Health Psychology Commons^™

Opioid Use Disorder In The Active Service: Incidence Rates And Behavioral Health Considerations, Brian A. Moore, Sophie Vincent, Michael Schlenk, Anne White

Symposium of Student Scholars

Military service members experience occupational specific injuries that often result in chronic pain, and comorbid behavioral health concerns that may be exacerbated by opioid use. Despite the vast amount of research examining substance use in the military, there is a dearth of literature examining the incidence of opioid use disorder (OUD). The present epidemiological study aims to examine the incident rate trends of OUD diagnoses among active duty service members between 2016 and 2021. The present study utilized data drawn from the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED) to conduct a retrospective cohort study and calculate the incidence rate of OUD …

Exploring Sleep Knowledge And Predictors Of Sleep Hygiene In College Students, Mirielle Erpelding

Honors College Theses

Sleep: something so crucial to successful daily functioning, yet also something so easily discarded in turn for something more stimulating. In college, there are late nights, early mornings, use of electronic devices, and the constant “always-on” mentality, all of which impacts student sleep hygiene. To define, the American Academy for Sleep Medicine (AASM) considers “sleep hygiene” as a pattern of healthy sleep behaviors that improve one’s ability to fall asleep, stay asleep, and awake more refreshed (2020). The current study has two goals: 1) assess knowledge of recommended sleep practices in the college population, and 2) identify predictors (among sleep …

The Ins And Outs Of Undergraduate Research And Leadership: A Student's Perspective, Regina F. Hockert

Kinesiology and Public Health

This manuscript is a reflective write-up of Regina Hockert’s experience in completing KINE 462, Honors Kinesiology Senior Project, during the 2022 Fall Quarter. It describes their experience as an undergraduate research leader, including specific milestones and artifacts related to a broader replication study and the daily activities of Dr. Jafrā Thomas’ lab. This essay was designed to be a written reflection around their senior project presentation and the insights shared through that medium about the senior project experience. It is created to showcase lessons learned in relationship with the tasks and responsibilities required of working in-depth on student-led research. …

Les Facteurs Qui Influencent L'Émergence D'Un Sentiment D'Injustice Suite À Un Accident Du Travail, Michael J. L. Sullivan, Manon Truchon, Pierre Coté, Marie Achille

Rapports de recherche scientifique

De nombreuses études ont rapporté que des niveaux élevés de sentiment d’injustice sont associés à un rétablissement problématique chez les personnes souffrant d’un large éventail de problèmes débilitants de santé et de santé mentale. On en sait peu actuellement sur les facteurs déterminants du sentiment d’injustice dans les suites immédiates d’un accident du travail, ou sur les facteurs déterminants des changements dans le sentiment d’injustice.

L’objectif principal de cette recherche était d’identifier les déterminants du sentiment d’injustice dans les premières semaines suivant un accident du travail. L’échantillon de participants comprenait 187 personnes (92 hommes et 95 femmes) ayant subi une …

Assessing Treatment Access, Medication Use, Caregiver Strain And Emergency Service Use In Families Of Youth With Autism, Emmaline Thorpe

Psychological Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

Background: Families with autistic youth utilize emergency services (e.g., police, emergency department) at greater rates than neurotypical peers. While research has recently explored this phenomenon, unknowns remain in how pharmaceutical, therapeutic, family (e.g., caregiver strain), and child factors (concurrent challenging behaviors) may influence the likelihood of this population resorting to emergency care. Method: The current study recruited caregivers (N = 55) of youth with autism and co-occurring challenging behaviors (ages 2 – 22) to complete an online survey regarding their use of emergency services, child medication and therapy, and caregiver strain. Caregivers were compensated for their time. Results: Outcomes revealed …

Good Faith: Surveillance And Evaluation Of 911 Good Samaritan Laws In The United States, Shane W. Reader

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

To fight soaring overdose mortality rates in the United States, lawmakers adopted a variety of harm reduction tools. Among these, 911 Good Samaritan Laws (GSLs) derive their name from the biblical parable of the Good Samaritan, a bystander who broke cultural convention to come to the aid of a man beset by thieves. These laws provide limited criminal immunity for bystanders in possession of controlled substances to encourage them to report drug overdoses. While previous studies associate GSLs with a modest reduction in opioid mortality, analyses often model them as equivocal or divide them coarsely across individual provisions. Evaluating these …

The Impact Of Having Foreign Domestic Workers On Informal Caregivers Of Persons With Dementia: Findings From A Multi-Method Research In Singapore, Qi Yuan, Yunjue Zhang, Ellaisha Samari, Anitha Jeyagurunathan, Tee Hng Tan, Fiona Devi, Peizhi Wang, Harish Magadi, Richard Goveas, Li Ling Ng, Mythily Subramaniam

