The Work-Family Interface and Burnout.

This study examined fluctuations in the experience of conflict between work and family and burnout in different phases of business travel as well as the relationship between work-family conflict (WFC) and burnout among 58 business travelers. Travelers completed questionnaires at 3 points in time: prior to going abroad, during the stay abroad, and after their return. An analysis of variance detected a different pattern of fluctuations in the levels of both WFC and burnout according to gender. Furthermore, while WFC at the pretrip and midtrip periods did not predict burnout in subsequent measurements, pretrip burnout did predict WFC during the trip and after the trip (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-esteem, social support, internalized homophobia, and coping strategies of HIV+ gay men.

The relationship was examined between self-esteem, social support, internalized homophobia, and coping strategies used by gay men (N?=?89) who were positive for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and between the use of coping strategies and mood state. Multiple regressions were conducted with avoidant (escape avoidance, accepting responsibility) and proactive (seeking social support, planful problem solving) coping serving as criterion variables. Greater homophobia and less self-esteem predicted avoidant coping, whereas less homophobia and less time since diagnosis predicted proactive coping. Greater time since diagnosis, less avoidant coping, less homophobia, and greater self-esteem predicted better mood state and accounted for 50% of the total variance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Social and Individual Coping With Threats: Outlines of an Interdisciplinary Approach.

Referring to a general conception of coping as an adaptive reaction to a perceived is-ought discrepancy, the authors present an interdisciplinary perspective on coping processes. Based on systems theory, a psychological view is compared with a sociological perspective, focusing structural equivalencies between social and individual adaptational processes. Defensive, proactive, and accommodative reactions are discussed as 3 general modes of coping. It is argued that all of these coping reactions in both individuals and social systems have specific costs and benefits, which are particularly visible if the interaction and "interpenetration" between the coping strategies of individuals and social systems are observed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Stress appraisal in women with spinal cord injury: Supplementary findings through mixed methods.

A study was conducted to examine how women with spinal cord injury (SCI) perceive the stressors they encounter, and how cognitive appraisal is associated with coping and life satisfaction. Fifty women with SCI were interviewed regarding their experience with stress and coping. The interviews were then coded using a framework based on stress and coping theory (transactional model). The systematic application of quantitative methods to the coded interview data allowed for statistical analyses, which demonstrated that the context in which the women spoke about their experiences with various stressors was associated with coping strategies, time since injury, and life satisfaction. Although stress and coping are commonly seen as interacting constructs that influence quality of life outcomes, current findings suggest that appraisal of stressors in the context of loss (more common among women more recently injured) may have a direct impact on life satisfaction apart from any coping strategies put into effect. Interventions designed to facilitate coping with loss and enhance problem-solving skills, along with education about available resources, may foster a sense of empowerment after SCI and ultimately change how stressors are perceived and managed in order to dampen their negative impact on life satisfaction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A stitch in time: Self-regulation and proactive coping.

In a conceptual and temporal framework, derived from research on social cognition, social interaction, and stress and coping, the authors analyze the processes through which people anticipate or detect potential stressors and act in advance to prevent them or to mute their impact (proactive coping). The framework specifies five stages in proactive coping: (1) resource accumulation, (2) recognition of potential stressors. (3) initial appraisal, (4) preliminary coping efforts, and (5) elicitation and use of feedback concerning initial efforts. The authors detail the role of individual differences, skills, and resources at each stage. They highlight the unique predictions afforded by a focus on proactive coping and the importance of understanding how people avoid and offset potential stressors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Coping strategies of people living in multigenerational households: Effects on well-being.

Analyses examined whether information about the coping strategies used by family members adds to an understanding about the psychological well-being of individuals. Data from 140 women and their husbands and children who were living in multigenerational households that included a disabled older relative indicated that for the women and children, the best predictors of depression, positive affect, and mastery were their own coping strategies; the coping strategies used by other family members did not add significantly to the predictive equation. For husbands, however, depression was predicted by both their own coping strategies and the coping strategies of their wives. Husbands' positive affect was predicted only by the coping strategies of their wives and children, and their mastery was predicted by their own coping strategies and those of their wives and children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Minority stress experiences in committed same-sex couple relationships.

