Background
According to literature, the COVID-19 pandemic caused stressful working conditions for nurses, which may have a negative impact on their Well-Being and mental health.
Aim
To investigate ...whether nurses and
non
-helping professionals differ in their Well-Being. Furthermore, we analyzed, for the first time, which personality traits and styles are a risk factor for nurses’ wellbeing during COVID-19 pandemic.
Methods
In an online survey, the following psychological tests were used on nursing staff (
n
= 518) and
non
-helping professionals (
n
= 335):
WHO-Five
(
WHO-5
), the
Personality, Style and Disorder Inventory
(
PSSI
), and the
Freiburg Personality Inventory-Revised
(
FPI-R
).
Results
Nurses and
non
-helping professionals did not differ significantly in terms of Well-Being. The Well-Being of nurses was correlated with the following personality traits and styles, namely
Spontaneous-Borderline Personality Style
,
Silent-Depressive Personality Style
,
Strain
,
Emotionality
, and
Life Satisfaction
. According to our results, 33% of participants suffered from clinically significant depressive symptoms.
Discussion
According to our results, nurses are not more at risk for depression. However, it was shown that Well-Being during the pandemic is highly dependent on personality.
Conclusion
Specific personality traits and styles are a greater predictor of depressive symptoms than profession. The stressful occupational environment during COVID-19 pandemic is not the only cause for depressive symptoms in nurses. Psychotherapeutic interventions are especially important for particular individuals and are necessary to prevent depressive symptoms during COVID-19 pandemic.
Objectives: Adolescent elite athletes are generally exposed to considerable stress. This study investigated the extent and intensity of burnout in adolescent athletes attending an elite Austrian ...sports school. Methods: The German version of the Athlete Burnout Questionnaire (ABQ) and additional questions on burnout-related risk factors were applied to a sample of 63 students. Results: The data show a substantial burden of burnout in the student sample, compared to a sample of adult endurance athletes. Burnout was negatively associated with training duration and with a perspective onto a professional sports career, and positively associated with thoughts about finalizing sports, with the number of injuries, and with high levels of success-related psychic pressure. Conclusions: Burnout in adolescent elite athletes at an Austrian sports school was evident in number and severity. Psychological factors like doubts on the career, perceiving a professional perspective in sports, self-efficacy, or sense-making may interact with contextual factors in a circular way.
Aim Mixed-methods approaches promise a deep understanding of psychotherapeutic processes. This study uses qualitative and quantitative data from daily diary entries and daily self-assessments during ...inpatient treatment. The aim of the study is to get an insight into the similarities and differences between both types of data and how they represent self-organized pattern transitions in psychotherapy. While a complete correlation of results is not expected, we anticipate observing amplifying and subsidiary patterns from both perspectives. Materials and methods Daily, five MDD patients wrote diaries and completed self-assessments using the Therapy Process Questionnaire, a questionnaire for monitoring the change dynamics of psychotherapy. The data were collected using the Synergetic Navigation System, an online tool for real-time monitoring. Diary entries of the patients described their experiences in everyday life. The qualitative text analysis was conducted using Mixed Grounded Theory, which provided categories representing the patients’ ongoing experiences of transformation and stagnation. The time series data was analyzed using the dynamic complexity algorithm and the pattern transition detection algorithm. Results from qualitative and quantitative analyses were combined and compared. Following the process of data triangulation, the leading perspective came from the theory of self-organization. In addition to presenting the overall results for all five patients, we delve into two specific case examples in greater detail. Results Specific and highly diversified diary entries of 5 patients were classified into the categories of perceived pattern stability, noticing improvement, broadening the perspective, critical instability, and experiencing moments of Kairos. Patients reported problems not only related to their disorder (e.g., lack of energy and hopelessness) but also to phases and steps of change, which could be related to the theory of self-organization (e.g., problem attractors, critical fluctuations, pattern transitions, and Kairos). Qualitative and quantitative analysis provide important supplementary results without being redundant or identical. Conclusion Data triangulation allows for a comprehensive and multi-perspective understanding of therapeutic change dynamics. The different topics expressed in the diary entries especially help to follow micro-psychological processes, which are far from being a simple reaction to interventions. The way patients experience themselves being in stability or instability and stagnation or transformation is surprisingly close to the general features of self-organizing processes in complex systems.
