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The efficacy of active spirituality in mitigating burnout and promoting wellness in the counseling profession
Get PDFBurnout presents an enormous risk to the helping professionals, and by proxy, the people they intend to help. The relationship between spirituality, religion, and burnout in the counseling profession was examined through review of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-method studies on the subject of interest. Without challenge, the overriding results were that active spirituality and religious beliefs were instrumental in preventing burnout among helping professions. Special attention was paid to Catholic priests, mental health counselors, and graduate students
Strategies for Integrating Wellness into Practicum Supervision
Get PDFThe high-stress work of the counseling profession has been linked to burnout and counselor impairment. This poses major ethical concerns for counseling practice. It has been suggested in the counseling literature that well-counselors are more helpful to their clients compared to those experiencing impairment and distress. Effective counselors are individuals continuously working toward enhancing their personal and professional wellness. Promoting student health and wellness begins with integrating this belief within counselor training programs. Wellness strategies may provide supervisors with tools to increase student wellness, prevent burnout, and assist in protecting clients from impaired counselors. This is essential because beginning counselors in training may not have knowledge about the importance of wellness as it relates to professional practice. This manuscript identifies the need to infuse wellness initiatives into the supervision experiences of master’s level counselors in training (CITs). Wellness models and concepts are discussed, a model for integrating wellness into CITs’ practicum supervisory experiences is proposed, and implications and future research directions are shared
Barriers and facilitators of intervening: The case of campus sexual assaults
Get PDFThis study examines the key barriers and facilitators, according to student respondents, that prevent and encourage bystanders on college campuses to intervene prior to or during a sexual assault. The research observes that an increased number of campus sexual assaults would have been avoided if bystanders intervened in a timely manner (see, for example, Darley & Latané, 1970). However, bystanders are most often reluctant to offer help because of a number of barriers, which will be discussed. Prior literature and theoretical contributions identify the major barriers to bystander intervention in criminal behavior generally as (1) diffusion of responsibility by bystanders, (2) lack of personal connection between the victim and the bystander(s), (3) fear ofexposure to negative personal consequences, and (4) problems in identifying if the problem was worth calling for intervention (Darley & Latané, 1970). A later study by Burn (2009) studied these major barriers directly in relation to sexual assault. This study builds on the work by Burn to further investigate barriers to bystander intervention specifically for campus sexual assault as well as to also identify facilitators that encourage bystander intervention
Ghana today: an assessment of the changes in the justice system during the colonial era
Get PDFGold Coast (present-day Ghana) was divided inland into ethnic groups. These ethnic groups were governed by laws and a corollary penal system, derived from custom. The justice system during the pre-colonial era was focused on maintaining social equilibrium and stability. Thus, imprisonment as a form of punishment was not aboriginal. Accordingly, punishments ranged in degree from apologizing, to paying compensation to victims, to performing the requisite animal sacrifice. However, as Gold Coast came under the aegis of British rule, the justice system was changed.Emile Durkheim’s theory on social change would explain the change in the Ghanaian justice system as an inevitable linear progression/change. Max Weber’s would explain the change in the justice system as an effect of rationality to make the justice system become more methodological, efficient and predictable. Michel Foucault’s would explain the change as an attempt by the British to control indigenes. But, how would a sample of subjects familiar with the justice system in Ghana explain this change? Would their explanation align with any of the above-mentioned theorists? This research is focused on examining what legal practitioners and persons, who have knowledge about the Ghanaian justice system, think caused changes in the justice system during the colonial era. This would be to identify views on the theoretical underpinning to the changes that occurred.To this end, a convenience and snow ball sampling technique were used to sample respondents. A Skype interview and an electronic survey were used to collect the data. To get an insight of what may be influencing the answers given to the above questions, the demographic variables were analyzed in relation to the responses. These variables were gender, region, where the respondent was raised, and profession
Words matter: Measuring rape myth acceptance through survey design
