<p> Money is generally assumed to be a good thing, but there is a downside to wealth. Research has shown that more money does not necessarily lead to greater happiness, but the reasons why remain unclear, and there is a paucity of studies comparing the wealthy to the non-wealthy. This study explored the effect of money on well-being, as well as the various problems associated with abundance. Having more money creates its own unique set of problems, as one must tend to one&rsquo;s money, protect it, and deal with the insatiable urge to accumulate more of it. It was proposed that those who have a lot of money exhibit more paranoia, higher levels of money addiction, and less quality of life, than those who have only have average amounts of money, which may explain why more money does not equal more happiness. Two groups, a wealthy &ldquo;target&rdquo; group and a non-wealthy &ldquo;control&rdquo; group, each completed the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI-16), the Paranoia Checklist, the revised Workaholism scale, quality of life as indexed by the World Health Organization Quality of Life-BREF, the Flourishing scale, and a demographic questionnaire. On average, the wealthy in the target group were found to have greater quality of life than the control group, mostly due to greater reported physical health and environment than their less wealthy counterparts. The other variables did not demonstrate a significant relationship or difference; in fact, on the variables of narcissism and money addiction level, the two groups were found to be nearly identical. However, once age was controlled for, paranoia was found to have a statistically significant relationship with Income. In other words, as predicted in the hypothesis, those with wealth exhibited greater paranoia than those with only average amounts of income when their ages were held constant; paranoia predicted wealth. The present study suggests one possible explanation for why more money does not necessarily lead to more happiness &ndash; the wealthy are more paranoid and distrustful of others than the non-wealthy.</p>

<p> Pediatric oncology patients and siblings are a population at-risk for negative psychosocial outcomes due to the various procedures, treatments, late effects, and family-based stressors associated with pediatric cancer. Pediatric oncology camps were designed to creatively address psychosocial gaps experienced by this steadily increasing population. Literature focusing on psychosocial adjustment of pediatric cancer patients and siblings is generally mixed or inconclusive, although there is some evidence suggesting increased psychosocial adjustment following camp participation. Research focusing on levels of perceived social support is limited. Although campers report social support as a main benefit of oncology camp participation, most studies are exploratory and yield inconsistent findings regarding demographic differences. In order to understand the effects of an oncology camp intervention on levels of psychosocial adjustment and perceived social support for pediatric cancer patients and siblings, an archival data set collected at a pediatric oncology camp (<i>N</i> = 64) was analyzed. There were 30 patients and 34 siblings in the sample, 37 females and 27 males, and with a mean age of 11.84 (<i>SD</i> = 2.89). Participants completed the Children&rsquo;s Depression Inventory (CDI) and the Social Adjustment Domain (SA) from the Child Behavior Checklist &ndash; Youth Self-Report at three time points. Data was analyzed using repeated measures MANOVAs and results indicated that psychosocial adjustment increased significantly for adolescent females but not for other demographic groups. Additionally, perceived social support was found to increase for adolescent females but decrease for adolescent males, although other demographic groups did not appear to experience significant change over time. Strengths, limitations, and areas for future research are addressed as part of the discussion. </p>

<p> Occupations involving vigilance performance (i.e., sustained attention in monitoring for rare environmental threats) are known to experience vigilance decrement, a decline in performance over time. These occupations are known to be cognitively and emotionally challenging, giving rise to harmful effects for employees in them and presenting safety implications for the welfare of others. The current study investigated mindfulness as a potentially viable intervention to alleviate outcomes of vigilance demands: stress and mental demand. A mindfulness induction was compared to an unfocused control condition in which both were administered during a break from a vigilance task, specifically, a baggage screening task. Ultimately, findings did not reveal positive effects for the mindfulness intervention, leading to reservations about its viability in a vigilance context. Moderation analyses revealed that baseline levels of stress and mental demand may have impacted one&rsquo;s ability to derive benefits from the mindfulness intervention. Finally, though the intervention failed to take effect, promising findings emerged for general levels of trait and state mindfulness across participants, independent of condition. Implications and future research directions are discussed. `</p><p>

