<p> Leading the Church of God as an elder can be exhausting to body and soul. The challenges of pastoral leadership wear out and wear down the best of men. When these leaders find themselves unable to continue to provide healthy leadership, they may be experiencing vocational burnout. This project seeks to equip church leaders with the skills to resist burnout and build resilience. </p><p> The project director reviewed an extensive amount of literature, both from the secular and sacred communities, to develop insight into the nature of burnout and the practices that prevent burnout and encourage personal and professional health. The director's studies produced a working definition of burnout and self-care. Readers will find an extensive description of burnout's symptoms and stages. In the area of self-care, readers will discover a special emphasis on the common demands and pressures faced by pastors along with a variety of insights from ministry experts on best practices to ensure a whole-personed experience of health. The director's summary of his findings is published in appendix E, "A Pastor's Manual for Resisting Burnout and Building Resilience." </p><p> This resilience, built into the body and soul, provides a reservoir of physical and spiritual health that blesses the pastor personally, relationally, and professionally. These practices deepen the pastor's life, protects the pastor's family, and increases the quality and longevity of his pastoral ministry. Pastors who practice biblically wise self-care can resist burnout, build resilience, and set a God-honoring example to those they lead.</p><p>

<p> Detroit has high rates of criminal activities and significant numbers of at-risk residents who have challenges with different types of hardship that include economic issues. Although hardships may include various types of challenges, at-risk residents of Detroit are economically challenged because of Detroit&rsquo;s economic downfall. The economic hardships lead to the inability to provide for dependent family members, to battle poverty and addiction, and to possibly other family and societal problems. In larger cities, particularly those economically challenged such as Detroit, because of the inability to hire more patrol officers as the result of insufficient financial resources, police seek the collaboration efforts of community members in the form of community policing to reduce crime. Community policing programs are used to reduce the crime and improve the perception of the police among the residents of Detroit, but they are not effective community policing programs as they do not relate to the needs of economically challenged at-risk citizens. The problem is that ineffective community policing increases the crime in Detroit. The purpose of this study was to investigate and identify the needs of the economically challenged at-risk residents of Detroit as perceived by those at-risk residents of Detroit who are identified through private-public organizations and to compare those needs with those perceived by the police pertaining to community policing programs. This may help in developing effective community policing programs. It was important in this study to identify the needs of the community residents who may perceive that there is no other way to survive but to commit crime that should be considered in developing community policing programs. The study identified education and training as the most significant issues that challenge the economically at-risk residents of Detroit. This study found that the economically at-risk residents of Detroit believe no help is available to them, but the members of the community police officers stated that some help is available for the economically at-risk residents; however, they are unaware of the programs that can benefit them. Police stated that various programs that can feed, clothe, educate, and teach various skills to the economically at-risk residents of Detroit are available and the community policing officers through current neighborhood policing programs can direct the residents to proper resources that they may need. The research instrument consisted of semi-structured interviews of at-risk residents focusing on issues that could identify the people&rsquo;s needs and attempt to understand if the current community policing programs have been addressing these needs of Detroit&rsquo;s at-risk residents. In this study, the results of the interviews and the questionnaires&rsquo; responses were used to identify, code, and categorize patterns found in the improving the community policing in Detroit data.</p><p>

<p> <i>Purpose:</i> To determine if personality style is related to perceptions of health coaching and if there is a relationship between perceptions of health coaching and the ability to lose weight. <i>Methods:</i> Data was gathered from approximately 2,000 MR program participants via an electronic survey. The Client Evaluation of Motivational Interviewing scale was used to determine if perceptions of health coaching affect the ability to lose weight. The Ten Item Personality Inventory was used to determine if personality style is associated with the perception of health coaching. Self-reported start weight and current weight were used to calculate percent of starting weight. Linear regression was used to determine the specific aims. Statistical analysis was controlled for age and sex. <i>Results:</i> Participants who reported a greater satisfaction with their health coaches&rsquo; knowledge, ability, time, support, and relationship displayed a greater weight loss than those who were not satisfied. Satisfaction with the relationship/connection with health coach was associated with extraversion (<i>p</i> = .039). Satisfaction with support of the health coach was associated with emotional stability (<i>p</i> = .061). <i>Conclusion:</i> Positive perceptions of health coaching influence weight loss in MR program participants. Some personality styles indicated satisfaction with specific aspects of health coaching. However, it can be assumed that personality is not the sole determining factor for health coaching perceptions.</p><p>

The current investigation examined the consistency of two different types of procedural knowledge as measured by a single-response Situational Judgment Test (SJT) across three different professions, including those of a physician, volunteer, and human factors professional (HFP). The first of these types of knowledge refers to Implicit Trait Policies (ITPs), which represent general procedural knowledge as measured by an SJT and have been shown to account for variance in job performance (Motowidlo & Beier, 2009). The second class of knowledge involves a bifurcation of the knowledge construct into knowledge about effective and ineffective interpersonal interactions at work. Undergraduates ( N = 152) completed a personality measure and an abbreviated version of three single-response SJTs created for medical students, volunteers, and FIFPs. Results suggest that there is moderate consistency in knowledge about effective and ineffective behavior across different jobs and that each type of knowledge is differentially related to personality traits.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Couseling and Educational Psychology, 2009. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Feb. 10, 2010). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-06, Section: A, page: . Adviser: Rex Stockton.