With the increasing use of real-time monitoring procedures in clinical practice, psychological time series become available to researchers and practitioners. An important interest concerns the ...identification of pattern transitions which are characteristic features of psychotherapeutic change. Change Point Analysis (CPA) is an established method to identify the point where the mean and/or variance of a time series change, but changes of other and more complex features cannot be detected by this method. In this study, an extension of the CPA, the Pattern Transition Detection Algorithm (PTDA), is optimized and validated for psychological time series with complex pattern transitions. The algorithm uses the convergent information of the CPA and other methods like Recurrence Plots, Time Frequency Distributions, and Dynamic Complexity. These second level approaches capture different aspects of the primary time series. The data set for testing the PTDA (300 time series) is created by an instantaneous control parameter shift of a simulation model of psychotherapeutic change during the simulation runs. By comparing the dispersion of random change points with the real change points, the PTDA determines if the transition point is significant. The PTDA reduces the rate of false negative and false positive results of the CPA below 5% and generalizes its application to different types of pattern transitions. RQA quantifiers also can be used for the identification of nonstationary transitions in time series which was illustrated by using Determinism and Entropy. The PTDA can be easily used with Matlab and is freely available at Matlab File Exchange (https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/80380-pattern-transition-detection-algorithm-ptda).
Background
Pathological Altruism and the concept of Helper Syndrome are comparable. We focused on Schmidbauer’s description because it provides a comprehensive and testable definition. Nevertheless, ...this concept of Helper Syndrome has not yet been empirically investigated in a sample of helping professionals.
Aim
To investigate whether nurses working with covid-19 patients are more likely to have Helper Syndrome compared with individuals from non-helper professions.
Methods
The online survey took place between April 2021 and February 2022, in urban and rural regions of Salzburg, during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nurses (
n
= 447) and controls (
n
= 295) were compared regarding Helper Syndrome characteristics. To measure characteristics of Helper Syndrome the following questionnaires were used: WHO-Five (WHO-5), selected scales of the Personality, Style and Disorder Inventory (PSSI) and the Freiburg Personality Inventory-Revised (FPI-R), the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT). Insecure gender identity and self-assessment of having a Helper Syndrome was measured by a Likert scale.
Results
In both groups, Helper Syndrome was detected (nurses 29.5%, controls 30.5%). Participants with Helper Syndrome showed significant differences in personality styles and traits, namely significantly higher scores for
Foreboding-Schizotypical Personality Style
,
Spontaneous-Borderline Personality Style, Amiable-Histrionic Personality Style, Ambitious-Narcissistic Personality Style, Loyal-Dependent Personality Style, Helpful-Selfless Personality Style, Carefully-Obsessive Personality Style, Optimistic-Rhapsodic Personality Style, Social Orientation, Strain, Emotionality
and lower well-being. The only difference between nurses and controls was that nurses were significantly less open aggressive.
Conclusion
For the first time, we were able to demonstrate Schmidbauer’s concept of Helper Syndrome. According to our data, we found a subgroup of individuals similar to Schmidbauer’s description of Helper Syndrome, but this sample was independent of helping or non-helping profession. These individuals seem to be at higher risk for psychiatric disorders.
Complex problem solving (CPS) can be interpreted as the number of psychological mechanisms that allow us to reach our targets in difficult situations, that can be classified as complex, dynamic, ...non-transparent, interconnected, and multilayered, and also polytelic. The previous results demonstrated associations between the personality dimensions neuroticism, conscientiousness, and extraversion and problem-solving performance. However, there are no studies dealing with personality disorders in connection with CPS skills. Therefore, the current study examines a clinical sample consisting of people with personality and/or depressive disorders. As we have data for all the potential personality disorders and also data from each patient regarding to potential depression, we meet the whole range from healthy to impaired for each personality disorder and for depression. We make use of a unique operationalization: CPS was surveyed in a simulation game, making use of the microworld approach. This study was designed to investigate the hypothesis that personality traits are related to CPS performance. Results show that schizotypal, histrionic, dependent, and depressive persons are less likely to successfully solve problems, while persons having the additional behavioral characteristics of resilience, action orientation, and motivation for creation are more likely to successfully solve complex problems.
Objectives: Sports injuries usually have severe consequences for the concerned athletes as well as for trainers and teams. The question is if accidents can be predicted in specific cases. Can ...early-warning signals be detected in psychological time series? Methods: An App-based method of process-monitoring was applied for data collection of psychological parameters. Daily self-assessments using a Sports Process Questionnaire were realized by a professional soccer player during the after-care period of a psychiatric treatment. Methods for the prediction of critical events were applied (Dynamic Complexity, Recurrence Plots, dynamic inter-item correlations). Injuries may demarcate pattern transitions in the mental functioning of athletes, which could be identified by the Pattern Transition Detection Algorithm (PTDA). Results: Early-warning signals of the accident could be identified in the time series. Dynamic Complexity revealed a critical instability, Recurrence Plots a transient period, and the dynamic inter-item correlations a period of increased system coherence just before the accident. The PTDA revealed a phase transition at the occurring injury. Conclusions: Even if the analysis is based on a single case, the results are promising. Psychological self-reports allow a short-term prediction of bio-mechanical injuries and by this, can help to prevent them. Nonlinear measures can be applied to time series data collected by digital process monitoring.
