87 research outputs found
Male victims of intimate partner violence by a female partner: Long-term effects and barriers to help seeking
No full textLife stories from the invisible youth: A study of narrative identity in young adults from families struggling with substance abuse
No full textObjective: Narrative identity is the dynamic story that people construct to make sense of their experiences. The narrative identity integrates people storied past, their present as well as their expected future to bring meaning and purpose to their exist- ence. The narrative identity has been proven to correlate with measures of mental health issues and research on this area has been proven to bring insight into the psy- chological mechanisms related to well-being. This study sought to examine the nar- rative identity of two young adults from families where one or more of the primary caregivers has struggled with alcohol or substance abuse issues. The purpose of this study is to understand the way in which an upbringing in such a household influences the way young people construct their self-understanding through their narrative iden- tity. Method: To examine the research question, a mixed method approach was used through the quantitative coding and qualitative analysis of two semi-structured inter- views with the informants based on The Life Story Interview produced by Dan McAdams. The informants consisted of two young Danish adults from a local gym- nasium with fathers struggling with alcohol abuse issues who were asked to narrate their life story through chapters and important life scenes. The narrative coding was based on three domains of the narrative identity: structural elements, autobiograph- ical reasoning and affective and motivational themes including agency-, communion- and redemption themes. Findings: The analysis revealed inconsistent findings re- garding the structural elements when coding for context but found a general lower score for autobiographical reasoning through the measure of exploratory processing in the chapters and scenes describing the informants’ earlier childhood years. A low- er score for agency and communion themes were also found in the earlier parts of the informants’ life stories, whereas the chapters and scenes describing their adolescentyears had higher scores, especially those regarding their peers and personal evolve- ment. The informants described their life scenes with a strong sense of redemption, and generally viewed their life stories as evolving positively. Implications: The analysis is based on case studies with diverse respondent characteristics, which may have implications for both the reliability and generalizability of the results. Overall, by shedding light on the lived experiences of young adults from families struggling with substance abuse, the research has the potential to inform interventions, chal- lenge societal attitudes, and contribute to our broader understanding of identity for- mation and resilience in the face of adversity
Examining the Utility of Life Narratives for the Assessment of Personality Pathology in Emerging Adults
No full textRecent advances in psychiatric nosology adopt a dimensional conceptualization for personality pathology. This framework includes the assessment of an individual’s level of personality functioning (LPF), constituting core features of personality pathology across self- and interpersonal domains. Given the increased emphasis on the assessment of self-functioning (e.g., identity, self-direction), scholars have proposed that narrative methods might be useful for the assessment of one’s sense of self, and thus, improve the detection of personality pathology. The narrative identity framework offers a phenomenologically rich account of the self as a story, holding the potential to capture aspects of the self not currently assessed with existing measures of self and identity. Thus, the current study aimed to examine the utility of narrative identity for the assessment of LPF. Through this, we examined the associations between narrative identity and LPF, and the prediction of both a self-report measure and clinical interview of LPF by narrative variables. Finally, we used hierarchical regression to evaluate the incremental utility of narrative identity over LPF in predicting functional impairment. Data was collected from 90 participants between the ages of 18 and 25 (M = 20.09, SD = 1.71) drawn from a mixed college and clinical sample. Results revealed more maladaptive LPF was significantly associated with lower levels of agency, communion, and growth, but higher narrative deterioration. Regression analyses revealed narrative agency emerged as the sole significant predictor of LPF as measured via self-report. Results demonstrated that agency explained small incremental variance above the clinical interview for LPF (though not the self-report measure) in predicting functional impairment. In sum, findings suggest that narrative identity is indeed associated with LPF, and narrative agency in particular may benefit the assessment of LPF
Personality Disorder and Adolescents—Still Living on a Shoestring?
Get PDFPersonality disorder (PD) has been and continues to be a controversial mental disorder to discuss with young people under the age of 18 [...
Maladaptive Social Cognition and Perspective-Taking
No full textIn this chapter we argue that social cognition, or mentalization, is significantly related to personality disorder (PD) as operationalized in the ICD-11. We present evidence that links maladaptive social cognition to PD and suggests mentalizing as a potential marker for psychopathology and personality dysfunction in general. We propose that a core defining feature of PD as defined in the ICD-11 operationalization, is maladaptive mentalizing, including the capacity to understand others “perspectives.” The model we suggest further extends the idea on the role of social cognition and mentalization in PD and links maladaptive mentalizing to epistemic mistrust, social hypervigilance, and interpersonal dysfunction.</p
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