Stress Study on Retirement of Secretariat Employees of South Bengkulu Regency

The purpose of this research is to study the stress that usually occurs in facing retirement. This research method is a qualitative descriptive method and direct interviews. The purpose of this study was to analyze the stress faced by retirees. The results of this study indicate that employees who enter retirement experience changes in life psychologically.

The Swiss Corona Stress Study: November 2021

This paper reports the results of the 4th survey of the Swiss Corona Stress Study. During the survey period from November 16-28, 2021, 11167 people from all over Switzerland participated in the anonymous online survey. Stress factors: There were major differences between the group of vaccinated persons (58 percent of respondents) and the group of unvaccinated persons in terms of the stress factors associated with the subjective perception of stress. The greatest differences were found in the stress caused by measures such as the certificate requirement, which the majority of the unvaccinated perceived as stressful, while the majority of the vaccinated perceived it as relieving. The burden of conflicts in the family, among friends or at the workplace due to corona measures or vaccination was high among both vaccinated and unvaccinated persons. However, it was significantly higher among the latter. There were also large differences - here with a higher burden among vaccinated persons - in the fear about the health consequences of Covid-19, such as the concern that someone in the closest circle could become seriously ill. Fears of suffering from Long Covid in case of an infection, or that children might bring the coronavirus home and infect parents or grandparents, were also more prevalent among vaccinated than unvaccinated respondents. Among respondents with their own children between the ages of 4 and 11 (a total of 2079 people), only 17 percent among vaccinated parents were not at all afraid that their child will become infected with the coronavirus. Among unvaccinated parents, the figure was 68 percent. Depressive symptoms: The proportion of respondents with moderately severe or severe depressive symptoms (PHQ>=15) was 19 percent, with vaccination status not playing a relevant role. In April 2020 (lockdown), this proportion was 9 percent; in May 2020 (partial lockdown), 12 percent; and in November 2020 (second wave), 18 percent. Risk factors for moderately severe or severe depressive symptoms were:- Young age: Severe depressive symptoms were most common in the youngest group (14 to 24 years old), with a share of 33 percent. Among participants who attended school or college/university, depressive symptoms were most strongly related to stress from pressure to perform at school. - Financial losses: Individuals whose financial reserves decreased during the pandemic were more likely to experience major depressive symptoms (32 percent) than those with unchanged or increased reserves (13 percent). - Previous mental health issues: Individuals with mental health problems prior to the pandemic are more likely to experience major depressive symptoms (34 percent) than individuals who reported having no mental health problems prior to the pandemic (14 percent). Substance use: Among those taking tranquilizers or sleeping pills (3544 persons), 53.6 percent reported an increase, 3.5 percent a decrease, and 42.9 percent no change in use during the pandemic (Figure 4). A similar pattern emerges for persons using nicotine, alcohol, or cannabis. The extent of use of these substances is related to the severity of stress, anxiety, and depression symptoms.

Gambaran Tingkat Kecemasan dan Stres Kerja Tenaga Kesehatan Puskesmas Saat Pandemi Covid-19

Introduction: The rapid growth of number of COVID-19 cases every day has made the condition of health workers increasingly depressed. These conditions can affect the level of anxiety and work stress. A study involving health workers caring for Covid-19 patient showed anxiety symptoms and work stress experience. The existence of anxiety and work stress can have an impact on increasing work errors, deteriorating physical and mental conditions, reducing productivity and decreasing service’s quality. This study aims to describe the anxiety level and work stress of health workers during Covid-19 pandemic at the Public Health Center (Puskesmas). Methods: This research was a descriptive survey study with 156 respondents from nine Puskesmas obtained through cluster and quota sampling calculation. Data was taken using Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS-42) and workplace Stress Scale (WSS) questionnaires which distributed via google form. Results: The results of this study obtained 16.7% of Puskesmas health workers experience anxiety consisting of 5.8% mild, 7.7% moderate, 2.6% severe and 0.6% very severe anxiety. Meanwhile, the work stress study obtained as many as 68.7% experience work stress, consisting of low 35.3%, moderate 27.6%, and heavy work stress 5.8%. Conclusion: Failure to manage anxiety and work stress can have a negative impact on mental health and can even endanger the lives of health workers. The findings in this study indicate risk for mental health disorders for health workers due to the Covid-19 pandemic. So it is necessary for relevant agencies and also individual itself, to manage anxiety and work stress.

