Indian Journal of Health and Wellbeing

Pages: 1281-1286
Pavitra Vasudevan, Shoma Chakrawarty and Dhanalakshmi, D. (Department of Applied Psychology, Pondicherry University, Pondicherry)

The study undertook a rare challenge of exploring the protective factors in middle adulthood as most research in this area looks at these factors in the context of the young or the elderly population. The study was aimed at exploring the relationship between optimism, health, coping and social support. A sample of hundred middle-aged participants (51 women and 49 men) were surveyed using the General Health Questionnaire (Goldberg &Williams, 1978), Life Orientation Test (Carver & Scheier, 1994), Ways of Coping Questionnaire (Folkman & Lazarus, 1985) and Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (Zimet, et al, 1988). The results indicated that people with a more optimistic outlook enjoyed better social support and utilized more adaptive coping strategies. There were no gender differences in optimism, social support and general health, although men manifested a tendency to use more escape avoidance and positive reappraisal. Teachers tended to have poorer health outcomes and used more avoidant coping strategies. In the model predicting health, planful problem solving emerged as the strongest predictor, followed by optimism, escape avoidance and social support from a significant other. The study reinforces the value of adaptive coping strategies for the health and wellbeing of individuals under stress. It also highlights the role of personal and social resources like optimism and social support, respectively, in fostering resilience in the face of the stressors of life.

Pages: 1291-1295
Vithoba Mhalkar (Manipal College of Nursing, Manipal University, Karnataka)
Linu Sara George (Department of Fundamentals of Nursing, MCON, Manipal University, Karnataka)
Asha Nayak (Department of Mental Health Nursing, MCON, Manipal University, Karnataka)

Over the years man's ability to perform has been judged by the intelligence he possesses, but it is evident intelligent quotient accounts only for about twenty percent of our success. The major attributes called Emotional Intelligence is critical to personal and professional success. Salovey and Mayer (1990) first coined the term emotional intelligence (EI), referring emotional intelligence as an ability to recognise the meaning of emotions and their relationship and to reason out and solve problems on the basis of the understanding. They further stated that EI develops with age and emotional skills can be learned. Nursing as a profession demands greater deal of understanding as we work with humans .Navigating through all emotions takes tact and cleverness especially if they hope to succeed in life. This is where emotional intelligence becomes important and integral part of their professional and personal life. This study aimed at assessing the EI of nursing students as well as the coping strategies used by them by using emotional intelligence inventory (EI) by Immanuel Thomas and coping strategies scale respectively at Manipal College of Nursing ,Manipal . Out of 74 participants, those having low and very low emotional intelligence(27) were subjected to emotional intelligence enhancement programme covering different facets of EQ of 10 hours divided into 5 days and post test was carried out after one month of intervention. The study group had significantly better improvement on overall emotional intelligence (p<0.001), personal efficacy (p<0.001), interpersonal efficacy (p<0.001), intrapersonal efficacy (p<0.001) and coping strategies (p<0.001). The Pearson correlation co-efficient also showed a significant relationship between emotional intelligence and coping strategies(r=0.504, p<0.001). It was also evident that students adopted better coping strategies like positive re-appraisal and seeking social support post EI enhancement programme.

Pages: 1302-1305
Amit Kumar (Ashoka Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital & De-addiction Centre, Jalandhar, Punjab)
Jai Prakash (Department of Clinical Psychology, RINPAS, Kanke, Ranchi, Jharkhand)

Speech is the verbal means of communicating. Speech consists of articulation, voice and fluency. In mania speech is rapid and loud that is difficult to interrupt. In extreme cases speech may become so disorganized that it is incomprehensible. The present study aims at to compare the dysfunction in receptive and expressive speech in patients with Bipolar Affective Disorder, Mania and Single Episode Mania. The sample consists of 30 bipolar manic and 30 single episode manic patients selected from different wards of Ranchi Institute of Neuropsychiatry and Allied Sciences (RINPAS) Kanke, Ranchi. Scales of receptive speech and expressive speech from Luria Nebraska Neuropsychological Battery were administered individually. The findings revealed that there is significant difference between two groups on both receptive and expressive speech scale. Patients with BAD (mania) showed more dysfunction in receptive speech and expressive speech in comparison to patients with single episode mania.

