<p> The primary purpose of this study was to explore ways migration experiences and cultural factors influence how sub-Saharan African-born immigrants diagnosed with HIV access medical and psychological health services in the United States. The study was conducted with African-born immigrants diagnosed with HIV. The participants were all members of a support group. The data was obtained through two focus group interviews. Qualitative methodology with thematic analysis was used. The findings of the study yielded six salient themes: (a) factors contributing to healthcare disparities; (b) emotional distress and psychosocial adjustment; (c) positive emotional wellness and support; (d) education as criteria to eliminate disparities; (e) stigmatization by interpreters; and (f) belief in God. Based on these findings, the following recommendations for reducing healthcare disparities among sub-Saharan African-born immigrants diagnosed with HIV were suggested: (a) provide culturally sensitive services that meet the needs of the population; (2) include clients in selecting their interpreters; and (3) provide in-depth education to clients and patients about their mental health with consideration for cultural meaning. Mental health providers are encouraged to seek some level of understanding about their patients&rsquo; perceptions of mental health symptoms and use culturally sensitive resources as an aid in providing services. The use of a collaborative and multidisciplinary team approach to care is likely to improve health seeking behaviors. Suggestions for mental health clinicians and implication for future research are discussed in the last section. </p><p> Key Words: healthcare disparities, stigma, HIV/AIDS, African-born immigrants, mental health, support, interpreters, refugees.</p>

<p> The concept of attraction and couple satisfaction has been of great interest in the field of psychology. However, there is limited research in relation to the factors of marital happiness and opposite personalities, particularly in how these are expressed through after dating or their relationship when evaluation through a time-span approach. This study attempted to fill this gap. The research question for this study was: What is the experience of being happily married among couples who have been together for at least five years and consider themselves as opposite from each other? This study used a generic qualitative inquiry, purposive sampling, and thematic analysis of the data. The generic qualitative study focused on six opposite-in-personality, happily married couples, most of whom were African American. These couples provided a rich description of their experiences of being married to their spouse, whom they believed to be opposite in personality. The 12 participants had the average age of 46.83 years, and couples were married an average of 14.33 years. The purpose of this generic qualitative study was to describe the experience of happily married couples who considered themselves opposites in terms of personalities. The major themes that emerged from the data were accepting the differences, complementary traits, foundation of the relationship, wanting a partner who is different, being around each other, conflict resolution, and communication is key. It is the hope of the researcher that this study will spark additional research that utilizes personality inventories and evaluate how personality differences impact marital satisfaction over time.</p><p>

<p> Empirical literature indicated that marriage and family therapists are not comfortable discussing sexual topics with clients. The purpose of this cross-sectional correlational study was to examine the variables that may influence or predict a therapist&rsquo;s willingness to discuss sexual topics with clients. The research questions focused on understanding the predictive relationship between the independent variables of therapists&rsquo; (a) attitudes, (b) knowledge, (c) training, (d) supervision experience, (e) clinical experience, (f) sex, (g) age, (h) strength of religion, (i) sexual orientation, (j) practice experience, (k) practice setting, and (l) graduate specialization, and the dependent variables of therapists&rsquo; (a) willingness to discuss sexual topics with clients and (b) comfort discussing sexual topics with clients. Bowenian theory provided the framework for the study. Survey data were collected from 90 state-licensed marriage and family therapists in the United States. Findings from correlational and stepwise logistic regression analyses indicated that supervision experience was the strongest predictor of a therapist&rsquo;s willingness to discuss sexual topics with a client. The second strongest predictor was clinical experience. Therapists&rsquo; attitudes and knowledge were not predictors of comfort or willingness to discuss sexual topics with clients. Increasing the number of clinical and supervisory opportunities for marriage and family therapists may increase their willingness to discuss sexual topics and may decrease the number of clients who cannot receive help, which may improve quality of life for therapists, clients, and their families. </p><p>

<p> The set of behaviors known as Autoerotic Asphyxiation (AeA) have been studied, by contemporary scientific standards, for the better part of sixty years. Within that time, an inadequate amount of research has been completed on a far too narrow sample of the population, namely those who have died from the practice. AeA as a practice has been understudied to this point despite statistics that would note the potential for an unknown number of individuals to currently be practicing these behaviors. There is a paucity of both quantitative and qualitative data about living AeA practitioners. The present study uses Sex Positivity to acknowledge and approach the Kink community from a position of social justice, wellness, and resilience within the community (Burnes, Singh, &amp; Witherspoon, 2017). Sex Positivity, as utilized in the present study, assumes validity and wellness in the varying forms of pleasure-seeking behaviors noted above that include concepts of consent, mutual respect, and communication between partners (Queen &amp; Schimel, 1997; Richards &amp; Barker, 2013). Due to the aforementioned general lack of extant data on oxygen restriction enthusiasts, the present study focuses primarily upon identifying similarities and differences between living AeA and Airplay with a Partner (APP) enthusiasts. The study attempted to identify demographics, methods, preparations, and practices of AeA and APP. The study identified several demographic information pieces, which stand in contrast to extant literature. </p><p>