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Background: Informal caregivers of persons with dementia (PWDs) sometimes engage foreign domestic workers (FDWs) to support their caregiving journey. However, there has not been much research to establish if this is really beneficial. The current study aims to investigate whether engaging FDWs specifically for caregiving of PWDs truly moderates caregiver stress and to explore caregivers’ experiences of engaging FDWs. Methods: A multi-method study design with a quantitative and qualitative sub-study was adopted. For the quantitative sub-study, 282 informal caregivers of PWDs were recruited. Propensity score matching analysis was used. For the qualitative sub-study, 15 informal caregivers with FDWs were interviewed. …

Can Obsessive Thoughts Predict Problematic Alcohol Use Through Thought Suppression?, Laura Pettigrew

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Alcohol misuse, which is a prevalent issue among college students, often coincides with psychiatric disorders or symptoms. Treatment of one facilitates treatment of the other. Some anecdotal evidence suggests that obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), or just obsessive-compulsive symptoms, is connected to alcohol misuse.

This study adapts part of the cognitive control model of OCD, which states that intrusive thoughts will only lead to distress if the individual interprets them in a dysfunctional manner and tries to control them. When the thought control attempt fails, if the individual interprets the failure in a dysfunctional way as well, they will become distressed. If …

K-5 Elementary Alternative Program: A Case Study, William E. Scheuer Iv

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this case study was to examine how the K-5 elementary alternative program All Students Can Thrive (ASCT) used student-centered learning practices to influence the whole child. There is a lack of research on K-5 elementary alternative programs, such as ASCT, and specifically those that integrate student-centered learning practices to influence the whole child. Literature does not contain universally accepted interventions that are effective in the elementary alternative setting to help students return to the mainstream classroom setting better prepared to display appropriate behaviors when a student is removed from a mainstream classroom setting due to disruptive behaviors. …

Distress In The Workplace: Characterizing The Relationship Of Burnout Measures To The Occupational Depression Inventory, Irvin Sam Schonfeld, Renzo Bianchi

Publications and Research

Burnout has been found to problematically overlap with depression. However, the generalizability of this finding remains disputed. This study examined burnout–depression overlap using the recently developed Occupational Depression Inventory (ODI) and two burnout measures, the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) and the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory (CBI). The study involved two teacher samples employed in France (N = 1,450) and New Zealand (N = 492). We found the correlations of the ODI with (a) the MBI’s emotional exhaustion (EE) subscale and (b) the CBI to reach .80. An explanation of these high correlations based on content overlap in fatigue-related items was ruled …

Methods For Teaching Mindfulness Within The Workplace, Gerrel March

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Over the past few years, the world has been shaken by the COVID-19 pandemic and technological advancements that have contributed towards work-life imbalances. Now more than ever, organizations are focusing on improving mental health and well-being. This understanding holds value towards the hospitality industry as employee wellbeing has a direct link towards consumer experience. Considering the nature of the business, employees endure distress resulting from emotional labor, long work hours, etc, understanding how organizations can improve well-being is critical. This paper attempts to make significant contribution towards understanding both individual and organizational outcomes of mindfulness, best practices, and potential limitations …

Responses To Covid-19 Threats: An Evolutionary Psychological Analysis., Stephen M. Colarelli, Tyler J. Mirando, Kyunghee Han, Norman P. Li, Carter Vespi, Katherine A. Klein, Charles P. Fales

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Responses to COVID-19 public health interventions have been lukewarm. For example, only 64% of the US population has received at least two vaccinations. Because most public health interventions require people to behave in ways that are evolutionarily novel, evolutionary psychological theory and research on mismatch theory, the behavioral immune system, and individual differences can help us gain a better understanding of how people respond to public health information. Primary sources of threat information during the pandemic (particularly in early phases) were geographic differences in morbidity and mortality statistics. We argue that people are unlikely to respond to this type of …

Dispositional Gratitude, Health-Related Factors, And Lipid Profiles In Midlife: A Biomarker Study, Andree Hartanto, Nadyanna M. Majeed, Verity Y. Q. Lua, Joax Wong, Nicole R.Y. Chen

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Dispositional gratitude has emerged in the literature to be associated with many health benefits in measures ranging from self-reported health to biomarkers of cardiovascular risk. However, little is known about the link between dispositional gratitude and lipid profiles. Drawing from the Gratitude and Self-improvement Model that grateful individuals are more likely to strive for actual self-improvement such as engaging in healthy lifestyles, we investigated the relation between dispositional gratitude and serum lipid levels. Participants consisted of 1800 adults from the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS) 2: Biomarker Project (N= 1054) and MIDUS Refresher: Biomarker Project …

The Effect Of Executive Function On The Development Of Chronic Pain: A Prospective Longitudinal Study, Wee Qin Ng, Andree Hartanto

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Increasing evidence suggests a close association between chronic pain and executive function, a set of cognitive processes necessary for goal-directed behaviors. However, there is a dearth of longitudinal studies examining the predictive effect of executive function on the development of chronic pain. Drawing on the cyclical model of executive function and health, we sought to examine how executive function, measured at baseline, may predict chronic pain etiology approximately 9 years later. Using a large-scale dataset of midlife adults (N = 1553) from the MIDUS 2 and 3 (Midlife Development in the United States) studies, we employed multivariate logistic regression to …

Lifestyle Choices Related To Food Consumption And Their Relationship To Depression, Steven L. Jennings Jr.

