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Research has shown that adult attachment mediates the relationship between child sexual abuse and mental health functioning in adulthood. However, there is great variability across these projects as to the operational definition of attachment. Hence, the primary goal of this project was to clarify the literature by providing a comprehensive definition of attachment which would allow for the translation of research findings into a treatment application for child sexual abuse. The second goal of this project was to update the child sexual abuse and attachment research bases by providing a complete definition of mental health outcome. That is, rather than defining mental health solely as the absence of psychopathology, it was defined both as the absence of psychopathology and the presence of psychological wellbeing. From these goals it was hypothesized that child sexual abuse would be positively related to adult psychopathology and negatively related to adult psychological wellbeing. The relationships were expected to be mediated by both adult attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance. To test the hypotheses a total of 421 men and women undergraduate students were sampled and completed numerous questionnaires. The analyses revealed a significant positive relationship between child sexual abuse and adult psychopathology and this relationship was found to be completely mediated by adult attachment anxiety and partially mediated by attachment avoidance. Contrary to prediction, the inverse relationship found between child sexual abuse and psychological wellbeing was not statistically significant. Unfortunately, all supportive findings had to be nullified because the size of the relationship between child sexual abuse and psychopathology was exceptionally small and post-hoc corrections were unable to increase the size of the effect. A considerable investigation was undertaken to identify potential sources of this apparent error and the relationships between the attachment and complete mental health variables were explored further. The most impressive finding of the exploratory analyses was that nearly one quarter of the variation of complete mental health was accounted for by adult attachment. Taken together, although this project did not unfold as predicted, it did partially satisfy its secondary goal and hence it remains an interesting and viable contribution to the literature.

The focus of this research was to provide descriptive research on the social phenomenon of Mental Health Courts (MHC). This thesis begins with a description of how a community in Northwestern Ontario developed a MHC to assist in reducing the involvement of mentally disordered individuals with the criminal justice system. This initiative was done without additional funds and was a unique response to a growing community issue. This research describes the demographic characteristics of the clients with the MHC in Kenora compared with those clients not involved in MHCs to determine if involvement with MHCs reduces mentally disordered individuals’ involvement with the criminal justice system. This comparison study examined the characteristics of individuals involved within the Mental Health Diversion & Court Support (MHD&CS) program at the Canadian Mental Health Association, Kenora Branch in 2005 and compared them with characteristics of individuals who were involved in the program in 2010 who were also involved in the MHC in Kenora. The results from this analysis indicated that the following demographic characteristics yielded statistically significant differences between 2005 and 2010: if participants had residence support and to what level, if participants were presenting with anxiety symptoms, and if participants were presenting with depressive symptoms The results indicated those individuals from 2010 who were involved with the MHC reoffended less than those from 2005 who were in the regular court stream. Therefore, it could be concluded that individuals’ participation in the MHC may have influenced recidivism rates of individuals involved in the MHD&CS program. The results for readmission to hospital indicated a lower percentage of participants in 2010 who were readmitted to hospital compared to participants in 2005. Therefore, it could be concluded that having individuals participate in the MHC may have influenced individuals being readmitted to hospital. When examining which of the significant descriptive variables were statistically significant with either re-offence rates or readmission to hospital rates within their prospective years, there was only one variable that was statistically significant; this was the variable in the 2010 sample of whether participants were experiencing symptoms of depression and if they were readmitted to hospital. The chi-square results indicated that there was an association between participants exhibiting signs of depression in 2010 and being readmitted to hospital. Therefore, it appears that those individuals with symptoms of depression who were part of the MHC were more likely to be readmitted to hospital.

This. thesis is a philosophical consideration of creativity and its relationship to positive mental health. This relationship is viewed by exploring the functions of the creative process, the creative personality, the creative environment, and the creative product and their contributions to the enhancement of mental health.Using library research, a generalized concept of positive mental health is developed as well as a concept of creativity as a positive influence on mental health. The review of literature and the findings are combined for clarity.