Get PDFSexual assault on college campuses has been a pervasive topic in American media, legislation, culture, and politics for some time. Recent legislative initiatives have increased the requirements of college campuses to investigate reported instances of sexual violence, educate communities about risk factors, and provide services to victims. The prevalence of sexual violence on college campuses is attributed to a multitude of factors. Among these, the acceptance of rape myths has been correlated with an increased propensity for males to offend and increased self-blame among victims (Powers et al., 2015). Rape myths are culturally held beliefs that create a climate that normalizes sexual violence, specifically, violence by men against women. While many do not consider the use of such language as harmful in and of itself, research shows that perpetrators of sexual and domestic violence are more likely to adhere to such myths among other attitudinal characteristics.This research examines how wording changes to one rape myth acceptance measure, the Updated Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance Scale (uIRMA) (McMahon & Farmer, 2011), affects student responses to the rape myth acceptance measures. I hypothesized that students are unlikely to respond honestly to measures of rape myth acceptance because of word choice that is socially undesirable, such as using the word, “rape,” and gendered language structure that places men in the role of perpetrator and women and girls in the role of victim. It was hypothesized that a theoretically rooted update to the measurement tool that uses gender neutral language and replaces the word “rape” with “sexual assault” would result in an increased acceptance of rape myths.Using classical experimental design, respondents were randomly assigned to two test groups: one with the original uIRMA language, and one with a revised version (referred to as the rIRMA) that uses gender-neutral phrasing and eliminates the word, “rape.” The findings of this research are in support of the hypothesis. Students given the revised measure showed heightened acceptance of rape myths as compared to those who received the uIRMA.The importance of reliable and relevant measurement tools is paramount to social scientific research. In the field of campus sexual violence, an accurate understanding of student perceptions and attitudes can help predict perpetration within communities and prevent self-blame among victims. This research is a small contribution to an important body of research regarding the attitudes and beliefs that may precipitate sexual assault
Dataset for: The hierarchy of predictability in ecological restoration: are vegetation structure and functional diversity more predictable than community composition?
No full text1. Predicting restoration outcomes requires an understanding of the natural variability of ecosystem properties. A hierarchy of predictability has been proposed that ranks measures of restoration success from most-to-least predictable in the following order: vegetation structure > taxonomic diversity > functional diversity > taxonomic composition. This hierarchy has not been tested empirically, and the location within the hierarchy of trait-based measures, such as community-level trait means and variances, is not well understood. 2. Our objective was to test the hierarchy of predictability in one of the longest running ecological restoration experiments in the western USA. We used linear mixed effects models to analyze changes in herbaceous biomass, species richness, two functional diversity indices, community-weighted mean traits, and taxonomic composition among experimental restoration treatments from 1992 to 2014 in a ponderosa pine-bunchgrass ecosystem. Restoration treatments included combinations of light or heavy tree thinning and no fire or repeated prescribed fire every four years to release the herbaceous understorey from overstorey competition. 3. Herbaceous biomass and species richness were the two most predictable and least variable measures of success, whereas taxonomic composition exhibited the highest variability among plots through time. Trait-based measures of functional diversity tended to be more predictable and less variable than community-weighted mean trait values in this experiment. Both community-weighted mean trait values and functional diversity were less variable among plots than taxonomic composition. 4. Synthesis and applications. Ecosystem properties that are intrinsically more variable over space and time will often be the least predictable restoration outcomes. Restoration practitioners can expect vegetation structure, species richness, and functional diversity to be more predictable and less variable than taxonomic composition, which can exhibit dynamic responses to restoration treatments over time. Monitoring dominant native and invasive species will always be important, but given the functional redundancy that can occur within communities, strict targets based on composition may rarely be met. Trait-based metrics that integrate taxonomic composition into their calculation are less variable and potentially more meaningful for evaluating ecosystem responses. The hierarchy of predictability should be tested in a range of ecosystems to determine its generality
Bridging the Gap: Implementing Peer-Mentoring Programs for Counselors-In-Training