<p> Research has shown that being a mental health therapist (MHT) is an extremely stressful vocation and often leads to burnout (Gibson, 2009). Evidence supports that humor and mindfulness assist in mitigating the negative effects of stress and burnout (Malinoski, 2013; Brown &amp; Ryan, 2003). It is also known that the effective use of humor (McGhee, 2010a) and mindfulness practices (Hayes, 2005) can be learned, practiced, and integrated into daily interactions across the lifespan. This research examined humor styles, trait mindfulness, and burnout of 94 licensed MHTs in community mental health centers located in Western Massachusetts in an attempt to add to research regarding burnout and protective factors that may minimize the impact of burnout. </p><p> Results found that MHTs with higher scores of trait mindfulness reported reduced levels of burnout, which supports existing research. Additionally, those reporting higher frequency of maladaptive styles of humor tend to report higher levels of Depersonalization. MHTs who reported the regular use of affiliative types of humor reported a lower rate of Emotional Exhaustion. These findings may be used to inform future pre-service and in-service training of MHTs to include attention to the possible protective factors of adaptive humor styles and trait mindfulness in an effort to prevent burnout among practicing MHTs thereby improving longevity in the field.</p>

<p> Limited research on creativity in delinquents concluded they were generally not creative, and delinquents who <i>were</i> creative tended to express creativity in the domains of crime and violence. None of this research examined creativity in delinquents with testing validated to measure both the divergent-exploratory and convergent-integrative thinking processes, now considered essential and interdependent elements of creative thinking. Further, no studies empirically examined creative products for violent and criminal content. The present study used archival data from an adapted Evaluation of Potential Creativity (EPoC) to analyze the creative potential of adolescents in a juvenile detention center relative to a reference group of adolescents in the general population. The adapted EPoC assessed creative potential in the graphic and verbal domains of divergent-exploratory thinking and the graphic domain of convergent-integrative thinking. Drawings from the adapted EPoC were also analyzed for presence and level of unsolicited violent content. </p><p> Delinquents demonstrated lower levels of creativity than adolescents of the general population in the graphic domain of both divergent-exploratory and convergent-integrative thinking. However, there was no difference in level of creativity between delinquents and adolescents of the general population in the verbal domain of divergent-exploratory thinking. In addition, delinquency did not moderate the relationship between creativity and production of unsolicited violent content in drawings; high levels of creativity in both delinquents and adolescents of the general population were associated with the production of high levels of unsolicited violent content in drawings. </p><p> The finding of no difference in levels of verbal creativity between delinquents and adolescents of the general population may suggest both groups share a common deficiency in verbal creativity due to environmental and pedagogic factors; specifically, an art bias equating creativity with graphic but not verbal creativity, and a teacher preference for students oriented toward the visual arts. The finding associating high levels of creativity with high levels of unsolicited violent content in drawings for both delinquents and adolescents of the general population may be related to the observed tendency of all creative adolescents to draw a greater volume of content overall, indicating drawing violent content is commonplace and disassociated from delinquency.</p>

<p> The Fullerton Ontological Confusion (FOC) scale was constructed to address the issues of inconsistent theory and inadequate measurement regarding paranormal, superstitious, magical, and supernatural (PSMS) beliefs. For the FOC scale, PSMS beliefs were defined as confusions of ontology, or the misattribution of core knowledge belief categories. The FOC was empirically evaluated under an Item Response Theory framework using the nominal response model (NRM) to estimate item parameters and the Wald test to evaluate within-item category variation. Using the NRM and the Wald test, the FOC scale items were revised to yield a measure that was optimally formatted and informative. Correlational analysis was used to validate the FOC scale by testing the hypothesized relationships to theoretically related and unrelated constructs. The FOC scale was found to have a good degree of validity with most of the testable validation hypotheses being supported. Compared to the available existing measures, the FOC scale could be used as a more pure and informative measure for PSMS beliefs. </p>

<p> This hermeneutic study explores the phenomenon of love-suicide using Cleopatra VII as a case study. This research explores a variety of depth psychological perspectives of death and destruction, suicide, and romantic love in order to gain an understanding of the meaning of death for the psyche and the archetypal underpinnings of suicide in the context of romantic love. Through investigating how the experiences and situations generated by love and generated in love may enliven the archetypal energy of suicide, defined as &ldquo;destructive reconstruction,&rdquo; this investigation establishes a basis for the notion that the shadow side of love may pull the soul to suicide. </p><p> This study uses the myth of Cleopatra&rsquo;s love-suicide to test the ideas developed regarding the soul&rsquo;s pull to suicide in romantic love. By imagining and exploring the projections and identifications Cleopatra may have held and how they may have impacted her love relationship with Antony and her suicide, this study demonstrates how the alchemy of being in love can deconstruct and reconstruct psyche and how love can dissolve the ego and materialize new life. The study concludes that this deconstructive process, an alchemical dissolution, is directed by the Self and ultimately may lead to physical death. This study&rsquo;s symbolic inquiry into Cleopatra&rsquo;s love-suicide illustrates that unlocking the mausoleum of the heart and exposing the interior darkness is a destructive process that is also potentially creative. That is, it may uncover the buried treasure within or bury the body that houses it.</p>

<p> The abstract is not available for copy and paste.</p>