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As societies worldwide continue to navigate and recover from the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, the world is at a unique crossroads. How can leaders in higher education institutions (HEIs) prioritize holistic human needs and maximize interpersonal and collegial human connection, while continuing to guide and grow successful learning communities both in-person and virtually? With potential costs and benefits in mind, pertinent literature is reviewed, and the limitations and silver linings presented by the ongoing pandemic are explored. Different forms of grief and loss experienced by faculty and students as well as the effects of technostress amid this time of change are also recognized. Concepts and practices introduced by prominent humanistic thought-leaders are discussed as a way to navigate the educational impacts created by the pandemic. A key finding presented is that leaders and HEIs that prioritize human connections and relationships, in concert with adopting technological advancements, are better equipped to maintain personal well-being while enhancing academic success in the long term. By fostering learning environments based on psychological safety, compassion, autonomy, and adaptability, humanistic leaders contribute to the betterment of HEIs as a whole. To this end, the enduring legacy of humanistic leadership is pivotal in this new era of global and individual humanistic transformation amid change.

Psychological trauma has not been considered to be a primary factor in reconciliation, peacebuilding, and (re-)integration into society during and after conflict and with vulnerable groups. Frequently, it is seen by those in leadership “soft” and often has been characterized as “irrelevant” in comparison with such factors as politics and economics.

We believe that bottom-up work is equally important as top-down work, if not more so, in creating viable societies, particularly during and after conflict and with marginalized groups as refugees, people with mental health reactions, former prisoners, and other vulnerable groups. We have seen that people whom we call “peer supporters” under good supervision can function extremely well. In our experience, in many cases, “experts” do not understand the issues and cultural aspects vital to such groups and thus function less well than people with less formal education but who are within the communities concerned.

The CWWPP has developed a highly participatory method known as Pragmatic Empowerment Training (PET) to train and supervise such people.

We stress that these are long-term processes and that current expectations of donors and others for short-term solutions have been unrealistic. We see such work as preventing violence and encouraging integration.

The NCS was based on multistage area probability sample of people age 15–54 in the non-institutionalized civilian population of the coterminous U.S., with a supplemental sample of students living in campus group housing (Kessler et al., 1994). The survey was carried out face-to-face in the homes of respondents by professional interviewers employed by the Survey Research Center (SRC) at the University of Michigan. The survey was carried out between September 1990 and February 1992. The response rate was 82.6%, with a total of 8,098 respondents participating in the survey. A supplemental non-response survey was carried out to adjust for non-response bias, with a random sample of initial non-respondents offered a financial incentive to complete a short form of the diagnostic interview. A non-response adjustment weight was constructed for the main survey data to compensate for elevated rates of disorders found among the initial non-respondents in this non-response survey. Significance tests were made using design-based methods because of this weighting and clustering of the data (Kish & Frankel, 1970; Koch & Lemeshow, 1972; Woodruff & Causey, 1976). More details about design and weighting procedures are reported elsewhere (Kessler, Little et al., 1995).

Emotion recognition and emotion expression/regulation are important aspects of emotional intelligence (EI). Although the construct of EI is widely used and its components are part of many investigations, there is still no sufficient picture set that can be used for systematic research of facial emotion recognition and practical applications of individual assessments. In this research we present a new Facial Action Coding System validated picture set consisting of six emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise). Basic principles of stimulus development and evaluation process are described. The PFA-U can be used for future studies in organization for the assessment of emotion recognition, emotion stimulation, and emotion management.

This study examines chronic illness, disability and social inequality within an exposure-vulnerabilities theoretical framework.

Using the National Survey of Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), a preeminent source of national behavioral health estimates of chronic medical illness, stress and disability, for selected sample years 2005–2014, we construct and analyze two foundational hypotheses underlying the exposure-vulnerabilities model: (1) greater exposure to stressors (i.e., chronic medical illness) among racial/ethnic minority populations yields higher levels of serious psychological distress, which in turn increases the likelihood of medical disability; (2) greater vulnerability among minority populations to stressors such as chronic medical illness exacerbates the impact of these conditions on mental health as well as the impact of mental health on medical disability.

Results of our analyses provided mixed support for the vulnerability (moderator) hypothesis, but not for the exposure (mediation) hypothesis. In the exposure models, while Blacks were more likely than Whites to have a long-term disability, the pathway to disability through chronic illness and serious psychological distress did not emerge. Rather, Whites were more likely than Blacks and Latinx to have a chronic illness and to have experienced severe psychological distress (both of which themselves were related to disability). In the vulnerability models, both Blacks and Latinx with chronic medical illness were more likely than Whites to experience serious psychological distress, although Whites with serious psychological distress were more likely than these groups to have a long-term disability.

