The COVID-19 pandemic has created a sense of threat, and stress that has surged globally at an alarming pace. University students were confronted with new challenges. This study examined university ...students’ functional difficulties and concerns during COVID-19 pandemic in two countries: Israel and Ukraine. Additionally, it examined the similarities and differences in prediction of COVID-related concerns in both countries. Two large samples of university students were drawn from both countries. Results showed that students’ main functional difficulties in both countries were: worries about their family health status and their learning assignments. In both countries, COVID-related functional difficulties and stress associated with exposure to the media added a significant amount of the explained variance of COVID-related concerns after controlling for background variables. In conclusion—while the level of exposure and difficulties may differ by country and context, their associations with students’ concerns seem robust. Additionally, repeated exposure to media coverage about a community threat can lead to increased anxiety.
У статті відображено результати теоретико-емпіричного осмислення проблеми трудових адикцій, переважно трудоголізму, як таких, що чинять руйнівний вплив на психічне здоров’я працівників в ...організаціях. Підкреслено суперечливі тенденції в розумінні феномену трудоголізму: виокремлення позитивних аспектів (високі досягнення, матеріальний і соціальний статус, зростання національного багатства), які сполучаються з високими ризиками для психічного й фізичного здоров’я людини, її благополуччя та якості життя. Найбільш поширеними критеріями трудоголізму є кількість витраченого часу на роботу, специфіка ставлення до неї, безперервне інвестування у власну працю багато часу, надмірні очікування стосовно її результатів і постійні нав’язливі думки щодо необхідності працювати. Проаналізовано сучасні типології трудоголізму: компульсивно-залежний, перфекціоністський та орієнтований на досягнення, булемічний, невпинний, ретельний, неуважно-розсіяний типи; трудоголізм із захопленням, із примусу, відповідно до наявності чи відсутності ентузіазму. Важливими механізмами для функціонування трудоголізму та його класифікації є розмежування зосередженості власне на змістові роботи чи на самому акту праці. Установлено сфери, у яких існують найвищі ризики для розвитку трудоголізму, серед них – сфери державного управління. Результати емпіричного дослідження державних службовців у Волинській області свідчать про те, що 28,6 % мають ознаки трудоголізму й потребують просвітницької та психотерапевтичної роботи стосовно цієї трудової адикції. Також установлено значно нижчі показники за шкалами якості життя: родина, соціальний статус, духовні потреби, душевний стан, соціальна підтримка з боку інших, здоров’я в осіб із наявністю симптомів трудоголізму. Проаналізовано цілісну політику ЄС щодо збереження й просування психічного здоров’я в Європі та підкреслено необхідність упровадження політики ЄС у вітчизняні організації.
Developmental Dyslexia is a specific reading and writing disability despite of normal intelligence, educational instruction and socio-cultural opportunity. Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder ...(ADHD) is a condition that affects millions of children and often persists into adulthood. ADHD can include a combination of problems, such as difficulty sustaining attention, hyperactivity and impulsive behaviour. The frequent co-morbidity of dyslexia and ADHD posed the question of the issue whether common causal mechanism can be identified. There are several causal explanation of the co-morbidity between dyslexia and ADHD. Firstly, the symptoms of ADHD associated with dyslexia are a secondary consequence of reading problems (‘phenocopy’ hypothesis). However, the finding could not substantiate in later studies. Therefore, the first aim the present research is to identify the frequency and nature of co-morbidity between dyslexics and ADHD children.
Developmental Dyslexia and ADHD are some of the most complex developmental disorders that affect children population. These are some of the conditions which affect the ability of the children to benefit from education and engage with surroundings in a meaningful manner. These conditions may occur in isolation, but many times they overlap. These overlapping conditions are termed as co-morbidity, and this may reflect the greater difficulties experienced by the children with a combination of deficits. However, the underlying reasons for these and the subsequent behavioural deficits are not well understood. Thus, the second major goal of the article is to investigate neuro-cognitive underpinning of dyslexia and ADHD. Neuro-cognitive basis presented by prefrontal dorsolateral cortex dysfunction was revealed and executive functions presented by problems in phonological working memory, initiating the activity and multitasking were established.