<p> While having a calling can produce great results, in recent studies on calling the key to reaping the rewards has been closely linked to being able to live out the call. For pastors in particular, &ldquo;The Call&rdquo; is fundamental to their lives and work. Most enter the ministry because of a deep sense of calling from God. A pastor&rsquo;s relationship with God is also key in this experience and was hypothesized to be a factor in the calling model for this career subgroup. The goal of this study was to explore how pastors experience calling in their lives and work; specifically, the relation between belief in their calling, fulfillment of that calling, life satisfaction, and how satisfaction in their relationship with God might interplay throughout the process. After accounting for missing data and outliers, the study sample consisted of 144 pastors enrolled in an online leadership development tool. Participants ranged in age from 23 to 98, 80% identified as male, and 98.6% were Protestant. Regression analyses were performed using the PROCESS macro in SPSS to estimate a moderated mediation (Model 58). The proposed mediated relationship was significant, with calling fulfillment mediating the relationship between calling belief and life satisfaction for pastors in this sample (<i> R</i>² = 0.215, <i>F</i>(2, 141) = 19.274, <i> p</i> &lt; .001). The proposed moderating role of satisfaction in relationship with God was not a significant predictor at either proposed stage. Overall, these results reveal that for pastors, the key in the relationship from calling to life satisfaction is living out the calling.</p><p>

<p> <i>Objective:</i> Pediatric Acute-onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome (PANS) and Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorder associated with Streptococcal infections (PANDAS) are relatively new diagnoses steeped in interest and debate. While much of the research has been conducted in the medical &ndash; particularly neurological &ndash; field, little has been researched through the psychology field. Despite the fact that symptoms consist of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), tic and movement disorders, Autism Spectrum features, and more, the psychology field appears to be lacking in educating psychologists of PANS/PANDAS. This lack of knowledge puts children at risk as the presentation of symptoms look similar to purely psychiatric disorders. Having this knowledge is important as the treatment for PANS/PANDAS differs significantly from the psychiatric treatments for the symptoms. A wrong diagnosis can lead to delays in treatment, putting children at risk for further possible neurological damage.</p><p>

<p> The author presents the lack of deliverance ministry in the Evangelical church world as being incongruent with biblical, theological and historical underpinnings and, as such, forms a significant hindrance to its effective mission. To demonstrate the efficacy of deliverance, the author surveyed 46 Christian leaders on 98 possible effects of their personal deliverance experience. The author concluded that deliverance renders significant and broad positive effects in the individual leader and makes numerous recommendations pertaining to the inclusion of deliverance in ongoing church ministry, discipleship strategies and global mission.</p><p>

