Adolescents with HIV (AWH) face the double burden of dealing with challenges presented by their developmental phase while coping with stigma related to HIV, affecting their mental health. Poor mental health complicates adherence to daily treatment regimens, requiring innovative psychosocial support strategies for use with adolescents. We assessed the effectiveness of a mindfulness and acceptance-based intervention on the mental health of AWH in Uganda.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Digital mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) are a promising approach to deliver accessible and scalable mindfulness training and have been shown to improve a range of health outcomes. However, the success of digital MBIs is reliant on adequate engagement, which remains a crucial challenge. Understanding people's experiences of using digital MBIs and identifying the core factors that facilitate or act as barriers to engagement is essential to inform intervention development and maximize engagement and outcomes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWhile the adaptation of evidence-based psychosocial support tailors the intervention components to the targeted context, minimizing the associated costs of developing new interventions for low-income contexts, the acceptability of such adapted interventions is important for augmenting successful implementation and sustainability. Given that psychosocial support to persons living with HIV is mostly rendered by healthcare providers, their acceptance of adapted interventions before implementation is crucial. This study explored healthcare providers' acceptance of an adapted mindfulness and acceptance-based intervention supporting adolescents with HIV.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To explore factors that influence professionals in deciding whether to withdraw treatment from a child and how decision making is managed amongst professionals as an individual and as a team.
Study Design: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of health professionals working at a UK Children's Hospital, with children with life-limiting illnesses whose treatment has been withdrawn. Data were transcribed verbatim, anonymized and analysed using a thematic framework method.
Background: Positive emotional well-being is associated with healthier lifestyle choices and overall health function, whereas poor mental health is associated with significant economic and psychological costs. Thus, the development of effective interventions that improve emotional well-being is crucial to address the worldwide burden of disease.
Objective: This study aims to develop a web-based emotional well-being intervention for use by health care staff using participatory design to consider adherence and engagement from a user perspective.
Background: Poor mental health and emotional well-being can negatively impact ability to engage in healthy lifestyle behavior change. Health care staff have higher rates of sickness and absence than other public sector staff, which has implications at both individual and societal levels. Individual efforts to self-manage health and well-being which add to the UK mental health prevention agenda need to be supported.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMoral vitalism refers to a tendency to view good and evil as actual forces that can influence people and events. The Moral Vitalism Scale had been designed to assess moral vitalism in a brief survey form. Previous studies established the reliability and validity of the scale in US-American and Australian samples.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPathogens represent a significant threat to human health leading to the emergence of strategies designed to help manage their negative impact. We examined how spiritual beliefs developed to explain and predict the devastating effects of pathogens and spread of infectious disease. Analysis of existing data in studies 1 and 2 suggests that moral vitalism (beliefs about spiritual forces of evil) is higher in geographical regions characterized by historical higher levels of pathogens.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPeople may have a visibly different appearance due to various causes, such as congenital conditions, injury, disease, or medical treatment. Some individuals with a visible difference experience social anxiety and isolation, body image dissatisfaction, shame and self-stigma, psychological trauma, and challenges managing their condition. In this article, we synthesize the relevant literature and present the theoretical rationale for the application of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), a third-wave behavioral therapy combining mindfulness skills and value-driven action, to those experiencing distress relating to an unusual or altered appearance.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe correspondence bias (CB) refers to the idea that people sometimes give undue weight to dispositional rather than situational factors when explaining behaviours and attitudes. Three experiments examined whether mindfulness, a non-judgmental focus on the present moment, could reduce the CB. Participants engaged in a brief mindfulness exercise (the raisin task), a control task, or an attention to detail task before completing a typical CB measure involving an attitude-attribution paradigm.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNegative thoughts, experienced by 80% to 99% of the non-clinical population, have been linked to the development of psychopathology. The current study aimed to compare a cognitive restructuring and cognitive defusion technique for coping with a personally relevant negative thought. Over a 5-day period, participants used either a restructuring, defusion, or control strategy to manage a negative thought.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAm J Psychol
November 2013
In the thought suppression literature the completion of one suppression and one expression phase is called an indulgence cycle. The current study aimed to determine the effects on thought frequency of entering multiple indulgence cycles. Participants were assigned to one of two groups.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHandling food cravings seems to play a major role in weight management. Many try to simply avoid cravings. However, avoidance based techniques like thought suppression can make attempts to deal with cravings more difficult.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIndividuals who experience stereotype threat - the pressure resulting from social comparisons that are perceived as unfavourable - show performance decrements across a wide range of tasks. One account of this effect is that the cognitive pressure triggered by such threat drains the same cognitive (or working-memory) resources that are implicated in the respective task. The present study investigates whether mindfulness can be used to moderate stereotype threat, as mindfulness has previously been shown to alleviate working-memory load.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe current study compared thought suppression, focused attention (mindfulness) and unfocused attention as strategies for managing spider fear. Spider fearful participants were exposed to a strategy induction before completing a Behavioural Approach Test (BAT). The BAT is a 10 step measurement of how close participants are willing to move towards a spider.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThought suppression appears to be a relatively ineffective and even counterproductive strategy for dealing with unwanted thoughts. However, the psychological processes responsible for unsuccessful suppression are still underspecified. One process that may be implicated is derived stimulus relations, which may underlie the formation of unintentional relations that act to hamper suppression attempts.
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