The problem addressed by this study is the lack of information available to help concerned people create an effective support system for a friend or family member who is diagnosed with cancer. Six cancer support systems, including both cancer patients and their supporters, were interviewed in order to find out what was effective in these support systems. All the support systems were described by the cancer patient as "good" or "helpful". For purposes of this study, the concentration was on cancer patients' "personal" support people, consisting of family and friends. Major themes addressed in the interviews were: having support already in place, commitment, giving and receiving love, having no choice but to support, belief in the possibility of healing, openness to change, amount and variety of support, offering anything and everything, layers of support, making offers of support specific, supporters' inspiring and "pushing", different strokes, cultivating self-assertion, having support affirmed, supporters getting support, accepting mortality, joy in life, intimacy, being fully present, rewards intrinsic to supporting and finding new meaning in life. Conclusions were not formed concerning what necessarily makes a good support system. What was good for one cancer patient or group of supporters was not necessarily good for another. The help given also varied depending on the resources of a particular support group. Possibilities for helping are described in order that other support systems might experiment with them and vary them as seems appropriate. Although the particular ways of supporting differed from group to group, all felt that they had come forward to give help, and continued to help, as a response to the love they had for the cancer patient they were helping and a sense of "doing right". Supporters found that in being authentic to themselves and in honoring the love that existed between themselves and the cancer patient, they had "no choice" but to support. The love that existed between supporter and cancer patient sustained supporters in their often very difficult roles of supporting.

A vulnerability model of depression based on attachment theory was presented. It was proposed that people's early experiences with caregivers determine the nature of their mental models of the self and relationships. When early relationship experiences are negative, people develop a model of the self as unworthy of love and a model of attachment figures as unreliable. These negative self- and relationship schemas consequently make such persons vulnerable to depression and contribute to poor adjustment in romantic relationships. Two studies were conducted to explore the link among quality of relationship with parents, self- and relationship schemas, depression, and relationship functioning. The first study compared depressed and nondepressed college women; the second study compared married women who had recovered from major depression and nondepressed women. Remitted and depressed women reported negative childhood relationships with parents, low self-esteem, insecure attachment styles (preoccupied or fearful), neglectful caregiving, and poor relationship functioning. Depressed and previously depressed women report more negative self- and relationship schemas. Thus, people who have negative relationship experiences with their parents while growing up will develop negative self-schemas and insecure relationship schemas; these in turn increase vulnerability to depression and to problems in romantic relationships. Implications for attachment theory and therapy are discussed.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of attributions, perceived avoidability, and acceptability on long-term adjustment following abortion. From an initial group of 192 women undergoing first-trimester, elective abortion, we conducted analyses on a subgroup of 75 women who returned for a post-abortion follow-up visit. We were most interested in psychological factors present at the time of the abortion that could be used to predict adjustment at the follow-up visit six to eight weeks later. Measures assessing coping, self-esteem, and depression were used as indicators of adjustment. Over time, we found that adjustment following abortion tended to improve rather than decline; however, feelings of vulnerability also increased. In terms of attributions, only attributions to luck were directly related to adjustment. Women who blamed luck for their unwanted pregnancy coped worse relative to women who did not. Perceived avoidability was also directly related to coping; women who felt that they could have avoided the past unwanted pregnancy or could avoid one in the future experienced better adjustment. Attributions to the self and behavior, while not directly related to adjustment, were associated by virtue of their relationship to perceived avoidability; that is, the attribution-adjustment relationship was mediated by perceived avoidability. Acceptability of abortion was associated with coping. Women who were least accepting of abortion reported having the most difficult time coping. Acceptability of abortion, future avoidability, and attributions to luck were found to be the best predictors of adjustment. Finally, we examined women in terms of whether or not they used contraception at conception and found no differences in adjustment.

