Attitudes surrounding the disclosure of mental illness

AimsTo survey the effect of COVID-19 on mental health of both medical professionals and the general population, as well as attitudes surrounding the disclosure of mental illness.MethodAn online survey comprised of two questionnaires, one for medical professionals and one for the general population, were conducted via social media. Both questionnaires asked respondents of the effect of COVID-19 on their mental health, and the former asked respondents about the effect of COVID-19 on their patient group's mental health. The questionnaires went on to ask respondents about their attitudes to mental health disclosure in various scenarios, to varying groups of people. The general population group was also asked how they would react if someone else disclosed their mental illness to them.ResultThe questionnaire for the medical professionals gained 62 respondents and the one for the general population had 122 respondents, with responses from multiple nations. Overall, COVID-19 has affected everyone's mental health to a degree, and all groups had reservations about disclosing their mental health issues to others. The medical professionals were especially reluctant to disclose mental illness to their patients, but were more comfortable when it came to disclosing mental illness to colleagues. The general population, however, was much more reluctant to disclose mental health issues to their colleagues. The general population were, on the whole, willing to listen to and help anyone who came to them with mental health concerns. Both groups surveyed showed reluctance toward disclosure to the wider community.ConclusionCOVID-19 appears to significantly affect not only physical health, but mental health as well. There is at least some degree of stigma surrounding the disclosure of mental health issues. While most would be happy to help anyone who came to them with their mental health problems, there seems to be an attitude shift when people must contend with mental health issues of their own.

Building Cities for Families: Attracting and Retaining Households

Planning for sustainable cities means creating complete communities with increased residential densities, housing choices, and services that attract a diversity of populations at all stages of their life. This exploratory study identifies the challenges that discourage households with children from moving to the downtown area and explores the public and private initiatives and strategies that can be used to attract and retain such families in downtown neighbourhoods by providing required infrastructure, amenities, and services. Data shows that households with children are underrepresented in downtown Toronto compared to the rest of the city. This exploratory study identifies the factors that the downtown area needs to provide long-term options for households with children, such as affordable and suitable housing, accessible schools and play spaces, and an overall attitude shift about the place of families in downtown Toronto.

Building Cities for Families: Attracting and Retaining Households

Planning for sustainable cities means creating complete communities with increased residential densities, housing choices, and services that attract a diversity of populations at all stages of their life. This exploratory study identifies the challenges that discourage households with children from moving to the downtown area and explores the public and private initiatives and strategies that can be used to attract and retain such families in downtown neighbourhoods by providing required infrastructure, amenities, and services. Data shows that households with children are underrepresented in downtown Toronto compared to the rest of the city. This exploratory study identifies the factors that the downtown area needs to provide long-term options for households with children, such as affordable and suitable housing, accessible schools and play spaces, and an overall attitude shift about the place of families in downtown Toronto.

Forms and Frames: Mind, Morality, and Trust in Robots across Prototypical Interactions

People often engage human-interaction schemas in human-robot interactions, so notions of prototypicality are useful in examining how interactions’ formal features shape perceptions of social robots. We argue for a typology of three higher-order interaction forms (social, task, play) comprising identifiable-but-variable patterns in agents, content, structures, outcomes, context, norms. From that ground, we examined whether participants’ judgments about a social robot (mind, morality, and trust perceptions) differed across prototypical interactions. Findings indicate interaction forms somewhat influence trust but not mind or morality evaluations. However, how participants perceived interactions (independent of form) were more impactful. In particular, perceived task interactions fostered functional trust, while perceived play interactions fostered moral trust and attitude shift over time. Hence, prototypicality in interactions should not consider formal properties alone but must also consider how people perceive interactions according to prototypical frames.

The Impact of TimeSlips on Undergraduate Students in Service Learning With Older Adults

Purpose Future speech-language pathologists are often unprepared in their academic training to serve the communicative and cognitive needs of older adults with dementia. While negative attitudes toward older adults are prevalent among undergraduate students, service learning has been shown to positively affect students' attitudes toward older adults. TimeSlips is an evidence-based approach that has been shown to improve health care students' attitudes toward older adults. The purpose of this study is to explore the change in attitudes in speech-language pathology students toward older adults using TimeSlips in service learning. Method Fifty-one students participated in TimeSlips service learning with older adults and completed the Dementia Attitude Scale (DAS) before and after service learning. In addition, students completed a reflection journal. The DAS data were analyzed using nonparametric statistics, and journal entries were analyzed using a qualitative analysis approach. Results The service learners exhibited a significant increase in positive attitude as indexed on the DAS. The reflective journal entries supported the positive change in attitudes. Conclusions A noticeable attitude shift was indexed in reflective journals and on the DAS. TimeSlips is an evidence-based, patient-centered approach well suited to address challenges in the preparation of Communication Sciences and Disorders students to work with the growing population of older adults.

