Consultation to Help Individuals Cope With Lifestyle Modification.

The escalating prevalence of chronic health problems related to lifestyle is extremely costly to organizations. It is likely that organizational consultants will have increasing opportunities to plan and implement interventions at the individual level for health behavior change. This article describes the importance of such consultation, emphasizing the role of coping in the behavior change process. In addition to identifying relevant research and theoretical literature, specific recommendations for how to conduct lifestyle change consultation are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The East–West Divide in Response to COVID-19

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) deaths per million population in the countries of the West had often exceeded those in the countries of the East by factor of 100 by May 2021. In this paper, we refer to the West as represented by the United States plus the five most populous countries of Western Europe (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom), and the East as the 15 countries in East Asia and Oceania that are members of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, RCEP (Australia, Brunei, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam). This paper argues that currently available information points to the factors most responsible for the East–West divide. Warnings by early January 2020 about an atypical viral pneumonia in Wuhan, China, prompted rapid responses in many jurisdictions in East Asia. Publication of the virus’s genome on 10 January 2020 provided essential information for making diagnostic tests and launching vaccine development. China’s lockdown of Wuhan on 23 January 2020 provided a final, decisive signal of the danger of the new disease. By late March 2020, China had fully controlled its epidemic, and many other RCEP countries had taken early and decisive measures, including restrictions on travel, that aborted serious outcomes. Inaction during the critical month of February 2020 in the United States and most other Western countries allowed the disease to take hold and spread. In both the East and the West, stringent population-wide non-pharmaceutical interventions were widely implemented at great cost to societies, economies, and school systems. Without these measures, the outcomes could have been even worse. Most countries in the East also implemented tightly focused policies to isolate infectious individuals. Even today, most countries in the West allow infectious individuals to mingle with their families, coworkers, and communities. Much of the East–West divide plausibly results from failure in the West to implement the basic public health policies of early action and the isolation of infectious individuals. Widespread immunization in some RCEP and high-income countries will soon attenuate their outbreaks, while the slow rollout of vaccines in lower income countries is replacing the East–West divide in outcomes with a North–South one. The South is thus replacing the West as the breeding ground for more dangerous variants as exemplified by the highly contagious Delta variant, which may undermine hitherto successful control strategies in many countries.     

New evidence of flaws in the Consumer Reports study of psychotherapy.

Comments on M. E. P. Seligman's article (see record 1997-04811-001) and comment (see record 1997-04812-001) concerning the Consumer Reports study of psychotherapy. It is argued that the new information from the comment only confirms previously cited flaws. It is believed that while seeking evidence about the effectiveness of psychotherapy, M. E. P. Seligman simultaneously assumed its effectiveness. Methodological flaws of the kind that invalidated the Consumer Reports reanalysis can be corrected in subsequent studies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Job design,employment practices and well-being: a systematic review of intervention studies

Abstract

There is inconsistent evidence that deliberate attempts to improve job design realise improvements in well-being. We investigated the role of other employment practices, either as instruments for job redesign or as instruments that augment job redesign. Our primary outcome was well-being. Where studies also assessed performance, we considered performance as an outcome. We reviewed 33 intervention studies. We found that well-being and performance may be improved by: training workers to improve their own jobs; training coupled with job redesign; and system wide approaches that simultaneously enhance job design and a range of other employment practices. We found insufficient evidence to make any firm conclusions concerning the effects of training managers in job redesign and that participatory approaches to improving job design have mixed effects. Successful implementation of interventions was associated with worker involvement and engagement with interventions, managerial commitment to interventions and integration of interventions with other organisational systems.

Practitioner Summary: Improvements in well-being and performance may be associated with system-wide approaches that simultaneously enhance job design, introduce a range of other employment practices and focus on worker welfare. Training may have a role in initiating job redesign or augmenting the effects of job design on well-being.     

