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In this paper we analyze the conceptions of high school students about mental health issues, and discuss the creation of mental basic health programs in schools. We base our findings in a quantitative survey carried out by us with 156 high school students of CTISM (Colégio Técnico Industrial de Santa Maria) school, located in Santa Maria city, Brazil. We have find that: (a) 28 students relate the subject mental health with psychiatric hospitals and lunatic asylums; (b) 28 students have relatives affected by mental diseases; (c) 76 students believe that mental patients, if treated, can live a healthy life; (d) depression, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are the most cited diseases; (e) 84 students have contact with mental patients, but know nothing about the disease; (f) 123 students have never been instructed about mental diseases while in the school; and (g) 135 students think that a mental health program would be important in the school. We argue that these numbers reflects a vision on mental health that can be related to the reductionist education still present in schools and to the lack of integration between health professionals, sciences teachers and students. Furthermore, this vision can be also related to a stigmatization process, which interferes with the interactions and with the representations regarding mental disorders and mental patients in society. / Esta pesquisa tem caráter investigativo e objetiva analisar as concepções de estudantes do ensino médio a respeito de temas em saúde mental e pretende ser um instrumento para a discussão e criação de um programa básico de saúde mental nas escolas. Foram aplicados questionários anônimos, quantitativos para 156 estudantes do ensino médio do CTISM (Colégio Técnico Industrial de Santa Maria) na cidade de Santa Maria, RS. Constatamos que: 1) 28 alunos relacionam o tema saúde mental com hospitais psiquiátricos e manicômios; 2) 28 alunos possuem familiares com doenças mentais; 3) 76 alunos acreditam que o doente mental pode ter uma vida saudável se tratado adequadamente; 4) a depressão, a esquizofrenia e o transtorno bipolar foram as doenças mais citadas; 5) 84 alunos convivem com doente mental, mas não tem conhecimento da doença; 6) 123 alunos nunca obtiveram esclarecimentos a respeito de doenças mentais na escola e 135 achariam importante um programa básico de saúde mental nas escolas. Essa visão pode estar vinculada à educação reducionista ainda presente nas escolas e à falta de integração entre profissionais de saúde, professores de ciências e estudantes e a todo um processo de estigmatização que interfere nas interações e nas representações acerca da doença e dos doentes mentais na sociedade

An episodic novel set in rural north Texas in the 1920s, this thesis concerns the life of Lizzie Brown and her son Luke. Suffering from a series of emotional shocks combined with a chronic hormonal imbalance, Lizzie is hospitalized shortly after Luke's fourth birthday. Just as she is to be discharged, he husband dies unexpectedly. Viewed by society as incompetent to care for Luke and operate her ranch alone, she finds herself homeless. She returns to her brother's home briefly, but eventually is declared NCM and institutionalized. The story also concerns Luke, his relationships with his father and other relatives who care for him in Lizzie's absence. As he matures, he must deal with society's attitudes regarding mental illness and orphans. The story ends with Lizzie's funeral when he is twenty.

<p> The US wields the most powerful military in the history of the world, and deploys military personnel throughout the globe to fight, kill and die in atoned conflict. US veterans number around 22.5 million or about 14% of the US population. Some veterans, troubled by violence, enroll in the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) and receive care from mental health providers who have developed, through their particular framework, the medical constructs of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and moral injury (MI) to diagnose and/or "treat" these veterans as "patients." The PTSD construct casts veterans as "patients with a disorder," minimizes legitimate moral pain, and enables the US public to avoid the work of reckoning with harmful consequences of US military action for which they hold ultimate responsibility. MI, a more recent and fluid construct, occurs at the intersection of religion and violence and thus invites the contribution of chaplains. A focused MI group for combat veterans within the VHA co-facilitated by a chaplain and psychologist provides veterans the opportunity for <i>frame breaking</i> and <i> reframing</i> and holds the possibility of systemic change in a response grounded not in individual therapy or treatment but rather in shared spiritual and moral community. A public ceremony with ritual and spiritual discipline creates sanctuary for veterans to provide <i>adaptive leadership</i>, as they transform themselves from patient to prophet, bearing witness to unsanitized and inglorious truths while the US public listens and wrestles with issues of culpability, obligation, and moral responsibility. The outcome is post-traumatic growth and spiritual development&mdash;indicated by greater moral engagement, awareness, forgiveness, and compassion. Such adaptive change may lead to increased resistance to militarism and greater reverence for all life on this fragile earth.</p><p>

