'It wasn't the strategies on their own': Exploring caregivers' experiences of accessing services in the development of interventions for autistic people with intellectual disability

LAY ABSTRACT

Many autistic individuals with intellectual disability experience anxiety, and for those who use few or no words, anxiety may present as behaviour that challenges, such as self-injury and avoiding anxiety-provoking situations. Families report difficulty accessing support from services for autistic individuals experiencing anxiety. Moreover, once receiving support, effective interventions for autistic people with intellectual disability are limited. We completed individual and group discussions with 16 caregivers of autistic people with intellectual disability, to (a) explore their experiences of accessing services for anxiety and/or behaviour that challenges for their child; and (b) understand what matters to caregivers when developing interventions that have been designed for them and the autistic individual with intellectual disability that they support. Caregivers reported that services, in their experience, did not deliver the support that they expected, and that they often needed to 'fight' for support. Caregivers considered services and families working together, the inclusion of peer support, and families being offered interventions that are flexible to individual circumstances to be important. These considerations are valuable for clinicians and researchers developing interventions and aiming to improve outcomes for autistic people with intellectual disability and their families.

Search for Spiritual Assistance in Religious Organizations: What Are the Motives of Persons Who Have Experienced Destructive Relationships at Work?

Religious assistance is an effective tool in helping the victims of violence, but so far, it has not been investigated that what promotes the persons aggrieved in the workplace to seek such assistance. Therefore, this study aimed to identify the motives of persons who have experienced destructive relationships, which inspire the search for spiritual assistance in religious organizations, seeking to develop the provision of such service. After the analysis of the scientific literature, a questionnaire "Motives of Persons Aggrieved at Work for Seeking Spiritual Assistance (MP-SSA-40)" was developed and validated. In this study, a survey was conducted on 463 persons working in Lithuanian organizations using the questionnaire survey method. The correlation and regression analyses were performed. The study has shown that the religiosity of the victim is not the only condition for seeking spiritual assistance. Significant factors are the congruence of values borne by the person and the religious organization, the motives arising from the relation with the person providing assistance, and the motives determined by circumstances that create an important contextual background. The established trends show that by solving work-related problems and problems of interpersonal relationships of assistance providers, obstacles hindering the implementation of intrinsic motives of the victim to apply for spiritual assistance to the religious organization, providing it can be removed. The value of the article is demonstrated by the fact that it fills the existing gaps of knowledge about the motives of victims of destructive relationships at work, seeking religious spiritual assistance. In addition, a new and reliable instrument to measure such motives is proposed.

Religious education can contribute to adolescent mental health in school settings

Background

Mental disorders contribute substantial burden to the society due to their widespread occurrence and debilitating effects. A quarter of the world’s population are children and adolescents, a significant number of whom experience mental disorders as early as the age of 14. Some interventions have been found to effectively reduce the risk factors and reinforce protective or preventive factors. However, there is still a need to put emphasis on mental health promotion strategies such as religious education. This paper aims to discuss the importance of religious education in promoting mental health.

Discussion

Religious education can be instrumental to improving adolescent mental health. Specifically, it can: (1) help develop healthier reaction to stimuli through the internalization of religious morality; (2) reinforce religious coping mechanisms which reduce the impact of stresses, enhance coping skills, and promote a less risky lifestyle; (3) increase awareness regarding religious beliefs and practices and their influence on the individual, the family, and the community; and finally, (4) promote connectedness which can enhance self-esteem and well-being. However, negative health outcomes such as discrimination and social isolation can also develop, especially among religious or gender minority groups.

Conclusion

It is important to reflect on the crucial role of religious education on adolescent mental health. School-based mental health education and promotion strategies can maximize the benefits of religious education by putting emphasis on effective implementation of religious education to positively influence adolescent mental health.

Cross-Cultural Research on Psychotherapy: The Need for a Change

Psychotherapy models, some of which now have a history over a century, have been practiced worldwide. However, considering that the most prevalently applied psychotherapy models are the products of Western culture, questioning the extent of these models’ effectiveness and efficiency for people belonging to diverse cultural backgrounds is legitimate. No doubt, ethno-cultural groups living in Western multicultural societies will interact with Western culture more deeply compared with people living in non-Western countries; therefore, to also think that their needs will differ is reasonable. In this case, the quantity and quality of the required adaptations may also change. Although a promising number of studies exist on intercultural adaptations necessitated by the needs of multicultural societies, the literature on the effectiveness of these models in the non-Western world and the local psychotherapy models is quite limited. One important question is whether psychotherapy models can be adapted to address non-Western cultures without transforming their fundamental assumptions, and if so, can this be conducted efficiently? With these questions in mind, the aim is to review the current state of scientific studies on psychotherapy practices in various cultures. In addition, considering the large spectrum of cultural migration taking place in modern days and the difficulty of receiving mental health services in underdeveloped countries, the importance of adapted and local psychotherapy research has been emphasized and some suggestions for consideration in future research have been made.