Teacher interventions in a synchronous,co-located CSCL setting: Analyzing focus,means, and temporality

Computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environments facilitate collaboration between students. There is a growing interest in studying the role of the teacher during CSCL. This study aims to contribute to the conceptualization of teacher interventions during CSCL. A teacher and his class worked in a CSCL environment for 8 lessons. Focus and means of teacher interventions were analyzed across these 8 time points. The results show that the teacher’s behavior varied greatly between lessons and also between groups, which contradicts research that has aggregated teacher behavior to types or teaching styles. Findings consistent across time points include the predominance of the teacher’s focus on students’ cognitive rather than social activities, and a higher number of interventions in groups where student activity was higher. Suggestions are made for future research, which include studying the effectiveness of supporting tools for teachers.     

Continuous evaluation of participants’ perceptions of impact: Applying a boundary object in organizational‐level interventions

Workplaces across Europe experience increasing problems with work‐related strain and stress. Consequently, they are confronted with the need for stress‐preventive interventions that target the sources of stress. A matter of current debate is how to continuously evaluate an organizational‐level intervention and gain insight into progress and participants’ perceptions of its impact; however, empirical data are lacking. Therefore, we conducted a qualitative study in three workplaces—two in information technology (IT) and one in manufacturing—to explore the design, evaluation process, perceived impact, and employees’ experiences with the continuous use of a physical evaluation tool (visualization object) during an organizational‐level intervention process. We conducted observations, surveys, semi‐structured interviews and chronicle workshops across all three workplaces. Overall, the results showed that the visualization object proved successful as a tool to explicate and combine participants’ perceptions of impact. The evaluation process also clarified that participants initially had different understandings of the intervention's purpose. However, the study also showed that the visualization object facilitated a dialog among participants, converging the different understandings to create a shared understanding and compliance of purpose. Finally, the respondents reported that the evaluation tool acted as a collective reminder of the intervention and the related changes. We conclude the study by providing recommendations for future evaluations of participatory organizational‐level interventions.     

The Mothers and Toddlers Program: Preliminary findings from an attachment-based parenting intervention for substance-abusing mothers.

The authors examined pilot data from an attachment-based parenting intervention for substance-abusing mothers of toddlers (ages 12-36 months). The Mothers and Toddlers Program (MTP) is a 20-week individual therapy intervention that aims to help mothers develop more balanced representations of their children and improve their capacity for reflective functioning (i.e., recognition of the intentional nature of children's behavior). The authors hypothesized that improvement in maternal representational balance and maternal capacity for reflective functioning would correspond with improvements in maternal behavior with toddlers (e.g., sensitivity to cues, responsiveness to distress, and social-emotional growth fostering) and reduction in maternal psychiatric distress and substance abuse. Eight mothers who completed MTP showed moderate improvements in representational balance and reflective functioning, and these changes corresponded with significant improvements in maternal behaviors with toddlers. The authors also compared MTP completers and noncompleters on sociodemographic and psychosocial indexes and examined the validity of the intervention's proposed mechanisms of change. Preliminary findings support the importance of attachment mechanisms and indicate that attachment-based interventions may strengthen substance-abusing mothers' capacities to foster their toddlers' socioemotional development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Prader-Willi syndrome.

Although known for its distinctive food-related behaviors, Prader-Willi syndrome is a multisystem disorder with genetic, developmental, and behavioral features. Two separate and distinct eating disorders are noted: initial feeding difficulties and failure to thrive, and later overeating. Additional outcomes observed with this disorder include hypotonia, obesity, developmental/cognitive disabilities, and significant maladaptive behaviors. Symptoms vary in complexity across age and individuals. This necessitates multidisciplinary approaches to interventions across the life span to address medical, developmental, and behavioral issues. School psychologists have a vital role to play in assessment and consultation for individuals with this syndrome, their families, and school staff. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Workplace mobbing and bullying: A consulting psychology perspective and overview.

Mobbing and bullying are forms of abusiveness that are of increasing concerns in the workplace. This special issue overviews various issues and interventions relevant for the practice of consulting psychology. The articles describe theoretical issues including prevalence, definitional clarity, and the influence of individual, work group, and organizational dynamics; they also describe various organizational interventions, including alternative dispute resolution, antimobbing training, and antibullying policy development. These articles and commentaries are intended to inform, provide strategies, and foster discussion of how consulting psychologists can best serve clients and client organizations that are experiencing mobbing and bullying. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)