Pages: 1312-1315
Dipti Arora (Department of Psychology, GHS Palra, Gurgaon, Haryana)
Promila Batra (Department of Psychology, Maharshi Dayanand University, Rohtak, Haryana)

Processing of different stimuli or attention has widespread psychological consequences in one's life. Without attention, perceiving, thinking, learning, deciding and acting is not possible as it is the gateway to all these processes. But in this era of high workload, stress, competition and technological advances attention capacities are deteriorating a lot. Decline in attention can have far-reaching effects on one's ability to function adequately and efficiently in everyday life at work home and elsewhere. Thus, it is important to enhance attention. Various techniques are available for enhancing other cognitive processes such as memory, learning etc. but, the techniques for enhancing attention are yet not well established in the existing literature. Moreover, the techniques available for enhancing attention are very few and require a lot of training, time, effort and experience for implementing them. Negative air ion therapy could be one such technique that does not require much training, is easy and economical to handle the attention disorder and has been shown to exert a positive effect memory and learning. If this therapy can enhance memory and learning, it is quite possible that it can also affect attention and if it shows same impact on attention, it can have wide implications. Keeping this in mind, present work was designed to study the impact of Negative air ion exposure on Selective and Sustained attention. A two group pre post design was employed. A sample of 30 students (n=15) studying in class 8th and 9thin the age range of 14-16 years, with an average span of attention was selected. Experimental group was given an exposure of 1000-1200 ions/cm3 for 10 days and no exposure was given to control group. Subjects were tested on two simple tasks i.e. Selective and Sustained attention before and after the ionic exposure. The results revealed that negative air ion therapy enhances the Selective and Sustained attention of adolescents.

Pages: 1321-1324
Dharini, Shefali Arora and Sanya Marwah (AIPS, Amity University, Noida, UP )

Emotional intelligence has become a popular topic in the business in recent years. Emotional intelligence (EI) is the ability to understand and manage your own emotions, and those of the people around you. To be effective, leaders must have a solid understanding of how their emotions and actions affect the people around them. The better a leader relates to and works with others, the more successful he or she will be. Emotionally intelligent leader in a way contribute to the enhancement of employee's attitude, interest, commitment in some way. This paper attempts to study the impact of leader's EQ on the employee's organization commitment. The researcher has used EQ test and Allen and Mayer organizational commitment scale, and administered it on 9 leaders and their team respectively and the findings were studied.

Pages: 1331-1334
Samridhi Pareek and Kanika Jindal (Department of Psychology, The IIS University, Jaipur, Rajasthan)

The present study aims at outlining the relationship between sense of coherence (SOC) and coping styles of parents having children with autism spectrum disorder. The sample consisted of 30 mothers and 30 fathers, of children having autism spectrum disorder (ASD) between the age group of 30-40 years, residing in Jaipur city. Standard psychological tests included orientation to life questionnaire-13 (Antonovsky, 1987) and coping response inventory (Moos, 1993). To assess the difference between the means of males and females t-test was applied, while Pearson's correlation was used for the assessment of relationship between the dimensions . It was found that mothers having low SOC used emotion focused coping while fathers with low SOC engaged in problem focused coping. The result also indicated that sense of coherence is positively related to problem focused coping and inversely related to emotion focused coping. Results however revealed no significant difference between the level of sense of coherence of fathers and mothers having children with autism spectrum disorder.

Pages: 1339-1341
Anjana Bhattacharjee and Khousbo Chhetri (Department of Psychology, Tripura University, Suryamaninagar, Tripura)

The objective of the present study was to ascertain the level of depression among persons with physical disability and to compare it with their normal counterparts (persons without any disability). Again the study investigated the impact of gender on the depressive feeling of the disabled persons. For the said purpose the study was carried out among 100 individuals. Among them 50 were persons with physical disability and rest were normal subjects. The persons with physical disability were selected purposively from DDRC (District Disability Rehabilitation Centre) Agartala and the matched normal population was also selected purposively from Agartala town. Beck Depression Inventory was used for data collection. Findings revealed that the persons with physical disability had high level of depression in comparison to their normal counterparts. Further the visually disabled persons possessed more depression than the persons with locomotor disability. However the study did not reveal any effect of gender on the depressive feeling of the disabled.

Pages: 1346-1350
Priyanka, Nadeem Luqman and Nitika Grover (AIBAS, Amity University, Gurgaon, Haryana)

The main objective of the paper is to investigate the specific personality factors which are making impact on the college adjustment level of new students. Personality keeps on varying at different age levels. Adolescent is the age which shows maximum variation in personality especially when we move from school to college. During this time, an individual make important life decisions, develop their personal and professional identities, interests and values, and evolve from adolescence to adulthood. Hence, it is very important for an individual to adjust well in college. College adjustment by each student will vary depending on background, experience, and prior schooling. In order to investigate the above mentioned objective investigator collected the sample of 160 first year students from Amity University, Gurgaon. The measures used were NEO-FFI-3 and College Adjustment Scale (CAS). Keeping in view the nature and purpose of the study investigator applied regression and t-test. Analysis result show that three factors are playing significant role in college adjustment i.e. neuroticism, openness and conscientiousness. High level of neuroticism leads to lower level of college adjustment and Individuals high in Openness to Experience and Conscientiousness have consistently demonstrated better overall adjustment to college life than students who score low.

