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Throughout the past several decades, research regarding counselor resilience has shifted from a pathology-based to a strengths-based approach. As a result, researchers have moved away from primarily identifying risk factors and now focus on protective factors. Researchers have found that social supports serve as a protective factor in counselor resilience. However, there is a lack of understanding of how counselors receive that social support, specifically after a professional adverse event. Professional adverse events are common given the nature of counseling work. For example, undesirable occurrences such as client suicide, attempted suicide, life threatening illnesses, accidents, overdose, or loss of a child are considered professional adverse events. This study explored how ten professional counselors experienced social support following professional adverse events. Three themes emerged from these counselors' stories: difficulty seeking support, misplaced support, and acts of kindness. Implications for counselors include honoring both confidentiality and their own humanness, the cultivating co-regulating relationships, and reinforcing acts of kindness. Counselor educators and supervisors can foster counselor resilience by using the implications to teach counselors how to invite effective social support. / Doctor of Philosophy / Being a counselor can be both challenging and rewarding. Given the heavy caseloads and complexity of cases, it is common for counselors to experience adverse professional events. Research shows that protective factors serve as a buffer against stress. Social support is a protective factor that assists counselors in maintaining wellness and building resiliency. This study explored how professional counselors received support from interpersonal relationships following a professional adverse event. Findings from this study indicate the importance of counselors honoring their own humanness while protecting the client’s confidentiality, the importance of having co-regulating relationships, and the healing power of acts of kindness.

The percentage of rape victims who do not seek social support after rape is alarming, particularly given the potential consequences of not seeking help. The present study attempts to address the dilemma of rape and attempted rape victims' lack of support seeking through a two-phase online intervention designed to encourage them to seek treatment. The study manipulates factors involved in characterizing oneself as a rape victim and in seeking help for problems resulting from rape. It was hypothesized that victims who received the intervention would seek counseling more than victims in a wait-list control group. Participants were 1322 women ranging in age from 17 to 39 from a large, southeastern university. Of these women, 344, or 26% of the sample, reported an experience consistent with a legal definition of rape or attempted rape. Unfortunately, it was not possible to fully examine the proposed model in this study, as hypothesized differences between intervention and control subjects did not exist. However, interesting trends developed collapsing across treatment groups. While few participants sought formal help, almost three-fourths sought informal help and almost half sought information about counseling. These findings are made even more salient by the large number of non-recent victims who sought help for the first time. Taking part in the study itself appeared to encourage victims who had gone without help for some time to actually seek help. In addition, higher levels of distress were associated with seeking help, as were higher levels of negative social reactions, stigma, and self-blame. Perceived need for help was found to mediate the relationship between distress and intent to seek help. Limitations and suggestions for future research are discussed. / Ph. D.

In comparison to their non-maltreated peers, adult survivors of child maltreatment experience more social and emotional maladjustment; however, survivors can be resilient when they have adequate psychological and social resources to cope with abuse sequelae. Similarly, stress and health studies have shown that social support schemas are stress buffers that attenuate negatively-valenced emotional reactivity. As a result of interpersonal problems, however, some individuals might interpret current relationships more negatively and expect little support in the future. Young women (ages ranging from 18 to 23) with histories of child maltreatment were administered a harassment task while their cardiac activity, emotional states, and stress appraisals were assessed. Before the stressor, the women were randomly assigned to either of two schema priming conditions: thinking and writing about a supportive person (social support schema condition) or a casual acquaintance (control condition). In comparison to women in the control condition, women in the support condition evidenced less state anger and heart rate variability (i.e., rMSSD) reactivity in response to the laboratory stressor; however, the support schema and reactivity relationship did not vary significantly between women with high versus low interpersonal problems. The support schema and state anger reactivity relationship was fully mediated by primary stress appraisals (e.g., feeling challenged and feeling intimidated), but not secondary stress appraisal (e.g., feeling in control). These findings suggest that there are nuances in the relationship between support schema and reactivity. Clinical and research implications are discussed. / Ph. D.

Adoption is an important family structure in The United States. In 2013, more than 1.7 million children were adopted including domestic, International, and foster care adoptions in the U.S. I examine the perceived and received support from grandparents to adoptive families and the impact it has on the families' lives. Qualitative methods in the form of semi-structured open-ended interviews were used to conduct 28 interviews with adoptive parents. My findings reveal that maternal grandmothers were more likely to be supportive and involved in adoptive families compared to other grandparents. Secondly, perceived support was directly mentioned or implied by every adoptive family. Third, single mothers expressed more desire for and instances of grandparent support. Fourth, the majority of grandparents who were initially hesitant or reluctant about adoption were later supportive and accepting of the adopted child(ren). Fifth, most adoptive families received and perceived support. However, some families who did not receive or perceive much support were able to find alternative support systems. Finally, verbal and emotional supports were the most reported forms of support from grandparents to adoptive families. Almost all adoptive families reported some level of emotional and/or verbal support from one or more grandparent. Future research can more thoroughly examine family outcomes from grandparent support. Looking at the other support systems adoptive families use is an additional area of future research. / Ph. D.

The older female segment plays a critical role in society's fabric, as women past retirement volunteer a significant amount in their communities and provide essential caregiving to family members and friends. Moreover, older females outnumber older males and with the baby boomer population aging over 65, this segment is becoming more influential. Yet there is surprisingly little marketing research that focuses on this older female segment, their lived experiences, and their well-being. Working within the tradition of consumer culture theory, this project is an ethnographic exploration of the Red Hat Society (RHS), a brand community which focuses on celebrating older women. This research adds to the theoretical understanding of older female consumers by exploring how older women negotiate the meaning of aging, gender, and identity. Extending on brand community literature, I suggest how the RHS manages to create a supportive, 'safe space' in which members are able to engage play and learning. Play performances, enacted in through costuming and other rituals within the brand community, are extended beyond the bounds of this 'safe space' to influence the identities and well-being of these women. / Ph. D.