У статті відображено результати теоретичного й емпіричного досліджень репрезентації життєвих подій у пам’яті особистості. Встановлено відмінності між автобіографічною й травматичною пам’яттю на ...основі розмежування емоційно негативних і травматичних подій. Емпірично доведено пропозиціональну репрезентацію життєвих подій у пам’яті особи та визначено специфіку пропозиціональних структурних елементів окремо для травматичних і негативних подій. Це свідчить про відмінності у збереженні та відтворенні цих подій, що може відігравати значну роль у лікуванні ПТСР. З’ясовано, що в осіб без ПТСР переважають елементи екстернального агента під час відтворення травматичних подій порівняно із негативними, що свідчить про врахування об’єктивних чинників цієї події й послаблення власної ролі в травмувальній ситуації, усвідомленого прожиття цієї ситуації. Під час відтворення травматичних подій порівняно із негативними збільшується кількість речень у наративі, що свідчить про легше запам’ятовування й відтворення травматичної події. Визначено значущі кореляційні зв’язки між показниками екстернального агента з усіма психолінгвістичними показниками: кількістю слів та речень у наративі, лексичною різноманітністю, екстернальним об’єктом, відношенням (предикатом) та часом. Це підтверджує наше припущення про те, що зосередження на екстернальному агентові (а не на собі) у відтворенні травматичної події дає змогу врахувати всі об’єктивні чинники цієї події, осмислити її, уникнути почуття провини та власної ролі у травмувальній ситуації й запобігти розвиткові ПТСР. Перспективним убачаємо дослідження наративів осіб із ПТСР, пропозиціональна структура яких дасть змогу зрозуміти особливості репрезентації травматичних подій у поєднанні їх із ПТСР.Ключові слова: травматична пам’ять, автобіографічна пам’ять, травматичні події, емоційно негативні події, пропозиціональні структурні елементи.
The study aims to examine constructing meaning in self-narrative in the context of information retrieval from autobiographical memory. The study applies seven dimensions of constructing meaning in ...self-narratives, in particular, completeness of the socio-cultural context description, the text cohesion and coherence, the detailed event description, narrator’s communicative intentions, completeness of characters` description, representation of personal traits in the characters` descriptions, narrator’s purpose and position in the problem-conflict situation. After obtaining consent forms, we instructed the participants (91 students) to reflect on a problem-conflict situation from their everyday lives. Two experts unfamiliar with the study’s objectives coded the transcripts of participants’ conflict-based life stories interviews and defined 34 structural components, associated with autobiographical memory activation. The principal component analysis with rotation results in 11 generalized factors indicating autobiographical memory activation. A positive correlation shows that the autobiographical memory activation is associated with some dimensions of constructing meaning in self-narratives. They are disclosure of characters’ traits, autobiographical reasoning, contradictory statements, fragmentation and disorganization in trauma description, interaction patterns, causal interpretation of events. These results add to the rapidly expanding field of narrative therapy, especially the healing effect of trauma-focused narrative and integrating the traumatic experience into autobiographical memory.
Moral injury (MI) is one of the main emotional distress in military personnel. Findings suggest that in wartime there are an endless number of potentially morally injurious events, which determine ...maladaptive cognitions, moral emotions of guilt and shame, and inefficient behaviour. Notwithstanding the strong association between MI and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) recognized in the number of studies, there is still a gap of accurate data aligned with identifying the differences between MI and PTSD in terms of treatment and healing. This study aims to establish conceptual boundaries of moral injury, post-traumatic stress disorder and systematically review the empirical literature on them in military personnel. Specifically, we explored and summarized co-occurrence of MI and PTSD in military personnel and evaluated the association between MI and PTSD, as well with other emotional distress. The results indicate that the key aspects of comparison of MI and PTSD include definition and symptomology, measurement, neural underpinning, and treatment. Considering the consequences of poor social well-being, emotional sufferings and inefficient behavioral patterns, treatments focusing on MI separately from PTSD-focused models are much needed.
Acknowledgements
This study is a part of the Moral Injury and Healing of Combatants: Neuropsychological Correlates and Psychological Interventions project funded by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine (2022-2023).
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
The article aims to extend our understanding of physical and psychological types of ambiguous loss through a systematic review based on content and psycholinguistic analysis. The study encompassed ...articles aligned with ambiguous loss published between 2019-2023, retrieved from PsycINFO, Web of Science (WoS), and Scopus. To eliminate the bias in the literature review, the study extracted published articles, dissertations, book chapters, and preprints with titles containing the search term “ambiguous loss”. Two reviewers (the first and the third authors worked independently) examined titles and abstracts and identified papers highlighting physical (n=34) or psychological (n=23) types of ambiguous loss. The physical type results from physical absence of meaningful persons (e.g. abducted, missing, adopted), while the psychological type results from psychological absence of meaningful persons (e.g. dementia, mental illness, addiction). The study applies the conceptual and relational content analysis of Leximancer (version 4.5) to develop three cluster maps and lists of concepts separately for physical and psychological types and all selected papers published between 2019-2023. The results show that the physical type primarily encompasses situations related to adoption, potentially leading to the ambiguous loss experienced by both biological parents and children when facing forced separation. Psychological type includes parents of children with disabilities, shaken baby syndrome, and caregivers of individuals with brain injuries and cancer. The present study indicates that the conceptual boundaries between physical and psychological types of ambiguous loss are not only expanding but also erasing, giving way to new applications in settings such as the COVID-19 pandemic, organ donor families, and sexual and gender minority.