Get PDFCounselors-in-training encumber a myriad of professional tasks. High prevalence of burnout in the helping professions (Testa & Sangganjanavanich, 2016) combined with overtasked novice counselors presents a conflict for the counseling profession, specifically at the counselor education stratification. Novice counselors may be unaware of the challenges they could face when entering the counseling profession. Peer-mentoring, as opposed to traditional, hierarchical mentoring, is explored as an option for increasing professional resilience. Wellness is explored as a construct conducive to peer-mentoring relationships in counselor education. Increasing resilience among novice counselors through peer-mentoring may serve to decrease burnout. Furthermore, peer-mentoring may increase wellness and self-care among novice counselors. The authors present peer-mentoring as a viable option for counselor education to implement in an effort to mitigate early counselor burnout. Design and implementation for a peer-mentoring program is introduced. The authors’ intention of the article is to call attention to the need of support for the deeper understanding and implementation of peer-mentorship in the field of counselor education
Mindful Meaning: The Impact of High Trait Mindfulness on the Fluid Compensation Process
Get PDFWhen something occurs that threatens an individual’s sense of meaning, they may respond by refocusing their attention on an unrelated meaning structure, which can be broadly conceptualized as an expected relationship in the environment. This process has been termed fluid compensation (Steele, 1988). Fluid compensation can be viewed as an avoidance defense mechanism. Currently, there has been little research done on moderating factors that may influence this process. The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of trait mindfulness as a potential moderator. Trait mindfulness is a relatively permanent sense of conscious awareness characterized by experiencing the present moment in a nonjudgemental light. Mindfulness may allow the individual to view the potentially threatening experience from a more open and objective perspective. This would eliminate the threatening feelings and thus, remove the motivation to fluidly compensate
Self-Compassion: A Wellness Intervention for the Millennial College Student
Get PDFToday’s traditional millennial college student (born between 1980-2004) is generally confident, performance oriented, ambitious, adept at multitasking, and successful (Levine & Dean, 2012; Yazykova & McLeigh, 2015). While the typical millennial college student has many strengths, researchers are noticing that this generation is increasingly affected by high rates of anxiety and depression (Brunner et al., 2014; Neff & McGhee, 2009). With a growing interest in the mental health benefits of self-compassion, researchers are finding that self-compassion is significantly decreasing personal distress in millennial college students (Neff & Pommier, 2013). Additionally, evidence suggests that increased self-compassion or treating oneself with kindness and compassion, is an important predictor of wellbeing and resilience (Neff, 2003; Neff, 2011). This article provides a current literature review describing the construct of self-compassion, the advantages of self-compassion, and its applicability to enhancing the wellbeing of the millennial college student. Additionally, the article discusses interventions that act as mediators for developing self-compassion amongst millennial college populations, providing implications for future research
Intersections of gentrification: The demographic and residential conditions of Flagstaff's Southside neighborhood
Get PDFGentrification exists as a significant social problem within the larger discourse of urban sociology and urban change. This thesis examines aspects of gentrification occurring within the historic Southside neighborhood of Flagstaff, Arizona. Two primary research questions are asked in this thesis. First, do demographic and residential conditions within the Southside neighborhood indicate that the population occupying the neighborhood is vulnerable to displacement? Second, do demographic and residential conditions within the Southside neighborhood indicate that gentrification is occurring? And if so, to what degree is this process occurring? Answering these questions enables for a greater understanding of the risks facing residents of the Southside in order to reduce potential negative impacts caused by urban change and gentrification. This study takes a quantitative approach to answering the established research questions by examining and analyzing American Community Survey data related to demographic and residential conditions that may be linked to gentrification in the Southside neighborhood and the greater Flagstaff area. This thesis finds that the Southside neighborhood is home to a population that shows signs of vulnerability to displacement, and that some forms of gentrification are occurring within the neighborhood. Additionally, this thesis includes a historical overview of the Southside neighborhood, a review of literature focusing on gentrification, a discussion of human ecology as a theoretical framework for studying urban change, the methodological approach used in this study, the findings of this study, and a discussion on the implications of the findings