This thesis examines whether residing in a mobile home predicts higher rates of psychological distress. Using combined data from the General Social Survey (1994-2006), I differentiate housing into four distinct categories: mobile homes, conventional homes, apartments, and townhouses. After looking extensively at the history and experience of residing in a mobile home, particularly when viewed through a social stress theory lens, I hypothesize that mobile home residents should have higher levels of psychological distress after socioeconomic variables are controlled. While mobile home residents have the highest raw scores for psychological distress (a composite of depression and anxiety), these did not hold significance after the inclusion of the socioeconomic and control variables. Conversely, social network ties were stronger in the mobile home community than in other types of housing and this remained so after socioeconomic variables were included. This thesis supports Shelton, et al.'s (1983) findings that mobile home residents are in many ways more similar to their conventional home counterparts than those living in apartments. It also supports social stress theory's assertion that social support is associated with better mental health and that socioeconomic factors are paramount when predicting levels of psychological distress. / Master of Science

Research across healthcare and organizational settings demonstrates the importance of social support to increase physical and mental well-being. However, the process of seeking social support is less well-understood than its outcomes. Specifically, research examining how people seek social support in natural settings is scarce. One natural setting increasingly used by people to seek support is the internet. In this online setting, people seek and provide social support verbally via social media platforms and messages. The present project seeks to further examine the nature of social support seeking in these online contexts by examining people’s language. This analysis includes discovering the common language features of social support seeking. By applying a data-driven content analysis approach, this research can examine the underlying themes present when seeking social support and build upon that insight to classify new instances of support seeking. These results would have important practical implications for occupational health. By identifying individuals who are seeking social support, future interventions will be able to take a more targeted approach in lending additional support to those individuals who have the greatest need. Subsequently, this application potentially provides the mental and physical health benefits of social support. Therefore, this research extends our knowledge of both the nature of support seeking and how to develop effective interventions. / M.S. / Research suggests that social support has important effects on our mental and physical health. To this point, though, the process of seeking social support has largely been neglected in research. Specifically, there hasn’t been much research on how social support is sought online. We know that people seek social support online by posting and messaging on social media. The present study seeks to examine the language of online support seeking—this way, we can understand what people tend to say when seeking support. The present study is concerned with the content of support seeking posts; by analyzing this content, we can understand themes that are prevalent in online support seeking. This allows us to better understand support seeking and, hopefully, better identify people in need of support. By identifying those people in need of support, we can ensure that their support needs are met and that they don’t suffer the health consequences related to a lack of social support. Therefore, this research extends our knowledge of social support seeking, both theoretically and practically.

Interpersonal Violence in the form of school shootings is prevalent in American society and can negatively impact the mental health of survivors. Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) tend to bear the worse outcomes following such events due in part by effects of complex trauma (e.g., minority stress). Using the Andersen Model of Behavioral Healthcare Use within a sample of 4,627 students who were enrolled at the time of the Virginia Tech 4/16 shooting, the current thesis sought to: (1) examine predisposing factors as a mediator of the relationship among racial identity and help seeking, (2) to examine enabling factors as a mediator of the relationship among racial identity and help seeking and (3) to examine need factors as a mediator of the relationship among racial identity and help seeking. Using negative binomial regressions within a mediational framework, the relationships among racial identity and help seeking were assessed, with variables capturing predisposing, enabling, and need components of the Andersen Model of Behavioral Healthcare Use entered as mediators. The results showed that predisposing factors mediated the relationship among racial identity and help seeking behavior in Asian, Black, and White students, but not Latinx students. Enabling factors mediated the relationship among racial identity and help seeking in Asian and Latinx students, but not Black and White students. Need factors mediated the relationship among racial identity and help seeking behavior in White students, but not in Asian, Black or Latinx students. Clinical implications of these results and future directions are discussed. / M.S. / Mass shootings in educational settings negatively impact the mental health of survivors, especially Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) who often bear the worst outcomes to these events. Individuals who are survivors of mass shootings don’t often utilize mental healthcare services despite their effectiveness in trauma exposed populations. This study uses the Andersen Behavioral Model of Healthcare Use to examine the help seeking behavior of students following the Virginia Tech 4/16 shooting. The results of this study indicated that Asian, Black and White students’ functioning in several areas of their life (e.g., social life, academic life) prior to the event explained the relationship between racial identity and help seeking behavior. Social support factors also explained the help seeking behavior of Asian and Latinx students. Lastly, students’ need as measured by their posttraumatic stress symptoms explained the relationship among racial identity and help seeking behavior in White students. Clinical implications stressing the importance of widened outreach following mass trauma are discussed.

Research surrounding older adults, social support, and emotional well-being are richly researched topics. However, literature is devoid of qualitative studies and research focusing specifically on community centers and older adultsâ social networks, which are integral for understanding the growing needs of older adults in todayâ s society. Guided by the theoretical frameworks of phenomenology, activity theory, and ecological theory, four in-in-depth interviews were conducted and then coded for themes. The central themes highlighted family connection, connection with others, resiliency, helping others, type of activity, restoring self, community connection, exploration, convenience, and life stages. Suggestions for future research and possible impacts for clinical practice are discussed. / Master of Science