Using psychological science to advance equity in government-wide programs: APA identifies mental health and well-being concerns that all federal agencies should consider and shares evidence-based recommendations with White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) steps.

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Federal Agencies ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
White House ◽  
Psychological Science ◽  
Health And Well Being

scholarly journals Prioritizing the Mental Health and Well-Being of Healthcare Workers: An Urgent Global Public Health Priority

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lene E. Søvold ◽  
John A. Naslund ◽  
Antonis A. Kousoulis ◽  
Shekhar Saxena ◽  
M. Walid Qoronfleh ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Mental Health ◽  
Health Systems ◽  
Healthcare Workers ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Health Impacts ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Public Health Emergencies ◽  
Healthcare Workforce ◽  
Health And Well Being

The COVID-19 pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on health systems in most countries, and in particular, on the mental health and well-being of health workers on the frontlines of pandemic response efforts. The purpose of this article is to provide an evidence-based overview of the adverse mental health impacts on healthcare workers during times of crisis and other challenging working conditions and to highlight the importance of prioritizing and protecting the mental health and well-being of the healthcare workforce, particularly in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. First, we provide a broad overview of the elevated risk of stress, burnout, moral injury, depression, trauma, and other mental health challenges among healthcare workers. Second, we consider how public health emergencies exacerbate these concerns, as reflected in emerging research on the negative mental health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on healthcare workers. Further, we consider potential approaches for overcoming these threats to mental health by exploring the value of practicing self-care strategies, and implementing evidence based interventions and organizational measures to help protect and support the mental health and well-being of the healthcare workforce. Lastly, we highlight systemic changes to empower healthcare workers and protect their mental health and well-being in the long run, and propose policy recommendations to guide healthcare leaders and health systems in this endeavor. This paper acknowledges the stressors, burdens, and psychological needs of the healthcare workforce across health systems and disciplines, and calls for renewed efforts to mitigate these challenges among those working on the frontlines during public health emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

scholarly journals (Re)sourcing the Character and Resilience Manifesto: Suppressions and Slippages of (Re)presentation and Selective Affectivities

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 416-437 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erica Burman
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Social Care ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Sociopolitical Context ◽  
And Coping ◽  
Health And Well Being ◽  
Made In

This article offers a critical discursive reading of the 2014 Character and Resilience Manifesto (hereafter the Manifesto), focusing on the sources and legitimation strategies supporting its claims. As an All Party Parliamentary Group on Social Mobility document, the Manifesto traces both old and new discursive tropes framing policy strategy on education and social care, extending into current political agendas around mental health and well-being and even child safeguarding and securitisation. While the Manifesto’s supposed evidence-based claims draw extensively on a specifically commissioned literature review undertaken by Gutman and Schoon, problems are identified with how this is represented in the Manifesto, including significant omissions and slippages within Gutman and Schoon’s text and between this and the Manifesto. Analysis highlights exaggerations of the claims made in Gutman and Schoon’s review in the Manifesto while important conceptual clarifications (between resilience and coping and the non-generalisability of resilience) are overlooked. Commentators’ cautions over the evaluation and comparability of current programmes also fail to appear. Beyond such asymmetries, a common narrative identified across both texts reformulates emotions away from their ‘soft’, culturally feminised, associations to become ‘hard and tough’, and abstracted from relationship and (sociopolitical) context. Clearly, such gendering of emotions can be situated in relation to wider discourses of feminisation, alongside others de-emphasising classed and racialised inequalities. Overall, the Manifesto performs its own rhetoric, manifesting its own buoyancy to resist critical engagement and further the contemporary moral doctrine of inciting voluntarist optimistic subjects, devoid of attention to class, gender or racialised inequalities.

scholarly journals A Survey and a Positive Psychology Intervention on French PhD Student Well-being

10.28945/3948 ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 109-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriel AB Marais ◽  
Rebecca Shankland ◽  
Pascale Haag ◽  
Robin Fiault ◽  
Bridget Juniper
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Positive Psychology ◽  
Large Fraction ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Private Life ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Research Experience ◽  
Positive Psychology Intervention ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Health And Well Being