Providing culturally competent services to same-sex couples requires an understanding of the social context in which these relationships are formed and maintained. Using minority stress theory (I. H. Meyer, 2003) as an interpretive framework, the authors conducted a dyadic-level qualitative analysis of 40 (20 female; 20 male) couples' conversations about their committed partnerships. Findings indicate that couples experience minority stress as they interact with their family members, coworkers, and communities. In response to stressors, couples use coping strategies that include reframing negative experiences, concealing their relationship, creating social support, and affirming self and partnership. Recommendations for practitioners based on these findings include assessing minority stress, facilitating coping, and taking a critical stance toward policies that perpetuate social stigma and chronic stress. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Do employees cope effectively with abusive supervision at work? An exploratory study.

Abusive supervision is a major organizational stressor yet little is known about how employees cope with such stress. The purpose of the present study was twofold: (a) to develop a new scale assessing how employees cope with abusive supervision, and (b) to investigate the effectiveness of coping with abusive supervision in terms of negative and positive affective outcomes. The study was conducted in two parts: Two samples of 108 and 101 student employees completed the initial versions of the new coping with abusive supervision scale; and another sample of 225 employees completed the final, 25-item coping scale, which consisted of five subscales: ingratiation, direct communication, avoidance of contact, support-seeking, and reframing. Additional measures used were abusive supervision, influence tactics scale, abuse-related negative and positive affect scales, and social desirability. The internal and test–retest reliability levels of the subscales of the newly developed questionnaire were high and it was validated by its subscales associations with influence tactics subscales. High levels of abusive supervision were related to coping strategies of avoiding contact, support seeking, ingratiation, and reframing. The first two strategies were also related positively to negative affect and mediated the effects of abusive supervision on affect. The results suggest that most coping strategies are invoked in response to abusive supervision. They are, however, found to be mostly ineffective in regard to their relationship with employees' affective reactions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Vocationally mature coping strategies and progress in the decision-making process: A canonical analysis.

It has been suggested that variation in the extent to which individuals possess vocationally mature coping strategies will differentially influence their progress in the process of completing specific decision-making tasks. Measures of vocationally mature coping strategies and progress on decision-making tasks were administered to 174 undergraduates. A canonical analysis was employed to identify the primary independent dimensions that relate the 2 sets of variables measured. Two significant canonical roots were extracted from this analysis. Results suggest that (a) the extent to which an S employed a planning orientation appeared to hinder or facilitate movement beyond the exploratory phase of making a decision about an occupation and (b) Ss who engaged in making decisions about college major or occupation and who did so without the benefit of decision-making skills and available resources were likely to devote excess effort in the prechoice portion of the decision-making process. (30 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Coping With Employment Uncertainty: A Comparison of Employed and Unemployed Workers.

This study examined coping with stress associated with employment uncertainty for comparable samples of laid-off and employed high-technology workers. It was expected that different coping strategies would be associated with perceived stress for employed vs. unemployed people. Although unemployed participants reported higher levels of stress compared with employed participants, employment uncertainty mediated the association between employment status and perceived stress. Emotion-focused coping strategies were related to higher perceived stress, whereas problem-focused coping strategies were related to lower perceived stress. The use of emotional avoidance as a strategy moderated the effect of employment uncertainty on perceived stress, such that a greater propensity to endorse avoidance coping strategies was associated with higher levels of stress particularly under low uncertainty conditions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Management team learning orientation and business unit performance.

Although research has suggested that teams can differ in the extent to which they encourage proactive learning and competence development among their members (a team learning orientation), the performance consequences of these differences are not well understood. Drawing from research on goal orientation and team learning, this article suggests that, although a team learning orientation can encourage adaptive behaviors that lead to improved performance, it is also possible for teams to compromise performance in the near term by overemphasizing learning, particularly when they have been performing well. A test of this proposition in a sample of business unit management teams provides strong support. The results confirm that an appropriate emphasis on learning can have positive consequences for team effectiveness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Of needles and skinned knees: Children's coping with medical procedures and minor injuries for self and other.

