Soothing Sorrow: Supporting Grieving Teens

Grief can have a profoundly detrimental effect on teens’ performance, but Dawn Jotham has seen that effective support and understanding can help them go on to pursue their goals and help them reclaim the focus and determination they need to succeed.

Irrespective of age, bereavement is a dreadful and stressful situation with the potential to leave anyone feeling lost and hopeless. The devastating reality of coping with the shock and sense of loss, on top of the indescribable sadness, is something that no one can possibly begin to comprehend until it is experienced first-hand.

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      string(4280) "Burnout is thought to result from unresolvable work stress and leads to people experiencing emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation, where they start to see others as impersonal objects. Emotional exhaustion constitutes the central characteristic of burnout as well as the entry point into the syndrome; refers to a coping strategy regarding depersonalisation. Depersonalisation has been conceived of as an immediate reaction to emotional exhaustion; emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation have been claimed to ‘go together’ and ‘mutually reinforce one another’. From an etiological standpoint, burnout is thought to result from unresolvable work stress. Burnout has become a popular construct among occupational health specialists over the last few decades. However, burnout is not an established diagnostic category, and its overlap with depression is problematic, both at an etiological and a symptom level. The spectrum of paranoid ideation goes from mild distrust and suspiciousness to full-blown persecutory delusions, and research suggests that paranoid thinking may be a regular experience in one in three individuals in the general population. However, a growing body of evidence indicates that paranoid ideation is associated with social stress and work stress. The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between burnout and paranoid ideation, based on reliable measures of the variables. Clarifying the extent to which burnout is associated with paranoid ideation may allow for more effective prevention and treatment of burnout. If paranoid thoughts are involved in burnout, then they may constitute therapeutic targets. For instance, reducing paranoid tendencies in burned out individuals may lead them to reappraise their working environment in a less stressful manner. This may contribute to alleviating burnout. Paranoia can range from mildly distrusting others to a full blown delusion that people are out to get them. The researchers felt that if paranoid traits are involved in burnout then addressing these tendencies could assist with directing appropriate treatment. A total of 218 schoolteachers were enrolled in this study, which has linked depression and paranoia to the condition. Key Points: A substantial association was found between paranoid ideation and burnout. Emotional exhaustion (EE) correlated about as strongly with paranoid ideation as it correlated with DP, suggesting that paranoid ideation could be considered a component of the burnout syndrome as much as depersonalisation (DP). Depressive symptoms—including thoughts of self-harm—were also associated with paranoid ideation. EE showed a strong correlation with both the affective-cognitive and somatic symptoms of depression, so does not support the view that burnout is distinct from depression. Burnout and depression were associated with paranoid ideation, a result suggestive of overlapping nomological networks. Paranoid ideation was increased by 185% in participants experiencing suicidal/self-injurious thoughts nearly every day compared with participants with no suicidal/self-injurious thoughts. Depression correlated moderately with DP but strongly with global burnout. Burnout, depression and paranoid thoughts were found to cluster together. Lower levels of burnout and depression coexisted with lower levels of paranoid ideation and higher levels of burnout and depression coexisted with higher levels of paranoid ideation. Conclusions Burnout is substantially associated with paranoid ideation. Interestingly, EE correlated as strongly with paranoid ideation as it correlated with DP. Moreover, if burnout is a syndrome of EE and DP that excludes depression, then the EE-depression correlation should not correlate more strongly with depression than with DP. These basic requirements for construct distinctiveness and syndromal unity were not satisfied. WEB LINK Burnout, Depression And Paranoid IdeationKeywords Dysphoria; exhaustion; health; mood; paranoia; personality; suicidal ideation; work stress "
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Inclusion

New training course fights teenage depression

21 Nov 2009

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