Psychiatry and Psychology Commons^™

Academic Stress And Anxiety In Nursing Students: An Aerobic Exercise Intervention, Mariko Danielle Aka

DNP Research Projects

Abstract

Background: The demands of rigorous nursing education programs often cause students to experience high levels of stress and anxiety during their schooling. Moderate to high academic stress and anxiety levels impact nursing students around the world. This is significant as academic stress and anxiety contribute to decreased academic success, program completion, and student health.

Local Problem: Students at Kettering College and Southern Adventist University were found to have moderate academic stress and anxiety using the SNSI and GAD-7.

Intervention: Participants (N = 24) engaged in a 4-week aerobic-exercise intervention. They were required to complete a minimum of 80 …

Two Dimensions Of A Bodhisattva, Douglas Duckworth

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

This paper presents two dimensions of a bodhisattva, the ideal of Maha- ya- na Buddhism. One dimension involves contemplative practices that disclose a pure nature that is always already present; this reality is unveiled after the obscurations that cloud it are removed. I refer to this as a “top-down” approach because it is based on qualities of awakening that are already there, yet lie beyond an ordinary being’s comprehension. The second dimension, which I refer to as a “bottom-up” approach, involves directed training and discipline. Unlike the top-down approach, this is not about “going with the flow” or simply letting …

Authentic Mindfulness Within Mindfulness-Based Interventions: A Qualitative Study Of Participants' Experiences, Supakyada Sapthiang, Edo Shonin, Paul Barrows, William Van Gordon

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

There are concerns that participants of some modern mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) are receiving a superficial form of mindfulness training. However, empirical investigation of this issue according to participants’ first-hand experiences has been limited. Thus, this qualitative study aimed to capture the first-hand perspectives relating to authentic mindfulness of participants who had recently attended an MBI in the UK. Ten adults completed a recorded, online semistructured interview. Based on a thematic analysis, the following four master themes were identified: (a) authentic mindfulness as a construct, (b) positive aspects of the training, (c) something missing, and (d) recommendations for authenticity. Although all …

Mindfulness Traps And The Entanglement Of Self: An Inquiry Into The Regime Of Mind, Richard Dixey, Ronald E. Purser

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

Mindfulness meditation can provide salutary therapeutic benefits, as well as lead advanced practitioners to states of calm and equanimity. In this paper, we argue that such forms of meditation may subtly entrap practitioners in circular, self-reflexive feedback loops. Because these meditation traps fail to clearly discern the operations of mind, they offer a temporary oasis of peace within an unaltered dualistic realm of mind that leaves the root delusion of self-identity intact. Drawing upon Tarthang Tulku’s seminal book Revelations of Mind, we present what he refers to as the “regime of mind,” the processes of cognition, identification and re-cognition in …

Cognitive Illusion, Lucid Dreaming, And The Psychology Of Metaphor In Tibetan Buddhist Dzogchen Contemplative Practices, Michael R. Sheehy

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

A classic set of eight similes of illusion (sgyu ma’i dpe brgyad) are employed recurrently throughout Indian and Tibetan Buddhist literature to illustrate the operations of cognition, its correlative perceptions, and experiences that emerge. To illustrate a Buddhist psychology of metaphor, the fourteenth century Tibetan scholar and synthesizer of the Dzogchen (rdzogs chen) or Great Perfection system, Longchen Rabjam Drimé Ödzer (1308-1363), composed his poetic text, Being at Ease with Illusion. This work on illusion is the third volume in Longchenpa’s Trilogy of Being at Ease (Ngal gso skor gsum) in which he presents a series of Dzogchen instructions on …

Mental Health Problems Among Elementary School Students Mandated To E-Learning: A Covid-19 Rapid Review Caveatmandated To E-Learning: A Covid-19 Rapid Review Caveat, Renee M. D'Amore, Angelina N. Halpern, Lauren R. Reed, Kevin M. Gorey

Social Work Publications

Extended lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic mandated millions of students worldwide to e- learning and by default made many of their parents proxy homeschool teachers. Preliminary anecdotal, journalistic and qualitative evidence suggested that elementary school children and their parents were probably most vulnerable to this stressor and most likely to experience mental health problems because of it. We responded with a rapid review of 15 online surveys to estimate the magnitude of such risks and their predictors between 2020 and 2021. The pooled relative risk of mental health problems among school children and their parents was substantial (RR = 1.97). …

Mental Health Benefits Of Physical Activity In Older Adults, Adrian Kurt Zitzmann

Master of Science in Nursing Family Nurse Practitioner

Physical activity is the fountain of youth, strengthening both the physical body as well as the mind, leading to better emotional stability and a general sense of well-being. The population over age 65 is nearing retirement age and are transitioning from a high paced work and family life to a slower and less active “empty nest” lifestyle. Among adults over age 65, will implementing an exercise program for 30 minutes per day increase mental well-being? The benefits of physical activity will be supported by gathering a group of older adults ages 65 and up from a local retirement community to …