Emotion in non-suicidal self-injury: A contradiction between global self-reports and real-time responses

<p><b>People who engage in non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) report doing so largely to manage overwhelming emotions. Prominent theories of NSSI argue that an amplified emotional response system creates the context in which a person chooses to regulate their emotions by engaging in NSSI. In line with these theories, people who engage in NSSI consistently report greater global emotion reactivity and emotion dysregulation than do controls. These global self-reports of emotional functioning also predict the onset and cessation of NSSI, demonstrating their considerable utility in understanding the behaviour. However, global self-reports provide an overall evaluation of one’s average affective experience and so are ill-suited to isolating precise alterations in emotional responding.</b></p> <p>I first establish how best to assess NSSI (Study 1a and 1b). I then leverage experimental affective science and individual differences methodologies to test whether NSSI is characterised by a more reactive and intense emotional response to challenge, and/or whether factors that help to create, modify, and later recall the emotional response are altered in those who engage in NSSI compared with controls. Study 2 compared how young adults with a past-year history of NSSI and controls subjectively and physiologically reacted to, and recovered from, acute stress. Study 3 compared how young adults with a past-year history of NSSI and controls subjectively reacted to both explicit and more ambiguous social exclusion.</p> <p>Consistent with a wealth of research, across both Studies 2 and 3 people with a past-year history of NSSI reported considerably greater global emotion reactivity and emotion dysregulation than did controls. However, counter to predictions, both the NSSI and Control groups showed similar patterns of real-time emotional responding to both acute stress (Study 2) and social exclusion (Study 3), providing no evidence that NSSI is characterised by an amplified response to emotional challenge. In addition, we found no evidence that emotional recovery, emotion regulation strategy use, memory of emotional experience, or appraisal—all factors that shape the emotional response—operate differently in those who engage in NSSI. Focusing on how people make global self-reports, exploratory reanalysis of Study 2 and 3 suggests that people with no history of NSSI draw from their real-time experiences of acute (but not mild) emotional challenge when making judgements about their global emotion dysregulation. In contrast, people who engage in NSSI appear to rely on different channels of information when reporting their global emotion dysregulation.</p> <p>Overall, this thesis demonstrates that, despite reporting considerably poorer global emotional functioning, people who engage in NSSI show largely typical responses to real-time emotional challenges. Given that global self-reports of emotional functioning appear to be critical for understanding NSSI onset and cessation, the discrepancy between global self-reports and measures of real-time responding highlights the complexity of the relationship between emotion and NSSI. To advance our understanding of emotional responding in NSSI, research should: a) establish the conditions (if any) under which people who engage in NSSI show amplified emotional responding, and b) isolate the psychological processes that underlie the experience of poorer global emotional functioning reported by people who engage in NSSI.</p>

Emotion in non-suicidal self-injury: A contradiction between global self-reports and real-time responses

<p><b>People who engage in non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) report doing so largely to manage overwhelming emotions. Prominent theories of NSSI argue that an amplified emotional response system creates the context in which a person chooses to regulate their emotions by engaging in NSSI. In line with these theories, people who engage in NSSI consistently report greater global emotion reactivity and emotion dysregulation than do controls. These global self-reports of emotional functioning also predict the onset and cessation of NSSI, demonstrating their considerable utility in understanding the behaviour. However, global self-reports provide an overall evaluation of one’s average affective experience and so are ill-suited to isolating precise alterations in emotional responding.</b></p> <p>I first establish how best to assess NSSI (Study 1a and 1b). I then leverage experimental affective science and individual differences methodologies to test whether NSSI is characterised by a more reactive and intense emotional response to challenge, and/or whether factors that help to create, modify, and later recall the emotional response are altered in those who engage in NSSI compared with controls. Study 2 compared how young adults with a past-year history of NSSI and controls subjectively and physiologically reacted to, and recovered from, acute stress. Study 3 compared how young adults with a past-year history of NSSI and controls subjectively reacted to both explicit and more ambiguous social exclusion.</p> <p>Consistent with a wealth of research, across both Studies 2 and 3 people with a past-year history of NSSI reported considerably greater global emotion reactivity and emotion dysregulation than did controls. However, counter to predictions, both the NSSI and Control groups showed similar patterns of real-time emotional responding to both acute stress (Study 2) and social exclusion (Study 3), providing no evidence that NSSI is characterised by an amplified response to emotional challenge. In addition, we found no evidence that emotional recovery, emotion regulation strategy use, memory of emotional experience, or appraisal—all factors that shape the emotional response—operate differently in those who engage in NSSI. Focusing on how people make global self-reports, exploratory reanalysis of Study 2 and 3 suggests that people with no history of NSSI draw from their real-time experiences of acute (but not mild) emotional challenge when making judgements about their global emotion dysregulation. In contrast, people who engage in NSSI appear to rely on different channels of information when reporting their global emotion dysregulation.</p> <p>Overall, this thesis demonstrates that, despite reporting considerably poorer global emotional functioning, people who engage in NSSI show largely typical responses to real-time emotional challenges. Given that global self-reports of emotional functioning appear to be critical for understanding NSSI onset and cessation, the discrepancy between global self-reports and measures of real-time responding highlights the complexity of the relationship between emotion and NSSI. To advance our understanding of emotional responding in NSSI, research should: a) establish the conditions (if any) under which people who engage in NSSI show amplified emotional responding, and b) isolate the psychological processes that underlie the experience of poorer global emotional functioning reported by people who engage in NSSI.</p>

