate a theoretical basis for the grounded theory linking mental health and empowerment during adolescence

Contextual Factors Related to School Engagement and Resilience

A study was conducted to assess risk, resilience and service use factors, including school engagement, among 497 13-21 year olds who were users of multiple services such as child welfare, mental health, youth corrections, outreach services for homeless youth, and, when in school, special educational services available outside the classroom. As hypothesized, factors associated with individual, relational and communityaspects of resilience like cultural adherence and fair treatment in one's community were more strongly related to school engagement than individual or relational (family) factors.However, higher rates of service use among youth with complex needs did not result in higher levels of school engagement as was expected. A discussion is included of the role service providers play encouraging youth to engage at school as well as the possibility that service providers who coerce youth to attend school may inadvertently cause young people to resist school attendance and disengage

Broadband tunability of gain-flattened quantum well semiconductor lasers with an external grating

Quantum well lasers are shown to exhibit flattened broadband gain spectra at a particular pumping condition. The gain requirement for a grating-tuned external cavity configuration is examined and applied to a semiconductor quantum well laser with an optimized length of gain region. The predicted very broadband tunability of quantum well lasers is confirmed experimentally by grating-tuning of uncoated lasers over 85 nm, with single longitudinal mode output power exceeding 200 mW

Examining the Potential of Combining the Methods of Grounded Theory and Narrative Inquiry: A Comparative Analysis

Increasingly, qualitative researchers are combining methods, processes, and principles from two or more methodologies over the course of a research study. Critics charge that researchers adopting combined approaches place too little attention on the historical, epistemological, and theoretical aspects of the research design. Rather than discounting eclecticism in qualitative research, we prefer to place it on a continuum of integration whereby at the ideal end of the spectrum, the researcher demonstrates thorough knowledge of the approaches being drawn from and a thoughtful consideration of the rationale for combining methods. However, there is limited reflection in the literature on the combination of methods from specific methodological approaches. To address this gap we examine the extent to which the methods from two distinct qualitative methodologies, grounded theory and narrative inquiry might complement each other within a qualitative study using a framework that encompasses 10 key methodological features of research design

The inhibitors and enablers of emerging adult COVID-19 mitigation compliance in a township context.

Young adults are often scapegoated for not complying with COVID-19 mitigation strategies. While studies have investigated what predicts this population’s compliance and non-compliance, they have largely excluded the insights of African young people living in South African townships. Given this, it is unclear what places young adult South African township dwellers at risk for not complying with physical distancing, face masking and handwashing, or what enables resilience to those risks. To remedy this uncertainty, the current article reports a secondary analysis of transcripts (n=119) that document telephonic interviews in June and October 2020 with 24 emerging adults (average age: 20 years) who participated in the Resilient Youth in Stressed Environments (RYSE) study. The secondary analysis, which was inductively thematic, pointed to compliance being threatened by forgetfulness; preventive measures conflicting with personal/collective style; and structural constraints. Resilience to these compliance risks lay in young people’s capacity to regulate their behaviour and in the immediate social ecology’s capacity to co-regulate young people’s health behaviours. These findings discourage health interventions that are focused on the individual. More optimal public health initiatives will be responsive to the risks and resilience-enablers associated with young people and the social, institutional, and physical ecologies to which young people are connected.Significance:• Emerging adult compliance with COVID-19 mitigation strategies is threatened by risks across multiple systems (i.e. young people themselves; the social ecology; the physical ecology).• Emerging adult resilience to compliance challenges is co-facilitated by young people and their social ecologies.• Responding adaptively to COVID-19 contagion threats will require multisystem mobilisation that is collaborative and transformative in its redress of risk and co-championship of resilience-enablers

Measuring resilience in the context of conflict-related sexual violence:A novel application of the Adult Resilience Measure (ARM)