Shifty Attitudes: Indexical Shift Versus Perspectival Anaphora

In cases of indexical shift, so-called indexical pronouns like I, you, here, and now refer to the speaker, addressee, location, and time of some context other than the utterance context. In cases of perspectival anaphora, an anaphor tracks the perspective of some individual other than the utterance speaker [or addressee(s)]. Thus, both phenomena involve referential obviation of a pronoun or anaphor from the utterance context. Such obviation also occurs under strikingly similar grammatical conditions—for instance, in the scope of an attitude predicate (e.g., say, think, perceive). In this review, I introduce the core properties of both phenomena and show that they actually stand in a subset–superset relation. The availability of indexical shift in a given environment entails that of perspectival anaphora, but not vice-versa. I describe a plausible way to make sense of these insights within a unified model of attitude shift, which in turn helps chart out clear avenues for future research. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Linguistics, Volume 7 is January 14, 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Sentiment analysis of consumer reviews – a comparison of organic and regular food products usage

Purpose This study aims to compare online review characteristics, review length and review sentiment score between “organic” and “regular” food products. In addition, variations in the consumer sentiment scores across the review lengths are studied. Design/methodology/approach This study fits into the descriptive research design. From Amazon’s website, the consumer product reviews are scrapped. Using the text analytical package “sentiment” in R-Studio, we computed the sentiment scores and counted the number of words in each review. The mean sentiment scores and mean review length are compared for regular and organic products using one-way ANOVA. Sentiment score variation across review length and product class is studied through factorial ANOVA. Sample reviews of ghee and honey are used to test the hypotheses. Findings The review length shows a significant difference between the regular and organic products. The mean number of words in the regular products reviews is significantly lower than the mean number of words in the organic product reviews. The regular products’ mean sentiment score is significantly lower than the mean sentiment score of organic products. The mean sentiment scores are not consistent between ghee and honey. Sentiment scores are better for organic honey and regular ghee products. For regular ghee products, longer reviews result in lower sentiment scores. For regular and organic versions of honey, longer reviews are associated with better sentiment scores. Research limitations/implications This study did not include the helpfulness of a review and the demographic data of the reviewers. Practical implications Sentiment scores’ variations across the regular and organic and product categories such as ghee and honey give a comprehensive feedback to the firms. It also indirectly communicates a brand’s evaluation by the consumers and the performance feedback for an upward extension like the organic category. Social implications Studies on organic category give feedback for environment-friendly products and consumer attitude shift towards safer products. Originality/value Very limited studies have reported the upward line extensions. The authors study the upward line extension organic and associated sentiment scores variation. The role of review length and its systematic influence on the sentiment scores, variations in the review due to the product nature (organic/regular) are unique contributions of this study.

Examining the impact of negative, user-generated content on stakeholders

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to (n=472) examine how negative, user-generated content on Facebook impacts stakeholders’ perceptions of the organization. Design/methodology/approach – At Phase 1, stakeholders’ perceptions about the organization – public relationship, corporate social responsibility, attitude toward the organization, and reputation of the organization were assessed. A week later, at Phase 2, participants were exposed to negative Facebook comments. This study employed the theory of inoculation as a way to bolster stakeholders’ attitudes to protect against attitude shift following exposure to negative, user-generated comments. Findings – Paired sample t-tests indicate stakeholders’ perceptions of the organization – public relationship and corporate social responsibility significantly decrease after stakeholders read negative, user-generated content. The pattern of means supports the idea inoculation can prevent against attitude shift. Practical implications – Strategic communication professionals should be aware of the impact negative posts can have and develop a strategy to respond to negative comments on Facebook. Originality/value – There is limited experimental research examining the impact of negative Facebook posts on stakeholders. It extends current literature and provides practitioners with some guidance on the impact of negative, user-generated content.