<p> A fundamental aspect of successful social interactions is the ability to accurately infer others&rsquo; verbal communication, often including information related to the speaker&rsquo;s feelings. Autism spectrum disorder is characterized by language and social-affective impairments, and also aberrant functional neural responses to socially-relevant stimuli. The main objective of the current research was to examine the behavioral and neural effects of making affective inferences from language lacking overt prosody or explicit emotional words in individuals with and without autism. In neurotypical individuals, the current data are consistent with previous studies showing that verbal emotional stimuli enhances activation of brain regions generally responsive to discourse, and also &ldquo;social-affective&rdquo; brain regions, specifically medial/orbital frontal regions, bilateral middle temporal areas, temporal parietal junction/superior temporal gyri and pCC/PC. Moreover, these regions respond differentially to positive and negative valence, most clearly in the medial frontal area. Further, results suggest that mentalizing alone does not account for the differences between emotional and neutral stories, as all of our stories required similar inferencing of the feelings of the protagonist. In autism, there is general agreement that the neurodevelopmental disorder is marked by impairments in pragmatic language understandings, emotional processes, and the ability to &ldquo;mentalize,&rdquo; others&rsquo; thoughts, intentions and beliefs. However, findings are mixed regarding the precise nature of emotional language understandings. Results of the present study suggest that autistic individuals are able to make language-based emotional inferences, and that like neurotypical controls, social-affective brain regions show task-related facilitation effects for emotional compared to neutral valence. However, the neural activations in the autism group were generally greater than controls, especially in response to emotion. Additionally, results showed greater difficulty with incongruent judgments in participants with autism. Together, these findings represent a first step toward revealing social-affective abilities in the language context in autism, despite irregular brain response. Such understandings are critical to generating effective intervention strategies and therapeutic practices for autistic individuals and their families. For remediation to be most beneficial, one must understand and utilize areas of skill, and leverage those to positively impact deficits.</p>

<p> This study examined multiple dimensions of well-being among adults with identified religious or spiritual affiliations utilizing the Multidimensional Well-Being Assessment (MWA). This study focused on transcendent well-being and its dimensions of religiosity/spirituality and meaning/purpose/flow. A non-random sample of 492 participants with identified religious or spiritual affiliations completed multiple measures of well-being as part of a larger psychometric investigation of the MWA. This study supports the MWA as a valid and reliable measure of transcendent well-being among adults with identified religious or spiritual affiliations. This study also found that those who view religiosity or spiritualty as very important to them and value its importance to their overall well-being had higher levels of transcendent well-being than those who did not. Furthermore, results of a series of MANOVAs found statistically significant differences between groups on various demographic and background variables (e.g., religious orientation, race/ethnicity, relationship status, and education level) who rate religion or spirituality in their top determinants of overall well-being. This study&rsquo;s findings also indicated transcendent well-being is positively correlated with other dimensions of well-being. This study has implications for future research related to understanding well-being in individuals who identify as religious or spiritual.</p>

<p> This hermeneutical research presents correlations between unconscious trauma responses and resultant sexual desire and behavior. Trauma reactions include reenactment, repetition compulsion, reverse reenactment, fawning, and dissociation. Clandestine sexual practices are often conducted surreptitiously, may co-occur with sexual paraphilia, and may include: infidelity; anonymous and group sex; pornography, cybersex, and virtual reality sex; sex with dolls and robots; and prostitution, strip clubs, and sex workers. The American Psychiatric Association&rsquo;s criteria for pathology are explored along with sex-positive psychology&rsquo;s position on the role of consent in diagnosing paraphilic disorder. Clinical manifestations of sexual distress including paraphilic and physiological disorders, sexually transmitted infections, sexual addiction, and related somatic and mood disorders are considered. Theories of ego-syntonia, ego-dystonia, and sexual consent are examined. Clinical applications include psychoeducation on unconscious trauma responses, a depth psychological approach to sexual content, explication of the original <i>dynamic sexual consent </i> theory and assessment tool, and frameworks for ego-syntonic sexuality.</p><p>

<p>Depression is a serious disability around the world that can cause harm to a person's physical and mental well-being. Little research has been done on the effects of social cohesion on depression. This study used a cross-sectional descriptive survey design to analyze a sample from the California Health Interview Survey (CHIS) to determine whether or not there was a relationship between how often a person feels depressed and social cohesion factors: (1) willingness of people in the neighborhood to help each other, (2) trust in people in the neighborhood and (3) doing volunteer work or community service in the past year. </p><p> Using, Chi-square analysis, it was determined that these three social cohesion variables showed a significant relationship with how often a person feels depressed. Having substantial social networks may act as protective barriers to stress, fear, and lack of control. These protections have positive impacts on depression and depressive symptoms. </p>