Dissertations

Dieting, or the act of restricting oneself to small amounts or particular kinds of foods on the basis of health, spirituality, lifestyle, and moral decisions, is a practice that dates to 1066 A.D. However, with social media being as influential as it is, one might believe dieting is a new obsession or at least an obsession to which popular culture is returning. Despite this, it is only in recent years that researchers have begun to focus on the health benefits of such behaviors. The present study was designed to take this focus a step further by exploring the potential risks …

Fear And Trembling While Working In A Pandemic: An Exploratory Meta-Analysis Of Workers’ Covid-19 Distress, William P. Jimenez, Ian M. Katz, Elissa A. Liguori

Psychology Faculty Publications

The global COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the lives of workers and taken its toll on health and well-being. In line with recent calls for more inductive and abductive occupational health science research, we exploratorily meta-analyzed workers’ COVID-19 distress, defined as psychological and psychosomatic strain contextualized to experiencing the virus and pandemic broadly. We identified many existing COVID-19 distress measures (e.g., Fear of COVID-19 Scale by Ahorsu et al., 2020; Coronavirus Anxiety Scale by Lee, 2020a) and correlates, including demographic variables (viz., gender, marital status, whether worker has children), positive well-being (e.g., quality of life, perceived social support, resilience), negative well-being …

Exposure To Unpredictability And Mental Health: Validation Of The Brief Version Of The Questionnaire Of Unpredictability In Childhood (Quic-5) In English And Spanish, Natasha G. Lindert, Megan Y. Maxwell, Sabrina R. Liu, Hal S. Stern, Tallie Z. Baram, Elysia Poggi Davis, Victoria B. Risbrough, Dewleen G. Baker, Caroline M. Nievergelt, Laura M. Glynn

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

Unpredictability is increasingly recognized as a primary dimension of early life adversity affecting lifespan mental health trajectories; screening for these experiences is therefore vital. The Questionnaire of Unpredictability in Childhood (QUIC) is a 38-item tool that measures unpredictability in childhood in social, emotional and physical domains. The available evidence indicates that exposure to unpredictable experiences measured with the QUIC predicts internalizing symptoms including depression and anxiety. The purpose of the present study was to validate English and Spanish brief versions (QUIC-5) suitable for administration in time-limited settings (e.g., clinical care settings, large-scale epidemiological studies). Five representative items were identified from …

Exploring Graduate Student Mental Health And Service Utilization By Gender, Race, And Year In School, Mikhila N. Wildey, Meghan E. Fox, Kelly A. Machnik, Deborah Ronk

Peer Reviewed Articles

Objective: The current study explored differences in mental health problems, services utilization, and support of graduate students by gender, race/ethnicity, and year in school.

Participants: Participants consisted of 734 graduate students from a large, Midwestern university.

Methods: Graduate students answered a series of questionnaires in fall 2021 assessing their mental health, services utilization, and perception of services.

Results: Women (vs men) and participants in their second year and beyond (vs first year) reported greater mental health problems, negative impact of the pandemic, and more services utilization. White (vs non-White) participants reported greater negative impact of the pandemic, greater services utilization, …

Family Still Matters: Human Social Motivation Across 42 Countries During A Global Pandemic, Cari M. Pick, Et. Al.

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The COVID-19 pandemic caused drastic social changes for many, including separation from friends and coworkers, enforced close contact with family, reductions in mobility, and a number of other health-related precautions. Here we assess the extent to which people’s evolutionarilyrelevant basic motivations and goals—their fundamental social motives—might have been affected. To address this question, we gathered data on these motives in 42 countries (N=15,915) in two waves, including 19 countries (N=10,907) for which data were gathered both before and during the pandemic (Pre-pandemic wave: 32 countries, N=8998; 3302 male, 5585 female; Mage=24.43, SD=7.91; Mid-pandemic wave: 29 countries, N=6917; 2249 male, 4218 …

Description Des Stratégies Favorisant L'Adoption De Comportements Préventifs Chez Les Travailleurs Ayant Subi Une Lésion Professionnelle : Une Revue Critique De La Littérature, Alexandra Lecours, Marie-France Coutu, Marie-José Durand

Rapports de recherche scientifique

Contexte et objectif de la recherche

Certains travailleurs ayant subi une lésion professionnelle présentent des difficultés à se maintenir au travail à long terme au retour d’une période d’absence, et ce, même après avoir reçu des services de réadaptation. Les professionnels de la réadaptation ont un rôle à jouer pour favoriser ce maintien sain et durable au travail, notamment par le soutien au développement des comportements préventifs chez les travailleurs. En effet, de récentes études ont permis de développer le Modèle des comportements préventifs au travail (MCPT) qui décrit six comportements que les travailleurs peuvent adopter en interaction avec leur …