Transformative, Noetic, And Transpersonal Experiences During Personal Development Workshops, Helané Wahbeh, Cassandra Vieten, Garret Young, Agnes Cartry-Jacobsen, Dean Radin, Arnaud Delorme

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

The global personal development market was valued at $38.28 billion in 2019 and is expected to grow an additional 5% from 2020 to 2027. Many of these workshops promise to be transformational. This secondary analysis study examined transformative, transpersonal, and noetic aspects of personal development workshops. We found that 74% of post-survey records endorsed that participants experienced a moment of clarity or profound insight during their workshop. In addition, 66% endorsed that participants had experienced at least one noetic experience, and 84% endorsed at least one transpersonal experience. These analyses provide preliminary evidence for the transformational potential of personal development …

Is Tai Chi A Beneficial Treatment For Anxiety In The Elderly Community?, Carolyn Kenney

Honors Projects in Applied Psychology

This study attempted to explore the relationship between tai chi practice and anxiety in the elderly population. The mental health disorder that I looked at was anxiety, as the elderly often experience anxiety related to contributing factors such as mental and physical decline. Anxiety among the elderly is a great concern as there is an increase in the world’s population of individuals aged 65 years or older. This will directly impact health care prices as more resources will have to be distributed to this age population. One solution to this problem is tai chi. Tai chi is a cost-effective way …

There's A Duwende On My Shelf: The Parapsychological Studies Of Fr. Jaime C. Bulatao, Sj, Carl Lorenz Cervantes

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

In the Filipino transpersonal worldview, the mind is not contained within the brain, and is often projected onto the world as “spirits”. Studying these cultural metaphors may allow for a deeper understanding of the Filipino psyche. Fr. Jaime C. Bulatao, SJ, one of the founders of the Psychological Association of the Philippines, studied the projections of the Filipino psyche as they manifested in paranormal phenomena. Bulatao provides the metaphor of eggs frying in a pan as a framework to understand this: the egg whites fuse despite the yolks being far apart. It is in the dissolution of boundaries that transpersonal …

Exceptional Human Experiences Among Pilgrims On The Camino De Santiago: A Study Of Self-Reported Experiences And Transformative Aftereffects, Miran Lavric, Snezana Brumec, Andrej Naterer

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

The Camino de Santiago pilgrimage is an extraordinary endeavour that tends to trigger exceptional human experiences. Following our previous investigation of this topic, we conducted an online survey of 501 pilgrims in order to assess the frequency of different exceptional experiences (EEs) on the pilgrimage and their transformative aftereffects (TAs) in everyday life afterwards. More than 70% of the respondents reported improvement in terms of self-confidence, personal relationships and letting go of emotional “baggage”. The results show strong correlations between the observed EEs and the (consequent) TAs. We contend that walking the Camino de Santiago often produces exceptional experiences that …

What Is Transpersonal Psychology? A Concise Definition Based On 20 Years Of Research, Glenn Hartelius

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

Research on definitions of the field of psychology and themes in the literature of the field over a period of 20 years inform this description: Transpersonal psychology is a transformative psychology of the whole person embedded within a diverse, interconnected, and evolving world that pays particular attention to states of consciousness and developmental models reflecting expansion beyond conventional notions of self. Each element of this definition is examined, as well as the four phases of definitional development within the field from its founding in 1968 up to the present.

Brain Activity During Paired And Individual Mindfulness Meditation: A Controlled Eeg Study, Hessel Engelbregt, Hugo F. Alderse Baas, Sietske De Grauw, Jan Berend Deijen

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

Objective: In this study, we evaluated brain electroencephalographic (EEG) activity in healthy participants during the performance of paired and individual mindfulness meditation (MM). We hypothesized that EEG activity is differentially affected by meditation in pairs compared to individual meditation.

Methods: A total of 20 healthy female university students (mean age 19.54 years, SD =1.53) with no prior experience in MM participated in this study. All participants had to perform a 5-minute MM task together and individually while the other participant was in rest or performing a concentration task (control condition). To exclude social interaction as main factor, participants were separated …

Tripping In The Moment: The Spiritual Journey Of Baba Ram Dass, Charles S. Hamilton

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

Ram Dass, the iconic, countercultural, spiritual seeker, brought the wisdom of the East to those of us in the West through his many books and frequent, charismatic dharma talks. This view of his spiritual journey describes the transformation of Richard Alpert, clinical psychologist and product of the Western milieu’s often-shackling conventional expectations, into Ram Dass, the free, embodied soul who, through explication and example, and with witnessing attention, tries to guide us all to the always present abode of loving awareness. Ram Dass’s idea of self in existence was transformed: first, from a psychological object of clinical study, to a …

