Network Support Treatment (NST) for Alcohol Dependence is a manual-driven, one-on-one outpatient treatment designed to help clients achieve alcohol abstinence. Over 12 60-minute sessions, NST therapists work with clients to increase their participation in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), increase the number of abstinent friends in their social network, increase their self-efficacy, and improve their coping strategies to resist drinking. Clients are encouraged to become more involved in social networks and group activities that do not include drinking (e.g., AA meetings, family activities, walks or lunches with nondrinking friends, participation in church groups) as well as nondrinking activities they can engage in alone (e.g., completing job applications, going on job interviews, attending classes).
Network Support Treatment (NST) for Alcohol Dependence
Study protocol: a randomised controlled trial investigating the effect of a healthy lifestyle intervention for people with severe mental disorders
Background:
The largest single cause of death among people with severe mental disorders is cardiovascular disease (CVD). The majority of people with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder smoke and many are also overweight, considerably increasing their risk of CVD. Treatment for smoking and other health risk behaviours is often not prioritized among people with severe mental disorders. This protocol describes a study in which we will assess the effectiveness of a healthy lifestyle intervention on smoking and CVD risk and associated health behaviours among people with severe mental disorders.
Methods:
250 smokers with a severe mental disorder will be recruited. After completion of a baseline assessment and an initial face-to-face intervention session, participants will be randomly assigned to either a multi-component intervention for smoking cessation and CVD risk reduction or a telephone-based minimal intervention focusing on smoking cessation. Randomisation will be stratified by site (Newcastle, Sydney, Melbourne, Australia), Body Mass Index (BMI) category (normal, overweight, obese) and type of antipsychotic medication (typical, atypical). Participants will receive 8 weekly, 3 fortnightly and 6 monthly sessions delivered face to face (typically 1 hour) or by telephone (typically 10 minutes). Assessments will be conducted by research staff blind to treatment allocation at baseline, 15 weeks, and 12-, 18-, 24-, 30- and 36-months.DiscussionThis study will provide comprehensive data on the effect of a healthy lifestyle intervention on smoking and CVD risk among people with severe mental disorders. If shown to be effective, this intervention can be disseminated to treating clinicians using the treatment manuals.Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry (ANZCTR) identifier: ACTRN12609001039279
Helping Patients Help Themselves: How to Implement Self-Management Support
Publisher: California HealthCare Foundation
Author(s): Bodenheimer, Thomas; Sharone Abramowitz
Published: December 2010
Explores case studies of early adopters and telephonic, behavioral, and health coach models of self-management support for the chronically ill. Examines challenges including lack of staff training and payment from Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurers.
Funder(s): California HealthCare Foundation
Subject(s): Health; Health, Healthcare Access/Reform
African American Suicide Fact Sheet
Escaping affect: How motivated emotion regulation creates insensitivity to mass suffering.
As the number of people in need of help increases, the degree of compassion people feel for them ironically tends to decrease. This phenomenon is termed the collapse of compassion. Some researchers have suggested that this effect happens because emotions are not triggered by aggregates. We provide evidence for an alternative account. People expect the needs of large groups to be potentially overwhelming, and, as a result, they engage in emotion regulation to prevent themselves from experiencing overwhelming levels of emotion. Because groups are more likely than individuals to elicit emotion regulation, people feel less for groups than for individuals. In Experiment 1, participants displayed the collapse of compassion only when they expected to be asked to donate money to the victims. This suggests that the effect is motivated by self-interest. Experiment 2 showed that the collapse of compassion emerged only for people who were skilled at emotion regulation. In Experiment 3, we manipulated emotion regulation. Participants who were told to down-regulate their emotions showed the collapse of compassion, but participants who were told to experience their emotions did not. We examined the time course of these effects using a dynamic rating to measure affective responses in real time. The time course data suggested that participants regulate emotion toward groups proactively, by preventing themselves from ever experiencing as much emotion toward groups as toward individuals. These findings provide initial evidence that motivated emotion regulation drives insensitivity to mass suffering. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)
Introduction to special issue on defining and measuring character in leadership.
This article introduces the background and need for this special issue of the Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research on “Defining and Measuring Character in Leadership.” The introduction reviews some of the history of the concept of character in leadership, presents the major themes of the special issue, and briefly describes the 6 papers related to 3 models of character in leadership (ethical/virtuous leadership, authentic transformational leadership, and worthy leadership) and the specific elements of integrity, ethics, virtues, and moral potency. The introduction notes that each article in the special issue indicates how character in leadership can be defined, operationalized, and assessed. The implications of each model for the practice of consulting psychology are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)