In light of the current Russia-Ukraine war, traumatic stress in civilian Ukrainians is a critical issue for psychological science to examine. Social media is often viewed as a tribune for authors’ ...self-expressing and sharing stories on the war’s impact upon their lives. To date, little is known about how the civilians articulate their own war experience in social media and how this media affects the processing of traumatic experience and releasing the traumatic stress. Thus, the goal of the study is to examine how the personal experience of the Russia-Ukraine war 2022 is narrated on Facebook as a popular social media venue. The study uses a corpus of 316 written testimonies collected on Facebook from witnesses of the Russia-Ukraine war and compares it against a reference corpus of 100 literary prosaic texts in Ukrainian. We analyzed both corpora using the Ukrainian version of the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count software – LIWC 2015 (Pennebaker et al., 2015). We identified psychological and linguistic categories that characterized the war narratives and distinguished it from the literary reference corpus. For instance, we found the style of Facebook testimonies to be significantly less narrative and more analytic compared to literary writings. Therefore, writers in the social media focus more on cognitive reappraisal of the tragic events, i.e., a strategy known to lead to a reduction of stress and trauma.
The research objective is to examine the brain activity of individuals with different levels of procrastination. The study applies EEG data analysis with different levels of linguistic stimuli ...complexity (letter and semantic word), allowing to change the cognitive load and register the electrical activity of the cerebral cortex while performing tasks with two different stimuli: perceptual and semantic. We registered the electrical activity of the cerebral cortex in 20 individuals (18 females, 2 males) in the shielding lightproof testing room of the Laboratory of Age Neurophysiology at Lesya Ukrainka Volyn National University. This technique analyzes the dynamics of cortical electrogenesis identifies general patterns of local and spatial synchronization of biopotentials of the cerebral cortex. The findings indicate that the dynamics of cortical electrogenesis of prospective memory depends on linguistic stimuli complexity in procrastinators, associated with increased energy expenditure. Furthermore, the largest number of statistically significant intergroup differences in subjects with different levels of procrastination was found in the beta range of EEG, indicating the rhythm of activity. On the one hand, this rhythm of activity is dependent on the optimization of problem-solving. On the other, the increase in its power reflects cortical excitation and selective inhibition. Evidence consistently suggests that the complexity of the linguistic task increases the interaction of brain macrostructures in the anterior associative zone (fronto-central leads) in students with dilatory behaviour. In contrast, subjects without dilatory behaviour demonstrate only changes in spatial synchronization modulated according to the linguistic stimuli complexity.
Moral injury is a relatively new construct which is strongly associated with PTSD but which also has distinctive features that may not overlap with PTSD. There is a growing body of literature that ...recognises moral injury as emotional distress and sufferings arising from a transgression of one’s core moral principles or ethical beliefs and aligned with feelings of shame and guilt. A great number of moral injury research is represented by theoretical and qualitative studies vs biopsychosocial approach towards conceptualizing PTSD. However, a systematic understanding of how potentially moral injurious events contribute to moral injury symptoms is still lacking. Of particular concern is moral injury of military personnel exhibiting PTSD symptoms during and after wartime. This study utilizes the concept analysis model (Walker & Avant, 2011) to explore and assess the attributes, antecedents, consequences and empirical referents of moral injury in Ukrainian National Guard service members, who are protecting the northern Ukrainian border with Belarus and defending military objects during the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops. The research uses narrative case studies collected from National Guard soldiers in Ukraine as part of our combatants' moral injury broader project. Initial results of this study indicate mechanisms of developing moral injury symptoms with comorbidity of depression, generalized anxiety, and PTSD in National Guard service members during wartime. The findings of the current study have important theoretical and practical implications in terms of better understanding the causal relations of moral injury and enhancing clinical practice and holistic treatment approach for National Guard soldiers.
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