The Perceived Impact Of Holotropic Breathwork: An Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis, Felipe Landaeta Farizo

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

Holotropic Breathwork (HB) is a method of self-exploration developed by Stanislav and Christina Grof. Research has only just begun to investigate the effects of HB, while the possible influence of the context and other features of HB within the experience and its impact have not been studied in depth. This qualitative study investigated the perceived impact of HB on 6 women and 6 men (ages 25-67) in Chile, using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), an emergent method developed specifically to work with these types of subjective issues. Results revealed 10 major themes involving both intrapsychic and relational features prior, during and …

Emotion And Judgment In Young Women Of A Society In Transition, Maura A. E. Pilotti, Khadija El Alaoui

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

The present study asked whether emotional responses to narratives of moral transgressions are shaped by the reader’s assumed relationship with the injured party (i.e., oneself, familiar other, and unfamiliar other). Its goal was to test a cultural, religious, and individualistic account of such responses in young females of a traditional society in transition towards a sustainable integration into the global economy. To this end, female college students from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia were asked to identify their emotional reaction to each of several moral transgressions, report its intensity and then judge the severity of the transgression. In agreement with …

The Mystical Exodus In Jungian Perspective: Transforming Trauma And The Wellsprings Of Renewal, B. Les Lancaster

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

No abstract provided.

Life Before Birth: A Thematic Analysis Of Memories Of Coming Into Life Part 2: Recollections Of Fetal Life And Birth, Jenny Wade

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

This article examines a second set of data produced in a thematic analysis of 68 “earliest memory” narratives submitted to an independent website to explore the question: what do people who claim to remember how they came into the world say about their experience prior to and including birth? Part 1 examined the first and largest subset of the data, narratives of an otherworldly existence consistent with Western reincarnation intermission stage 2 experiences, near-death experience accounts and mythic traditions. This article thematically analyzes descriptions of life in the womb, birth, and apparently veridical out-of-body and other paranormal impressions of events …

Unexpected Side Effects: A Cautionary Note On Challenges Of Persistent Self-Transcendence, Elizabeth D. Stephens, Harris L. Friedman

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

Self-transcendence is an ambiguous construct without consensual meaning, yet many claim that it relates to, or even causes, beneficial outcomes. Few discuss its potential deleterious side effects, choosing to focus primarily on positive effects. However, anything with sufficient potency to heal may have unintended side effects, especially when it leads beyond a transitory state to becoming an enduring trait, such as when self-transcendence (ST) becomes persistent self-transcendence (PST). With PST, evidence is overviewed here, along with two illustrative case reports, that people can suffer emotional difficulties, motivation changes, loss of self-reflexivity, anhedonia, dissociation, depersonalization, memory problems, and other psychological concerns. …

Life Before Birth: A Thematic Analysis Of Memories Of Coming Into Life Part 1: Recollections Of Another Realm, Jenny Wade

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

Autobiographic memories prior to birth remain controversial in psychology because such memories are traditionally believed to begin much later when some sense of self is formed. Prenatal sentience, including fetal learning, occurs in species from arthropods to humans, and evidence for autobiographic memories from pre- and neo-natal humans has typically come from clinical case histories of altered-state regression techniques eliciting records from adults or clinical case histories of children in normal states. This thematic analysis examined 68 “earliest memory” narratives submitted to an independent website to explore the question: what do people who claim to remember how they came into …

How Perception Meets Hermeneutics: An Empirical Investigation Of Tasseography, Elizabeth Avetisian

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

Tasseography is a divination method to provide insight about the seeker’s past, present, or future life by interpreting patterns in the dregs of a liquid. Although it has been practiced with coffee throughout Europe and Middle East, particularly among women, no known studies exist on the seer’s perceptual process of the ambiguous patterns or how the roles of the seeker and seer, symbols, ritual, and cultural epistemology shape the divinatory hermeneutics. This study focused on the Armenian coffee divination ritual, asking what are the processes and conditions that enable experienced cup readers to obtain divinatory insight in tasseography? Two seekers …

Virtual Versus Face-To-Face Cognitive Behavioral Treatment Of Depression: Meta-Analytic Test Of A Noninferiority Hypothesis And Men’S Mental Health Inequities, Carly M. Charron, Kevin M. Gorey

Social Work Publications

Global rates of depression have increased significantly since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is unclear how the recent shift of many mental health services to virtual platforms has impacted service users, especially for the male population which are significantly more likely to complete suicide than women. This paper presents the findings of a rapid meta-analytic research synthesis of 17 randomized controlled trials on the relative efficacy of virtual versus traditional face-to-face cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) in mitigating symptoms of depression. Participants’ aggregated depression scores were compared upon completion of the therapy (posttest) and longest follow-up measurement. The results …