Children participated in four role-plays designed to assess what the children themselves would do and what they would suggest a friend should do when encountering a medical procedure and a minor injury. Open-ended responses were coded into an empirically derived continuum suggested by past research. Similar responses were given to cope with medical procedures and injuries. However, children suggested more reactive coping strategies (e.g., cry, pull away) for themselves and more proactive responses (e.g., think of something fun, take deep breaths) for friends. This finding questions the assumption that children choose the most effective coping strategy in their repertoire when they themselves confront an aversive stimulus, suggesting that preparation for invasive procedures should include motivational components. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Coping effectiveness and coping diversity under traumatic stress.

The effectiveness of different strategies of coping and the impact of coping diversity were tested under traumatic stress conditions. Participants were 632 U.S. soldiers stationed in Iraq (mean age = 27.7, 98 male). Results indicate that four of nine functional coping strategies (including some emotion-focused coping) as defined by the COPE scale were inversely related to psychological symptom, whereas five of six dysfunctional strategies were positively related. Overall, in comparison to the norm group, soldiers showed a depressed level of functional coping strategies. Hierarchical regression, used to control for demographics and coping strategy intercorrelations, indicated that positive reinterpretation, emotional social support, and humor were most strongly related to lower psychological symptoms, whereas venting emotions, denial, mental disengagement, behavioral disengagement, and alcohol and drug use were related to higher levels of psychological symptoms. Two indices of coping diversity were tested. The index more strongly related to higher psychological adjustment was the sum of deviations from the mean of specific coping strategies combined with the alignment of functional and dysfunctional strategy clusters. Implications for research and application were discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of components of protection-motivation theory on adaptive and maladaptive coping with a health threat.

How do people cope with a threat when they do not plan to adopt an adaptive, protective reponse? We explored this question by examining the effects of information about a health threat and two aspects of coping ability, self-efficacy and response efficacy, on two adaptive and five maladaptive coping strategies (e.g., avoidance, wishful thinking). The results disclosed that the high-threat condition energized all forms of coping; it did not differentially cue specific coping strategies. The critical factor in determining the specific strategies used was the coping information. The high-response-efficacy and high-self-efficacy conditions strengthened adaptive coping and did not foster any maladaptive coping. A supplementary path analysis revealed an intriguing pattern of relations, including the finding that the most maladaptive strategy was avoidant thinking, which simultaneously reduced fear of the threat and weakened intentions to adopt the adaptive response. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Strategic marketing: How to achieve independence and prosperity in your mental health practice.

Reviews the book, Strategic marketing: How to achieve independence and prosperity in your mental health practice by Kalman M. Heller (1997). The author of this book believes there is ample opportunity for solo and small group practices not merely to survive but to thrive; you don't have to sell out to big business in order to maintain or create the small but successful practice that is your chosen way to help others. What you do is develop a marketing-driven practice. He promises that if you do, you will (a) become a more competent therapist, (b) increase your referrals and revenues, and (c) have more fun! In an extremely well-organized and concise fashion, he presents what you need to know about strategic marketing and what you have to do in the form of proactive behaviors to succeed. This is a relatively short book of 137 pages divided into 11 chapters. The first eight are devoted to laying the groundwork for the concepts of marketing, accepting that mental health practice is a business, the utility of developing a business plan, and selecting a practice strategy and specialized "products." Heller, unfortunately, has made promises and expressed optimism which are incompatible with the marketplace realities of private practice in the United States and in that sense may be dangerously misleading to the younger practitioner. Like the APA Guidelines for Practice, to follow all of Heller's planning, evaluation, and practice promotion activities would likely leave little time to treat patients, at least not enough hours to generate the revenue to live, which of course is the objective of the book. This is not a fatal criticism, but certainly is one for the reader to understand beforehand in order to avoid a panic attack by book's end. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of coping in the relationship between perceived racism and racism-related stress for Asian Americans: Gender differences.