Aim/Purpose: The present work focuses on French PhD students’ well-being: an understudied working population thus far, which impedes the development of evidence-based policies on this issue in France.The focus of this work is the well-being of French PhD students, on which almost nothing has been published thus far, impeding any evidence-based policy on this issue to be carried out in France. Background: Research studies from several countries have shown that carrying out a PhD can be a difficult experience resulting in high attrition rates with significant financial and human costs. Methodology: The two studies presented in this article focus on biology PhD students from University Lyon 1, a very large French university (~40,000 students). A first study aimed at measuring the mental health and well-being of PhD students using generalist and PhD-specific tools. In a second study, we carried out and assessed a positive psychology intervention (PPI) aimed at improving PhD students’ well-being. Contribution: Our work is one of the first characterizations of French PhD students’ mental health and well-being. As with other recent studies conducted in Western coun-tries, we found a high level of mental distress among PhD students. Our work also underlines the importance of taking many dimensions of the PhD (not only supervisor behaviour) in order to understand PhD student well-being. Cultural specificities are highlighted and can help inform the design of interventions adapted to each situation. The PPI showed pre-to-post positive changes on PhD students’ well-being. Further research is needed on a larger sample size in order to detect more subtle effects. However, these results are promising in terms of interventions that help reduce PhD student distress. Findings: Study 1 involved 136 participants and showed that a large fraction of the PhD students experiences abnormal levels of stress, depression, and anxiety. We found that career training and prospects, research experience, and the impact of carrying out a thesis on health and private life have more impact on PhD students’ mental health than the supervisors’ behaviour. French PhD students’ well-being is specifically affected by career uncertainty, perceived lack of progress in the PhD, and perceived lack of competence compared to UK PhD students well-being, which suggests cultural differences about the PhD experi-ence in France compared to other countries. In study 2, the scores of the test and control groups (N = 10 and N = 13, respectively) showed a clear effect of the intervention on reducing anxiety. Impact on Society: The high levels of mental health issues and reduced well-being in French PhD students reported in this study underline the importance of developing interventions in this field. Improving the supervisor-student relationship is one possibility but is not the only one. Interventions aimed at learning how to cope with the research experience and with the uncertainty with career pathways, and a good balance between PhD work and personal life present other promising possibilities

scholarly journals User Experience of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Apps for Depression: An Analysis of App Functionality and User Reviews (Preprint)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Stawarz ◽  
Chris Preist ◽  
Debbie Tallon ◽  
Nicola Wiles ◽  
David Coyle
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy ◽  
User Experience ◽  
Behavioral Therapy ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Cognitive Behavioral ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
User Reviews ◽  
Mental Well Being ◽  
Health And Well Being

BACKGROUND Hundreds of mental health apps are available to the general public. With increasing pressures on health care systems, they offer a potential way for people to support their mental health and well-being. However, although many are highly rated by users, few are evidence-based. Equally, our understanding of what makes apps engaging and valuable to users is limited. OBJECTIVE The aim of this paper was to analyze functionality and user opinions of mobile apps purporting to support cognitive behavioral therapy for depression and to explore key factors that have an impact on user experience and support engagement. METHODS We systematically identified apps described as being based on cognitive behavioral therapy for depression. We then conducted 2 studies. In the first, we analyzed the therapeutic functionality of apps. This corroborated existing work on apps’ fidelity to cognitive behavioral therapy theory, but we also extended prior work by examining features designed to support user engagement. Engagement features found in cognitive behavioral therapy apps for depression were compared with those found in a larger group of apps that support mental well-being in a more general sense. Our second study involved a more detailed examination of user experience, through a thematic analysis of publicly available user reviews of cognitive behavioral therapy apps for depression. RESULTS We identified 31 apps that purport to be based on cognitive behavioral therapy for depression. Functionality analysis (study 1) showed that they offered an eclectic mix of features, including many not based on cognitive behavioral therapy practice. Cognitive behavioral therapy apps used less varied engagement features compared with 253 other mental well-being apps. The analysis of 1287 user reviews of cognitive behavioral therapy apps for depression (study 2) showed that apps are used in a wide range of contexts, both replacing and augmenting therapy, and allowing users to play an active role in supporting their mental health and well-being. Users, including health professionals, valued and used apps that incorporated both core cognitive behavioral therapy and non-cognitive behavioral therapy elements, but concerns were also expressed regarding the unsupervised use of apps. Positivity was seen as important to engagement, for example, in the context of automatic thoughts, users expressed a preference to capture not just negative but also positive ones. Privacy, security, and trust were crucial to the user experience. CONCLUSIONS Cognitive behavioral therapy apps for depression need to improve with respect to incorporating evidence-based cognitive behavioral therapy elements. Equally, a positive user experience is dependent on other design factors, including consideration of varying contexts of use. App designers should be able to clearly identify the therapeutic basis of their apps, but they should also draw on evidence-based strategies to support a positive and engaging user experience. The most effective apps are likely to strike a balance between evidence-based cognitive behavioral therapy strategies and evidence-based design strategies, including the possibility of eclectic therapeutic techniques.