<p> Cancer survivors are known to experience significant changes to psychosocial wellbeing (e.g., Everdingen et al., 2007; Houldin, 2000). In particular, cancer is considered to be a highly impactful and traumatic event (K&aacute;llay, &amp; D&eacute;gi, 2014; Kangas, 2013), and often contributes to negative changes in mental and emotional functioning. It has been projected that up to 50% of cancer survivors will experience impairment from mental health symptoms (Derogatis et al., 1983; Honda &amp; Goodwin, 2004; Massie &amp; Holland, 1990), with depression, being the most common, projected to affect 20-30% of cancer survivors (Honda &amp; Goodwin, 2004; Irwin, Henderson, Knight, &amp; Pirl, 2014). </p><p> Problematically, identification of psychosocial needs of cancer survivors within oncological care is lacking (Adler et al., 2008; Holland et al., 2011; Nakash et al., 2014). Oncological primary care providers may often fail to identify psychosocial needs of cancer survivors (Forsythe et al., 2013; S&ouml;llner et al., 2001), resulting in unmet psychosocial needs and a lack of mental health referrals (Nakash et al., 2014). Researchers have identified the need for improvements in assessment of psychosocial needs of cancer survivors as a critical step in reducing gaps in psychosocial care (Adler et al., 2008). Biopsychosocial models, which theoretically include physical, emotional, social, and functional health factors (Engel, 1980; Hatala 2012), have been identified as particularly salient in assessing holistic wellbeing of individuals with chronic illnesses such as cancer (Sperry, 2006). </p><p> Currently, measures of quality of life (QoL) remain the most commonly utilized biopsychosocial assessment tools in cancer care (King &amp; Hinds, 2012; Lavdaniti &amp; Tsitsis, 2015). However, QoL and other biopsychosocial assessments utilized in medical care have been criticized for bias towards the measurement of bio-medical functioning (Jacob, 2013; Moons, Budts, &amp; De Geest, 2006), and may fail to appropriately assess psychosocial factors&mdash;particularly those relevant to co-occuring mental health symptoms (Adler et al., 2008; Alonso, 2004; Connell, O&rsquo;Cathain, &amp; Brazier, 2014). Alternatively, wellness-based models, biopsychosocial models commonly utilized in psychosocial health professions, are generally more inclusive of psychosocial factors, and may provide a more robust assessment of cancer survivors&rsquo; psychosocial needs (Jamner &amp; Stokols, 2000; Myers et al., 2005a; Swarbrick, 2013). Additionally, researchers have suggested the inclusion of patient feedback in improving disciplinary conceptualization of wellbeing (Connell et al., 2014; Weston, 2005), as QoL and wellness are theoretically subjective concepts of health (Sirgy, 2012). To this end, the purpose of this research study was to examine connections between multidisciplinary frameworks of wellbeing, QoL and wellness, and their ability to assess significant psychosocial factors that impact the holistic wellbeing of cancer survivors. This study also compared multidisciplinary models of wellbeing to significant psychosocial factors identified by cancer survivors. </p><p> In the current study, both of the examined models of biopsychosocial wellbeing were found to account for significant variance in depression scores among cancer survivors. Additionally, both models were found to have significant commonality, as well as have unique contributions in predicting depression among cancer survivors. These findings suggest the utility of multidisciplinary inspection of biopsychosocial assessment models for use in cancer care. Furthermore, while the QoL assessment model was found to be superior in capturing the unique social and physical needs of survivors within the cancer context, the wellness model was found to contribute a new significant construct to the overall biopsychosocial model of wellbeing: coping styles. Qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews held with eight cancer survivors resulted in the identification of additional salient psychosocial factors among cancer survivors not present in either of the models; namely, items related to post-traumatic growth, satisfaction with health providers and settings, and the impact of cancer-related financial burden. The qualitative results also provided further support for the quantitative results. While it is clear that current assessment models utilized in biomedical and mental health settings provide reasonable utility in accounting for the psychosocial needs of cancer survivors, the results of this study indicate the need for further refinement of biopsychosocial models utilized in the cancer context. Interdisciplinary inspection, as well as further analysis of the self-identified needs of cancer survivors may contribute to the creation of more robust biopsychosocial assessment models of wellbeing, and the resultant improvement of psychosocial care for cancer survivors. Furthermore, implications for theory, mental health and biomedical practice, and suggestions for future research will be shared while taking into consideration relevant literature on cancer survivorship.</p><p>

<p> Over the course of a therapist&rsquo;s career, absences from work are inevitable. Although therapist absences undoubtedly impact the therapy process, the topic has not received sufficient attention to produce helpful guidelines. Instead, clinicians looking to the literature for recommendations find less in peer-reviewed journals regarding therapist absences than they would if they were to turn to popular media geared toward a client audience (Barchat, 1988). This study sought to begin to remedy this research gap using a Consensual Qualitative Research (CQR) research design focusing on anticipated therapist absences. Ten therapists with at least two years of experience post-licensure were asked about their general thoughts and approach to absences and the training they had received regarding therapist absences. They were also asked to discuss in depth a time that they were absent during therapy with an individual, adult client, focusing on the period before, during, and after the absence, as well as its overall impact. Participants reported generally receiving minimal or no formal supervision or training regarding therapist absences, and experiencing emotional distress when thinking about absences as a whole. When asked about specific absences, however, participants reported experiencing more positive than negative emotions, creating a plan with the client, and generally achieving positive outcomes. Implications are discussed, including recommendations for training, clinical work, and future research.</p><p>

<p> This thesis explores issues of accessibility, quality, and effectiveness in the treatment by mental health professionals of children exhibiting severe cases of parental alienation syndrome (PAS). It presents treatment options that reflect the most up-to-date approaches, research and extensive experience, and the current knowledge base established by expert clinicians. Hermeneutic research finds the need for increased support, education, and additional resources to enable professionals to provide PAS-informed approaches when working with children and families in high-conflict divorce situations, particularly children presenting with extreme behaviors, including traits associated with psychopathology and mental illness. The author integrates personal experience in seeking to support a loved one who was the targeted parent of a severely alienated child. This heuristic account is based on witnessing a family struggling to find a way out of alienation and seeks to highlight the challenges of this client population.</p><p>