Compared to the extensive evidence of the effectiveness of mindfulness-based interventions, there is only a limited understanding of their mechanisms of change. The three aims of this study are (1) ...to identify features of self-organization during the process (e.g., pattern transitions), (2) to obtain an impression of the effects of continuous self-assessments and feedback sessions on mindfulness-related stress reduction, and (3) to test the feasibility of high-frequency process monitoring and process feedback. Concerning aim (1), the specific hypothesis is that change will occur as a cascade of discontinuous pattern transitions emerging spontaneously in the sense of not being a reaction to external input. This single case study describes changing patterns of multiple time series that were produced by app-based daily self-assessments during and after an 8-week mindfulness-based stress reduction program. After this MBSR program, the participant (a female nurse) continued the self-assessment and the mindfulness practice for a further 10 months. The results confirm findings on the positive effects of mindfulness programs for healthcare professionals, especially on coping with work-related stress. The analysis of the time series data supports the hypothesis of self-organization as a possible mechanism of change manifesting as a cascade of phase transitions in the dynamics of a biopsychosocial system. At the end of the year, the participant reported a beneficial impact of daily monitoring and systematic feedback on the change process. The results underline the feasibility and usefulness of continuous high-frequency monitoring during and after mindfulness interventions.
Although there is convincing evidence for socio-cognitive impairments in schizophrenia spectrum disorder (SSD), little evidence is found for deficient moral cognition. We investigated whether ...patients with SSD showed altered moral judgments in a story task where the protagonist either had a neutral or malicious intention towards another person. This paradigm examined whether SSD relates to altered moral cognition in general or specifically to impaired integration of prior information (such as beliefs) in moral judgments.
23 patients and 32 healthy controls read vignettes created in a 2 x 2 design. The protagonist in each story either had a neutral or negative intention towards another person which, as a result, either died (negative outcome) or did not die (neutral outcome). Participants rated the moral permissibility of the protagonist's action. Standard null hypothesis significance testing and equivalent Bayes analyses are reported.
Schizophrenia patients did not differ significantly in permissibility ratings from healthy controls. This finding was supported by the Bayes analyses which favoured the null hypothesis. Task performance was not related to symptom severity or medication.
The current findings do not support the notion that moral judgments are deficient in schizophrenia. Furthermore, the current study shows that patients do not have observable difficulties in integrating the protagonist's belief in the rating of the moral permissibility of the action-outcome.
Psychotherapy could be interpreted as a self-organizing process which reveals discontinuous pattern transitions (so-called phase transitions). Whereas this was shown in the conscious process of awake ...patients by different measures and at different time scales, dreams came very seldom into the focus of investigation. The present work tests the hypothesis that, by dreaming, the patient gets progressively more access to affective-laden (i.e., emotionally charged) unconscious dimensions. Furthermore, the study investigates if, over the course of psychotherapy, a discontinuous phase transition occurs in the patient's capacity to get in contact with those unconscious dimensions.
A series of 95 dream narratives reported during a psychoanalytic psychotherapy of a female patient (published as the "dreams of Amalie X") was used for analysis. An automated text analysis procedure based on multiple correspondence analysis was applied to the textual corpus of the dreams, highlighting a 10-factor structure. The factors, interpreted as affective-laden unconscious meaning dimensions, were adopted to define a 10-dimensional phase space, in which the ability of a dream to be associated with one or more local factors representing complex affective-laden meanings is measured by the Euclidean distance (ED) from the origin of this hyperspace. The obtained ED time series has been fitted by an autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model and by non linear methods like dynamic complexity, recurrence plot, and time frequency distribution. Change point analysis was applied to these non linear methods.
The results show an increased frequency and intensity of dreams to get access to affective-laden meanings. Non linear methods identified a phase transition-like jump of the ED dynamics onto a higher complexity level of the dreaming process, suggesting a non linear process in the patient's capacity to get in contact with unconscious dimensions.
The study corroborates the hypothesis that, by dreaming, the patient gets progressively more access to affective-laden meaning intended as unconscious dimensions. The trajectory of this process has been reproduced by an ARIMA model, and beyond this, non linear methods of time series analysis allowed the identification of a phase transition in the unconscious process of the psychoanalytic therapy under investigation.
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