The importance of formal versus informal mindfulness practice for enhancing psychological wellbeing and study engagement in a medical student cohort with a 5-week mindfulness-based lifestyle program

Purpose Medical students commonly experience elevated psychological stress and poor mental health. To improve psychological wellbeing, a 5-week mindfulness-based lifestyle course was delivered to a first-year undergraduate medical student cohort as part of the core curriculum. This study investigated the effects of the program on mental health, perceived stress, study engagement, dispositional mindfulness, and whether any improvements were related to amount of formal and/or informal mindfulness practice. Methods Participants were first year undergraduate medical students (N = 310, 60% female, M = 18.60 years) with N = 205 individuals completing pre and post course questionnaires in a 5-week mindfulness-based lifestyle intervention. At pre- and post-intervention, participants completed the Mental Health Continuum-Short Form, the Perceived Stress Scale, the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale for Students, the Freiburg Mindfulness Inventory, and the Mindfulness Adherence Questionnaire. Results Mental health, perceived stress, study engagement, and mindfulness all improved from pre- to post-intervention (all p values < .001). Improvements on these outcome measures were inter-related such that PSS change scores were negatively correlated with all other change scores, FMI change scores were positively correlated with MHC-SF and UWES-S change scores, the latter of which was positively correlated with MHC-SF change scores (all p values < .01). Finally, observed improvements in all of these outcomes were positively related to informal practice quality while improved FMI scores were related to formal practice (all p values < .05). Conclusions A 5-week mindfulness-based program correlates with improving psychological wellbeing and study engagement in medical students. These improvements particularly occur when students engage in informal mindfulness practice compared to formal practice.

EXPRESS: Interruption, Work Rumination, and Stress as Indicators of Reduced Working Memory Resources Affect Aesthetic Experiences

Do we savour aesthetic experiences less when distracted by interrupted tasks, work rumination or stress? Evidence suggests that the ability to concentrate on the aesthetic experience is crucial for initiating a processing mode of conscious aesthetic reception that results in more positive emotions. When working memory resources are otherwise occupied, people are less able to concentrate on aesthetic experiences. Aesthetic savouring, in particular—a cognitive form of emotion regulation that is used to maintain and extend aesthetic experiences—is thought to be impaired under those circumstances. We conducted three investigations to examine how conditions that are known to deplete working memory resources affect the savouring of aesthetic experiences. In Study 1, participants rated beauty and savouring felt from encounters with visual stimuli in a controlled laboratory setting after an interruption of a writing task. Aesthetic experience was hampered if participants were interrupted. In two field investigations, we demonstrated that work-related rumination (Study 2, N = 329) and stress (Study 3, N = 368) are inversely related to the savouring felt from opera, theater, or cabaret pieces. These findings highlight the importance of concentrating on aesthetic experiences so that the perceiver can fully benefit from them. We also discuss implications for cognitive models of working memory and for health and well-being.

Drought Stress Study on Nicotiana tabacum L., “Baladi”, an In Vitro Experimental Model

Crops drought tolerance is a trait of outmost importance for agriculture especially today when climate change is affecting more the production for food and feed. The scope of this article is to evaluate in vitro drought stress response of Nicotiana tabacum L., “Baladi”. The experiment was set up for four successive stages starting with in vitro seedling development, hypocotyl cultivation, three generations of micropropagation, pre-acclimatization and acclimatization. The effect of abscisic acid (ABA) and/or polyethylene-glycol 6000 (PEG) on tobacco hypocotyl caulogenesis and micropropagation were investigated. Superoxide-dismutases (SODs) and peroxidases (POXs) are more active and different isoforms patterns have been identified compared to the control for cualogenesis. A decrease of internodes length and a higher shoots multiplication rate were observed. However, under PEG treatment plantlets expressed hyperhydration and ceased rooting. Pre-treatments effects study of ABA and/or PEG were finalized in acclimatization phase for 18 tobacco clones. A summary of our results revealed that ABA and/or PEG induce among others a higher oxidative stress compared to the control in the first stage that is not maintained for all clones until acclimatization. Certain clones expressed a lower SOD activity compared to the control during acclimatization but maintaining higher POX activity.