<p> Although the population of adults age 65 and older with Alzheimer&rsquo;s disease and other dementias is growing exponentially, many dental professionals are not adequately prepared to work with these special needs patients in the clinical setting. The purpose of this project was to develop a training for dental professionals including basics about dementia, and communication and behavioral management. Personal oral hygiene, often lacking in a person with dementia, contributes to periodontal inflammation and oral infection that may be linked to potentially, life-threatening diseases, including cardiovascular disease, and aspiration pneumonia. This could result in poor quality of life, and hospital or nursing home admission. The training will help dental professionals to better provide preventive or maintenance dental care or assist in providing care. The training will meet a portion of the continuing education biennial course requirements and course provider requirements for license renewal of dental professionals in California. The training was presented to dental professionals. Their feedback, as well as suggestions from an expert panel, informed revisions to the training, such as increasing the length of the training and including &ldquo;brain breaks&rdquo; in the presentation.</p><p>

Alcohol misuse, including heavy episodic use and negative consequences, is a major public health concern and a particular problem among college students. The etiology of alcohol misuse is not well resolved, with multiple and often contradictory factors implicated in its development. Genetic factors influence alcohol misuse but few specific genes have been identified. A potential reason for these challenges is that alcohol misuse is phenotypically and genetically heterogeneous; that is, there are multiple causal pathways underlying its development. Previous typologies have suggested that distinct internalizing and externalizing pathways are involved, with corresponding differences in profiles of personality, temperament, and comorbid psychopathology. Drinking motives, specifically drinking for positive reinforcement versus negative reinforcement motives, map intuitively onto such pathways and may provide a mechanism explaining their development. The aim of this project was to utilize drinking motives as intermediate phenotypic measures to investigate genetic and environmental factors contributing to the hypothesized diverging internalizing and externalizing pathways to alcohol misuse in a prospective, longitudinal sample of college students. Mixture modeling approaches identified distinct internalizing and externalizing subgroups with both quantitative and qualitative differences in traits/symptoms. The externalizing subgroup had a broader risk profile and elevated levels of both types of drinking motives, while the internalizing subgroup had specifically elevated levels of internalizing symptoms and negative reinforcement motives. Longitudinal analyses indicated stability of drinking motives throughout college and differential associations between positive/negative reinforcement motives and internalizing, externalizing, and alcohol misuse measures. Cross-lagged structural equation models pointed to a causal direction of effect of positive reinforcement motives on alcohol misuse. Finally, a series of genetic association analyses identified some promising genes and genetic variants underlying drinking motives and internalizing psychopathology, though their genetic etiologies remain largely inconclusive. The results of this project tie together several parallel lines of research on alcohol misuse and in the broader psychiatric genetics field. Findings support the existence of distinct, though not wholly separate, internalizing and externalizing subgroups, and suggest that the intermediate mechanisms of drinking motives are a valuable tool through which to understand these heterogeneous pathways to alcohol misuse.

<p> Cannabinoid signaling is known to modulate behavioral and physiological responses associated with stress, and could be manipulated in the management of stress-aggravated neuropsychiatric disorders. However, there is still a limited understanding of how individual components of this signaling system contribute to stress responsivity. Zebrafish are a genetically tractable vertebrate model that would be particularly useful for studying this interface. Accordingly, we utilized genome editing technology to provide a platform for studying how cannabinoid signaling modifies stress responses in zebrafish. <b>Chapter 1</b> reviews how zebrafish have been leveraged in the field of cannabinoid biology. <b>Chapter 2</b> describes the deployment of transposon technology to develop the SR4G zebrafish stress response reporter line, which is used to show that cannabinoid signaling impacts the transcriptional activity of glucocorticoid receptors. <b>Chapter 3</b> details the deployment of nuclease technology to develop lines with mutations in genes encoding components of the endocannabinoid system, which are used to establish roles for these genes in modulating stress-associated behavior. <b>Chapter 4</b> concludes with a summary of this thesis, and synthesizes content from the preceding chapters in a discussion about potential future research directions. </p><p>