Online Social Networking Among Clinically Depressed Young People: Scoping Review Of Potentially Supportive Or Harmful Behaviors, Carolyn L. Elias, Kevin M. Gorey

Social Work Publications

Online social networking sites are ubiquitous and prevalently used by young people. The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the potential for such sites to bring isolated people together to support their mental health. Virtual communications, however, are not without risks. Substantial knowledge exists on attendant risks and protections among the general population, but much less seems known about their effects among clinical populations. This scoping review mapped the novel knowledge and knowledge gaps related to online social networking experiences and perceptions of depressed young people, adolescents to emergent adults. It also explored moderators of their social networking supports versus harms. A broad …

The Effect Of Physical Activity On The Mental Health Of Pre-Nursing Students And Undergraduate Student Nurses, Larinda J. Fandrich

DNP Research Projects

Abstract

Mental health concerns are on the rise among the college-aged student. College students face a great deal of stress, which can lead to depression and anxiety. Nursing students, as a sub-group of college students, are under even greater stress related to rigorous course work and the responsibility of caring for other people, which can lead to greater depression and anxiety. This study aimed to determine what effect, if any, physical activity has on depression and anxiety scores using the PHQ-9 and GAD-7 instruments in pre-nursing and nursing students. In this study, physical activity is defined as is “any bodily …

The Green Rx: An Intervention In Nurse Anxiety And Depression, Melissa Dawley

DNP Research Projects

No abstract provided.

Predicting The Efficacy Of Psilocybin In Treating Mental Health And Addiction, Courtney Ledford

altREU Projects

Machine Learning is used to predict the efficacy of psilocybin in treating mental health and addiction by using a random forest algorithm. Psilocybin is a chemical compound found in fungi. Following ingestion, it is converted to psilocin which acts as a serotonin agonist, producing altered states of consciousness and hallucinations. Research suggests the use of psilocybin as a potential treatment for mental health disorders and addiction. An analysis of thirty-one experiments from the Altered States Database was inputted into the model. Past meta-analysis performed on this experimental data focuses on healthy participants rather than participants diagnosed with a mental illness. …

Fecal Microbiota Transplantation And Gut Microbiome Effects On Psychiatric Illnesses, Mona Seresht

Physician Assistant Studies | Student Articles

Despite the medical advances that have been made in regards to mental health, psychiatric medications, and alternative therapies, many patients continue to suffer day in and day out, unable to live the type of life they desire. Many times, the medication route includes many episodes of trial and error, side effects, and no significant improvement in actual symptoms. Therapy, although effective, typically necessitates a supplemental medication for the best results. Fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) is a method where feces from a healthy donor is transferred to an affected patient, typically via colonoscopy. Theoretically, this alters the gut microbiome in a …

Integrative Pharmacotherapeutic Approaches To Treating Depression, Charlotte Tse

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), based in the philosophy-religions of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism, is more than a purely prescriptive medical system; it is a way of life focused primarily on the principles of prevention rather than the more reactionary direction that pharmacotherapy in the US has taken. Mental illness is expected to account for a quarter of China’s overall health burden by 2020, with depression affecting around 100 million people and nearly 30 percent of young Chinese adults. Conventional antidepressants have a delayed onset and unpredictable therapeutic efficacy in this condition, especially in mild to moderate cases of depression. In …

Assessment Of Interprofessional Team Collaboration Scale (Aitcs): Further Testing And Instrument Revision., Carole Orchard, Linda L Pederson, Emily Read, Cornelia Mahler, Heather Laschinger

Nursing Publications

INTRODUCTION: The need to be able to assess collaborative practice in health care teams has been recognized in response to the direction for team-based care in a number of policy documents. The purpose of this study is to report on further refinement of such a measurement instrument, the Assessment of Interprofessional Team Collaboration Scale (AITCS) first published in 2012. To support this refinement, two objectives were set: Objective 1: to determine whether the items from the data collected in 2016 load on the same factors as found for the 2012 version of the 37-item AITCS. Objective 2: to determine whether …

Relative Effectiveness Of Mindfulness And Cognitive Behavioral Interventions For Anxiety Disorders: Meta-Analytic Review, Samina K. Singh, Kevin M. Gorey

Social Work Publications

Increasingly popular mindfulness intervention innovations seem demonstrably effective in alleviating anxiety among people with anxiety disorders. However, the basis of such primary and synthetic evidence has, for the most part, been comparisons with non-active comparison conditions such as waiting lists. The longest-standing and strongest evidence-informed practices in this field have been cognitive behavioral interventions (CBI). This meta-analysis synthesized evidence from nine randomized trials of the relative effectiveness of mindfulness interventions compared to CBIs (i.e., active control groups) in treating anxiety disorders. The sample-weighted synthesis found no statistically or practically significant differences between the two groups on anxiety alleviation: Cohen’s d …