Pages: 1354-1356
Deepak Pandey and Priyamvada Shrivastava (School of Studies in Psychology, Pt. Ravishankar Shukla University, Raipur, Chhattisgarh)

The purpose of this study was examined the relationship between self perception and CD4+ cell counts in men and women living with HIV/ AIDS in Chhattisgarh, INDIA. 100 men and 100 women living with HIV and enrolled for ART centers were considered as sample of the study. CD4 cell counts over 6 months period was considered. Self perception of the participants was assessed with the help of a scale measuring self perception; linear regression analysis findings reveal significant contribution of the self perception and education in enhancing CD4+ counts. The results indicate that higher education and positive self perception is important in increase in the immune response of the HIV patients.

Pages: 1362-1364
Aashima Jasoria, Ram Kumar Gupta, and Mukta Singhvi (Department of Psychology, Univeristy of Rajasthan, Jaipur)

The present study was intended to determine whether the parent child relationship would predict emotional maturity among school going students. Thirty participants with ages between 16 and 17 years (group mean age ± S.D., 16.25 ± 0.44) who were studying in a school at Alwar district in the state of Rajasthan were included in this cross-sectional study. Participants were assessed for emotional maturity using emotional maturity scale and for parent child relationship with parent child relationship questionnaire. Emotional stability scale was categorized in five dimensions. The parent child relationship questionnaire was sub-categorizes into 10 subunits. Pearson correlation analyses were performed using PASW (SPSS version 18.0) to determine how the parent child relationship would predict emotional maturity among school going students. Neglecting parent child relationship significantly negatively correlated with emotional stability of the child (p <0.01). Emotional maturity showed negative correlation with indifferent parent child relationship (p <0.05) and neglecting parent child relationship (p <0.05). The results suggest that the neglecting parent child relationship negatively affects emotional maturity of the school going students.

Pages: 1369-1372
Sarwat Jabeen (Department of Psychology, Nirmala College, Ranchi, Jharkhand)

The family is one of the primary groups of society concerned with face to face relationship. A child’s earliest education is received in his family. It is here that his basic ideas, ideals as well as many attitudes towards himself and his associates are initiated which determine his later adjustment to school and other out of home situations. The economic status, attitudes and behavioural experiences of parents and family environment, all influence the child’s behaviour and attitudes, both directly and indirectly. In a family the role of the mother in the development of the child is very vital. A child usually spends maximum time with its mother. It is, therefore, the mother alone who leaves a strong and a long lasting impact on the child and lays the foundation for its future development. She acts as a model and the way in which she is perceived by the child determines many of the behavioural choices the child will make later. The early warmth and affection of a mother is associated with calm, happy and cooperative behaviour of the child. She disciplines the child and guides it towards a career. A mother has more opportunities than the father to influence the child’s growth and behaviour. To study the difference in the value of students (boy & girl) of working and non-working mothers. To study the difference of ego strength of students (boy & girl) of working and non-working mothers. There exists significant difference in the value and ego strength of students of working and non-working mothers. Comparison between Intermediate students of working mothers and of non-working mothers on all the variables under study, i.e., values and ego strength. “Study of Values” Test developed by R.K. Ojha was used to collect data concerning six values, viz., Theoretical, Economic, Aesthetic, Social, Political and Religious. Ego strength scale of Hassan will be used to measure students ego strength. For the present study t-test and Descriptive Method was used. Because it is considered as one of the best method to describe the current status of the research work. The study comprises a sample of 60 Intermediate students (30 of students of working mothers) and 30 students of non-working mothers) was selected from Higher Secondary School situated in Ranchi District. There is significant difference in the values and ego strength of students of working and non working women. There is no such significant difference between boy and girl students on values and ego strength. Impact of mother’s working status on her young children has always been a issue of debate .The studies conducted earlier with different variables have been showing mixed results

Pages: 1376-1379
Aruna Chinnappan (Department of Sociology, Pondicherry University, Puducherry)

In ensuring quality life, health occupies priority especially for women. It is important because their biological conditions and societal preconditions affect the overall health practices. The social preconditions are by way of their social status and position, and other specific cultural practices of the society. From a social structural perspective gender roles have been identified as major determinants of health status (Doyal, 1995). Cancer is a major cause of death in South Asian women (Bhopal & Rankin, 1996) and there is a low uptake of screening tests. The paper addresses the impact of culture in addressing the health seeking behaviour of women and the distinct phases in health seeking behaviour through Thaddeus and Maine (1990) model. It explores the socio-cultural processes that influence women's decision making at each phase. The study findings indicate women pay less attention to their own body and health as it is viewed as self-centered and hesitate to discuss reproductive health issues for fear of jeopardizing the social status. In addition, financial constraints, dependency, lack of time and the sacrificial nature of women for which they are used to, intervene in accessing health care.