scholarly journals Promoting Mental Health and Well-Being among Adolescent Young Carers in Europe: A Randomized Controlled Trial Protocol

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 2045
Author(s):  
Giulia Casu ◽  
Valentina Hlebec ◽  
Licia Boccaletti ◽  
Irena Bolko ◽  
Alessandra Manattini ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Randomized Controlled Trial ◽  
Primary Prevention ◽  
Study Protocol ◽  
Controlled Trial ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Young Carers ◽  
Randomized Controlled ◽  
Health And Well Being

It is estimated that 4–8% of youth in Europe carry out substantial care for a family member or significant other. To prevent adverse psychosocial outcomes in young carers (YCs), primary prevention resilience building interventions have been recommended. We describe the study protocol of an international randomized controlled trial (RCT) of an innovative group intervention designed to promote the mental health and well-being of adolescent YCs (AYCs) aged 15–17. The RCT will be conducted in six European countries in the context of the Horizon 2020 European funded research and innovation project “Psychosocial support for promoting mental health and well-being among adolescent young caregivers in Europe” (“ME-WE”). The ME-WE intervention is based on Hayes and Ciarrochi’s psychoeducational model for adolescents and will consist of seven 2-h sessions in a group format, aimed to help AYCs build psychological flexibility and live according to their values. The control group will be a waitlist. Primary and secondary outcomes and control variables will be measured at baseline (T0), post-intervention (T1) and 3 months follow-up (T2). The COVID-19 pandemic has made amendments necessary to the original study protocol methodology, which we describe in detail. This study will contribute to building an evidence-based manualized program that educators and health and social care professionals can use to support AYCs in their transition to adulthood. From a research perspective, the outcomes of this study will contribute to evidence-based practices in primary prevention of psychosocial difficulties in AYCs and will gather novel knowledge on the effectiveness of Hayes and Ciarrochi’s model for use with middle adolescents with caring responsibilities. The trial has been preregistered (registration number: NCT04114864).

A positive psychology study and intervention on the well-being of French PhD students in biology

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriel Marais ◽  
Rebecca Shankland ◽  
Pascale Haag ◽  
Robin Fiault ◽  
Bridget Juniper
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Positive Psychology ◽  
Large Fraction ◽  
Reference Sample ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Attrition Rates ◽  
Human Costs ◽  
The Uk ◽  
And Control ◽  
Health And Well Being

In France, little data are available on mental health and well-being in academia, and nothing has been published about PhD students. From studies abroad, we know that doing a PhD is a difficult experience resulting in high attrition rates with significant financial and human costs. Here we focused on PhD students in biology at university Lyon 1. A first study aimed at measuring the mental health and well-being of PhD students using several generalist and PhD-specific tools. Our results on 136 participants showed that a large fraction of the PhD students experience abnormal levels of stress, depression and anxiety, and their mean well-being score is significantly lower than that of a British reference sample. French PhD student well-being is specifically affected by career uncertainty, perceived lack of progress in the PhD and perceived lack of competence, which points towards possible cultural differences of experiencing a PhD in France and the UK. In a second study, we carried out a positive psychology intervention. Comparing the scores of the test and control groups showed a clear effect of the intervention on reducing anxiety. We discuss our results and the possible future steps to improve French PhD students’ well-being.

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