Differences in Home-based Family Caregiving Appraisal for Caregivers of the Elderly in Rural and Urban Japanese Communities

This quantitative study aimed to determine the differences between rural and urban residencies related to home-based appraisal (including care burden and positive appraisal) for Japanese primary family caregivers of the elderly with extensive care needs. The study examined a sample of 196 caregivers (106 rural, 90 urban), and stepwise multiple regression analysis was performed. Resident location was significantly associated with care burden, and each factor associated with the appraisal, especially care burden, differed between rural and urban areas. The social and physical environment is thus a necessary consideration to support family caregivers and the elderly requiring home-based care.     

The enhancement of clinical competence through caring science

This theoretical research attempts to create a new basis for dialogue between two independent research fields that are connected by an inseparable link. The first, nursing science, is a body of professional knowledge, while the second, caring as an independent body of pure knowledge, conducts basic research with an aspiration towards applicability. This theoretical research uses the guidelines of the Buberian dialogue, which provides new meaning to the concept of clinical competence. The results emphasise the need to adopt abstract knowledge into the nursing field in order to improve the graduate's clinical capabilities. The combination of assessing clinical capability in a judgmental manner together with the dialogical humanistic approach of caring science may create a genuine platform and meeting event as a maturing process, which is intended to promote educational goals, which subsequently receive new meaning, that is, a different type of assessment. However, this assessment cannot be measured since a wide range of ethical moral aspects regarding both the student and the patient will have to be included. Nevertheless, this dialogue between nursing science and caring science can implement evidence on the basis of trust and can be used as a dialogical tool for evaluating clinical skills with the goal of empowering the educational field in nursing. Consequently, this clinical competence is called ‘caring maturing means’, and the goal is to convert the learning process into a meaningful event with the aim of improvement.     

Trend Disparities in Emotional Distress and Suicidality Among Sexual Minority and Heterosexual Minnesota Adolescents From 1998 to 2010

BACKGROUND

Sexual minority young people have demonstrated higher rates of emotional distress and suicidality in comparison to heterosexual peers. Research to date has not examined trends in these disparities, specifically, whether there have been disparity reductions or increases and how outcomes have differed over time by sex and sexual orientation group.

METHODS

Minnesota Student Survey data, collected from 9th and 12th graders in 3 cohorts (1998, 2004, 2010) were used to examine emotional distress and suicidality rates. Logistic regression analyses were completed to examine outcome changes over time within and across sexual orientation/sex groups.

RESULTS

With few exceptions, sexual minority youth are at increased risk of endorsing emotional distress and suicidality indicators in each surveyed year between 1998 and 2010. Young people with both‐sex partners reported more emotional distress across all health indicators compared to their opposite‐sex partnered peers. With a few exceptions, gaps in disparities between heterosexual and sexual minority have not changed from 2004 to 2010.

CONCLUSIONS

Disparities in emotional health persist among youth. Research is needed to advance understanding of mental health disparities, with consideration of sexual orientation differences and contextualized to sociocultural status and changes over time. Personalized prevention strategies are needed to promote adolescent mental health.

     

Effectiveness of a program to facilitate recovery for people with long‐term mental illness in Japan

Recovery is defined as the process of developing new meaning and purpose in life as one grows beyond the catastrophic effects of mental illness. This study aimed to develop a program to facilitate recovery and examine its effectiveness in a randomized controlled trial. The program was developed with three components that enhance benefit finding, personal meaning, and a sense of happiness. Sixty‐three participants with long‐term mental illness were randomly allocated to the intervention group (n = 32) or the control group (n = 31). The intervention group attended eight 2‐h group sessions, with one held every week. Recovery was assessed at baseline, post‐intervention, and at a three‐month follow‐up. In the per‐protocol analysis, after excluding those who dropped out, the intervention group showed significant improvement in recovery compared with the control group (P < 0.05). In the intention‐to‐treat analysis, a repeated measures analysis of variance did not show any significant intervention effect (time × group) (P > 0.05). The program had the potential to facilitate recovery.