M.A. (Psychology) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

Ph.D. (Education) / The effects of daily abuse and hardship on the streets lead street children to suffer from poor mental health resulting in them choosing ineffective and self-destructive coping strategies that then impacts their physical health and their overall sense of well-being. Facilitation of the mental health of street children subjected to daily threats to their survival is thus crucially needed. In my previous research, I indicated that street children are more vulnerable to impaired psychological health than any other group of children (Moolla, 2007:65-78; Moolla, Myburgh & Poggenpoel, 2008:597). The results of this research further confirmed that street children experience a vast array of negative feelings during their daily survival activities on the street which impact negatively on their mental and physical health. I also found that negative feelings of fear, abandonment, rejection, sadness, loss of trust, disillusionment and a sense of both hopelessness and uncertainty were experienced by all the street children in the study during their daily activities necessary for their survival. As a psycho-educational facilitator, I am equipped with the skills to provide the facilitation of the mental health of street children subjected to daily abuse and hardship on the streets. Psycho-educational facilitators are highly valuable in providing an integrated healthcare-social-psychological approach when working with vulnerable individuals. To date, they are not being utilized to benefit the community and social health services, places of care and institutions catering for the neglected and abused individuals in our society. The development of a model “Facilitating the mental health of street children” is the primary purpose of this research. The problem of street children suffering from challenges to their mental health due to their daily abuse encountered on the streets, made me realise that street children need urgent facilitation of their mental health. The fact that they made a decision to leave a usually abusive home and family environment for the street shows that street children already possess an inner resilience when it comes to self preservation. However, they frequently end up choosing destructive coping strategies which makes it more difficult for them to utilise their inner resources to enhance their lives. Thus, this model focuses on nurturing this inner resilience present in street children in order to facilitate them toward enhanced mental health. Other important aspects of this research are guidelines and recommendations for psycho-educational facilitators or any healthcare professional with regard to how they should implement the model.

The aim of the research was to develop a psychoeducational programme for team coaches to facilitate the mental health of managers. Preventing managerial degeneration has become a corporate priority. Without support and intervention, executives and managers can degenerate personally or derail careerwise at enormous cost to themselves, their companies and the economy. Personal degeneration may include selfneglect, ignoring families, marriages, friends, personal interests and their own physical and mental health as they chase their corporate and career objectives. Business managers are subjected to more pressure than ever to produce results, yet they are often promoted through job specific expertise without the emotional intelligence and worklife balance skills necessary to sustain them. Research has revealed an across the board consensus that coaching is one of the most powerful strategic and tactical weapons open to business today because of its ability to enhance areas of proficiency that are already high and to establish skills that were previously absent or weak. Business coaching provides the gateway to intellectual and emotional support and develops managers, thus avoiding managerial derailment and preparing individuals to meet the increasingly complex requirements of today’s business environment. Business and team coaching is distinct from other types of coaching and calls for additional competencies and expertise as specialisation areas. The coaching industry in Southern Africa is in its infancy and as such there are currently no barriers to entry. There is a lack of descriptive and accepted standards, agreed upon core competencies and accredited team coaching programmes that offer depth in terms of knowledge, skills, values and business acumen. In light of the above challenges the following research question arose: · What should a programme for team coaches consist of in order to facilitate the mental health of managers? A qualitative, explorative, descriptive and contextual research design was followed including autoethnography as a strategy. The research took place in four phases. Phase 1: A situation analysis was done in order to explore and describe what a programme for team coaches should consist of in order to facilitate the mental health of managers. This involved the identification of key stakeholders. Focus groups and interviews were conducted and individual naïve sketches collected from individuals who were are not available for interviews. A literature control was conducted in order to verify findings. Phase 2: Based on the abovementioned results, the research progressed to phase two, which involved the development of a programme. During this phase a conceptual framework was described that included an approach to the programme. Phase 3: This phase presented a description of the programme as well as guidelines for the implementation of the programme. Phase 4: The programme was evaluated and possible limitations were highlighted. Recommendations regarding possible further research were made. The researcher believes that business and team coaching will continue to thrive and gain increased status as a profession. With an empirically sound programme in place, business and team coaching is set to flourish and managers have a means to manage and maintain optimum mental health. / Prof. Marie Poggenpoel Prof. Chris Myburgh