There is a rich body of research addressing the issues of conflict-related sexual violence, and a similar wealth of scholarship focused on resilience. To date, however, these literatures have rarely engaged with each other. This article developed from an ongoing research project that seeks to address this gap, by exploring how victims-/survivors of conflict-related sexual violence in three highly diverse settings – Bosnia-Herzegovina, Colombia and Uganda – demonstrate resilience. This research is the first to apply the Adult Resilience Measure (ARM), a 28-item scale that seeks to measure protective resources across individual, relational, and contextual subscales, to the context of conflict-related sexual violence. A total of 449 female and male participants in the three aforementioned countries completed the ARM (in the framework of the study questionnaire) as part of this research. This article presents some of the results of the analyses. Specifically, we first sought to establish through Confirmatory Factor Analysis whether the ARM was actually measuring the same construct in all three countries, by confirming the invariance (or otherwise) of the factor structure. The second aim was to explore how different resources function and cluster in different cultural contexts, to arrive at a more nuanced understanding of the different protective factors in the lives of study participants. We generated different factor structures for BiH, Colombia, and Uganda respectively, suggesting that a single factor structure does not sufficiently capture the diverse groupings of protective factors linked to the particularities of each country, including the dynamics of the conflicts themselves. Ultimately, we use the findings to underscore the need for policy approaches that move away from a deficit model and give greater attention to strengthening and investing in the (often overlooked) protective resources that victims-/survivors may already have in their everyday lives

Limiting the impacts of child abuse and neglect by understanding which supports matter most : a differential impact approach

No abstract available.http://www.elsevier.com/locate/chiabuneg2019-04-01hj2019Educational Psycholog

Identification of a chemical fingerprint linking the undeclared 2017 release of 106Ru to advanced nuclear fuel reprocessing

The undeclared release and subsequent detection of ruthenium-106 (106Ru) across Europe from late September to early October of 2017 prompted an international effort to ascertain the circumstances of the event. While dispersion modeling, corroborated by ground deposition measurements, has narrowed possible locations of origin, there has been a lack of direct empirical evidence to address the nature of the release. This is due to the absence of radiological and chemical signatures in the sample matrices, considering that such signatures encode the history and circumstances of the radioactive contaminant. In limiting cases such as this, we herein introduce the use of selected chemical transformations to elucidate the chemical nature of a radioactive contaminant as part of a nuclear forensic investigation. Using established ruthenium polypyridyl chemistry, we have shown that a small percentage (1.2 ± 0.4%) of the radioactive 106Ru contaminant exists in a polychlorinated Ru(III) form, partly or entirely as β-106RuCl3, while 20% is both insoluble and chemically inert, consistent with the occurrence of RuO2, the thermodynamic endpoint of the volatile RuO4. Together, these findings present a clear signature for nuclear fuel reprocessing activity, specifically the reductive trapping of the volatile and highly reactive RuO4, as the origin of the release. Considering that the previously established 103Ru:106Ru ratio indicates that the spent fuel was unusually young with respect to typical reprocessing protocol, it is likely that this exothermic trapping process proved to be a tipping point for an already turbulent mixture, leading to an abrupt and uncontrolled release

Resilience and mental health : how multisystemic processes contribute to positive outcomes

More is known about the factors that predict mental disorder than about the factors and processes that promote positive development among individuals exposed to atypically high levels of stress or adversity. In this brief Review of the science of resilience, we show that the concept is best understood as the process of multiple biological, psychological, social, and ecological systems interacting in ways that help individuals to regain, sustain, or improve their mental wellbeing when challenged by one or more risk factors. Studies in fields as diverse as genetics, psychology, political science, architecture, and human ecology are showing that resilience depends just as much on the culturally relevant resources available to stressed individuals in their social, built, and natural environments as it does on individual thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. With growing interest in resilience among mental health-care providers, there is a need to recognise the complex interactions across systems that predict which individuals will do well and to use this insight to advance mental health interventions.http://www.thelancet.com/psychiatry2021-05-01hj2020Educational Psycholog