On the basis of stress and coping theory, the authors examined coping as a mediator of the relationship between perceptions of racism and racism-related stress with a sample of Asian American college students (N = 336). Results indicated that coping mediated the relationship between racism and racism-related stress differentially by gender. The more that men perceived racism, the more likely they were to use support-seeking coping strategies that were associated with higher levels of racism-related stress. The more that women perceived racism, the more they used active coping strategies that were associated with higher levels of racism-related stress. The findings demonstrate how coping with racism differs for Asian Americans on the basis of gender. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Facilitating and debilitating trait anxiety, situational anxiety, and coping with an anticipated stressor: A process analysis.

19–23 yr-old college students completed anxiety and coping diaries during 10 periods that began 7 days before an academic stressor and continued through the evening after the stressor. Profile analysis was used to examine the anxiety and coping processes in relation to 2 trait anxiety grouping variables: debilitating and facilitating test anxiety (D-TA and F-TA). Anxiety and coping changed over time, and high and low levels of D-TA and F-TA were associated with different daily patterns of anxiety and coping. Participants with a debilitative, as opposed to facilitative, trait anxiety style had lower examination scores, higher anxiety, and less problem-solving coping. Covarying F-TA, high D-TA was associated with a pattern of higher levels of tension, worry, distraction, and avoidant coping, as well as lower levels of proactive coping. Covarying D-TA, high F-TA was associated with higher levels of tension (but not worry or distraction), support seeking, proactive and problem-solving coping. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

bcl-2 and p53 oncoprotein expression during colorectal tumorigenesis

AMS is a preventable disease about which travellers are frequently uninformed and one which physicians may wrongfully assume is limited to the population of ultra high altitude adventurers. These studies on incidence, while not without flaws, point out the frequency of AMS, as well as its significant incidence at moderate and commonly frequented altitudes. The current literature does not fully answer questions about incidence at moderate altitudes, nor about the full effects of altitude on children. Certainly AMS is not a rare complication of travel to altitudes and may indeed be under-recognized and under-treated. Both acetazolamide and dexamethasone provide adequate prophylaxis, and the choice of medications can be to some extent based on experience and patient profile. The best prophylaxis is a slow stepwise ascent, and the best treatment descent. The availability of medications for the amelioration or prevention of symptoms, and succinct advice on prevention by travel planning will make many of our patients' holidays more enjoyable and business trips more productive.     

My life as a mutant: The BRCA1 experience.

Genetic testing is a stressful experience, as is being identified as a carrier of a deleterious mutation. The benefits of testing (e.g., using the information to make proactive decisions to decrease cancer risk) can be more easily realized if anxiety is managed through effective coping strategies. The author reviews relevant literature and presents personal experience with the process, which suggests that key psychosocial supports include interaction with positive coping role models, accurate empathy from family or friends, use of humor, and benefit finding. Specific therapeutic implications for clients who are facing genetic testing or who are in a known high-risk group for serious medical illness, as well as suggestions for therapists who themselves are struggling with health-related fears and worries, are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Business owners' action planning and its relationship to business success in three African countries.

A model of business success was developed with motivational resources (locus of control, self-efficacy, achievement motivation, and self-reported personal initiative) and cognitive resources (cognitive ability and human capital) as independent variables, business owners' elaborate and proactive planning as a mediator, and business size and growth as dependent variables. Three studies with a total of 408 African micro and small-scale business owners were conducted in South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Namibia. Structural equation analyses partially supported the hypotheses on the importance of psychological planning by the business owners. Elaborate and proactive planning was substantially related to business size and to an external evaluation of business success and was a (partial) mediator for the relationship between cognitive resources and business success. The model carries important implications for selection, training, and coaching of business owners. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)