Several possibilities for understanding the failure to uncover an exposure dynamic in the model turn on the potential intersectional effects of age and gender, as well as several other covariates that seem to confound the linkages in the model (e.g., issues of stigma, social support, education).

This study (1) extends the racial/ethnic disparities in exposure-vulnerability framework by including factors measuring chronic medical illness and disability which: (2) explicitly test exposure and vulnerability hypotheses in minority populations; (3) develop and test the causal linkages in the hypothesized processes, based on innovations in general structural equation models, and lastly; (4) use national population estimates of these conditions which are rarely, if ever, investigated in this kind of causal framework.

The modern workplace contains many physical and interpersonal hazards to employee physical and psychological health/well-being. This chapter integrates the literatures on occupational safety (i.e., accidents and injuries) and mistreatment (physical violence and psychological abuse). A model is provided linking environmental (climate and leadership), individual differences (demographics and personality), motivation, behavior, and outcomes. It notes that some of the same variables have been linked to both safety and mistreatment, such as safety climate, mistreatment climate, conscientiousness, and emotional stability.

Purpose – Intersexuality is examined from a sociology of diagnosis frame to show how the diagnostic process is connected to other social constructions, offer new support that medical professionals define illness in ways that sometimes carries negative consequences, and illustrate how the medical profession holds on to authority in the face of patient activism.

Methodology/approach – Data collection occurred over a two-year period (October 2008 to August 2010). Sixty-two in-depth interviews were conducted with individuals connected to the intersex community including adults with intersexuality, parents, medical professionals, and intersex activists.

Findings – Medical professionals rely on essentialist understandings of gender to justify the medicalization of intersexuality, which they currently are doing through a nomenclature shift away from intersex terminology in favor of disorders of sex development (DSD) language. This shift allows medical professionals to reassert their authority and reclaim jurisdiction over intersexuality in light of intersex activism that was successfully framing intersexuality as a social rather than biological problem.

Practical implications – This chapter encourages critical thought and action from activists and medical professionals about shifts in intersex medical management.

Social implications – Intersexuality might be experienced in less stigmatizing ways by those personally impacted.

Originality/value – The value of this research is that it connects the sociology of diagnosis literature with gender scholarship. Additional value comes from the data, which were collected after the 2006 nomenclature shift.

Women are nearly twice as likely as men to suffer a major depressive episode (Kessler et al., 1994). Risk of onset for single mothers is twice that of married mothers and financial hardship also doubles the risk of becoming depressed (Brown & Moran, 1997). If diagnosed, depression can be effectively treated, typically with pharmacotherapy or psychotherapy or some combination of the two (Goldman et al., 1999; Sirey et al., 1999). But a sizable majority of sufferers remain undiagnosed and untreated (Lennon et al., 2001). Such treatment can be prohibitively expensive to patients who lack health insurance, particularly those with few financial resources. Although most low-income women have a safety net in Medicaid, welfare reform’s delinking of Medicaid from welfare cash assistance has left uncovered many who are eligible for the benefits (Garrett & Holahan, 2000).

Heritability studies attempt to estimate the contribution of genes (vs. environments) to variation in phenotypes (or outcomes of interest) in a given population at a given time. This chapter scrutinizes heritability studies of adverse health phenotypes, emphasizing flaws that have become more glaring in light of recent advances in the life sciences and manifest most visibly in epigenetics.

Drawing on a diverse body of research and critical scholarship, this chapter examines the veracity of methodological and conceptual assumptions of heritability studies.

The chapter argues that heritability studies are futile for two reasons: (1) heritability studies suffer from serious methodological flaws with the overall effect of making estimates inaccurate and likely biased toward inflated heritability, and, more importantly (2) the conceptual (biological) model on which heritability studies depend – that of identifiably separate effects of genes versus the environment on phenotype variance – is unsound. As discussed, contemporary bioscientific work indicates that genes and environments are enmeshed in a complex (bidirectional, interactional), dynamic relationship that defies any attempt to demarcate separate contributions to phenotype variance. Thus, heritability studies attempt the biologically impossible. The emerging research on the importance of microbiota is also discussed, including how the commensal relationship between microbial and human cells further stymies heritability studies.

Understandably, few sociologists have the time or interest to be informed about the methodological and theoretical underpinnings of heritability studies or to keep pace with the incredible advances in genetics and epigenetics over the last several years. The present chapter aims to provide interested scholars with information about heritability and heritability estimates of adverse health outcomes in light of recent advances in the biosciences.