The present study was designed to investigate the possible relationship between religiosity as cognitive variable and the occurrence and severity of nonpsychotic, reactive depression within the paradigm of cognitive theory. Religious orientation, religious belief content, and locus of control were investigated to assess their relationship to guilt tendencies and depression tendency. The basic cognitive elements of religiosity were used as predictor variables in multiple regression analyses of the criterion variables of guilt and depression tendencies. Pearson correlations were also performed to determine the strength of the relationships between religiosity variables and guilt and depression tendencies.

Past research on attitudes toward the mentally ill has produced conflicting results, due in part to methodological problems. The present study examined this issue using a more sophisticated design. Randomly, 600 residents of Delaware County Indiana were chosen from the telephone directory to be the recipients of a mail survey. Of these, 206 responded, yielding a return rate of 34.5%. Each subject was randomly assigned to either the experimental group that read a case vignette which described a hypothetical mental patient, or the control group which read about a medically ill patient. In both conditions there were three levels of severity of behavior. Thus, three cases described hypothetical patients labeled as mentally ill with a range of severity of psychopathology, and three described comparably behaving medical controls. It was found that the mentally ill were rejected significantly more than medical controls at each level of severity. Respondents also rated the mentally ill as less predictable, and having less hopeful outcomes, than the medical controls. In addition, beliefs about mental illness were not sufficient to account for all rejection. Finally, no demographic characteristics of the population were found to significantly correlate with rejection. / Department of Psychological Science

This thesis was designed to examine two issues concerning negative cognition in depression: whether a negative schema is a characteristic of depressed people, and if so, whether it is a temporary state or an enduring trait. Previous research has reported mixed findings on both issues. A negative schema was defined as the negativity of an individual's chronically accessible constructs. A positive relationship between negative construct accessibility and depression , and between negative construct accessibility and vulnerability to depression was predicted. The relationship between negative construct accessibility and vulnerability to depression controlling for depression was also examined. Subjects completed a construct accessibility measure, the Beck Depression Inventory, the Dysfunctional Attitude Scale, and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. The results indicated that the relationship between negative construct accessibility and depression was modified either by anxiety alone or by gender and vulnerability to depression. The relationship between negative construct accessibility and vulnerability to depression was modified by gender and depression. These results suggest that under certain conditions a negative schema is a temporary state in depressed individuals. Implications for future research are discussed. / Department of Psychological Science

This experiment was initially inspired by the visual imagery studies of R.J. Weber and colleagues (1969, 1970, 1972). The purpose of the present study was to examine various aspects of mental fatigue associated with the forming of mental images as suggested by Weber and Castleman (1970).A total of 45 undergraduates were given 10 trials on the Weber Alphabet Task (Weber and Kelley, 1969) which involves mental imagery, The experimental design compared three inter-trial interval periods, 0 sec, 10 sec, and 30 sec, on speed and accuracy of performance. The results indicated that the more trials a subject completed, the faster he was able to complete later trials, regardless of the intertrial interval. However, on the error data, the effedt of the intertrial interval was significant. It was demonstrated that the 0 sec intertrial interval group made most errors on the imagery task when compared to the other two groups.

Previous studies of cognitive fatigue which have used the pupillary response have centered on long term, time-induced effects. Results have indicated that pupil diameter decreases as a function of cognitive fatigue. This study examined the effects of short term, task-induced fatigue on the pupillary response.The research design involved the use of a pre/post paradigm with an interpolated mental multiplication task designed to produce cognitive fatigue. Pupil diameter and rating scale measures were obtained, as well as a measure of the subjects' numerical aptitude. By analyzing the pre/post differences in pupil diameter over time, the use of the pupillary response for the assessment of short term, task-induced cognitive fatigue was demonstrated to be feasible.

This study explored the relationship between counterfactual thinking and depressive self-schemata. Specifically, the effect of depression on the focus, direction, and action versus inaction of counterfactual thoughts was studied. It was found that the positive and negative outcome events containing action resulted in a greater range of affect (regret and joy) for the depressed group, and positive and negative outcome events with inaction resulted in greater affect (regret and joy) for the nondepressed group. The depressed and nondepressed groups did not differ in their focus on the self or other within their counterfactual thoughts in response to a positive or negative eventAlso, no differences between the depressed and nondepressed groups use of upward and downward counterfactual thoughts were found. / Department of Counseling Psychology and Guidance Services