Exploration of loneliness linked with automatic thoughts during COVID-19 outbreak

COVID-19 outbreak decreases the amount of daily routine and lifestyle. Loneliness is stemming from a deficiency of social contact and social connectedness. As a result, adolescents are prone to loneliness during the outbreak. In addition, loneliness influences the emerging automatic thoughts in the cognitive domain. This research aims to explore the psychological perspective on loneliness experienced by adolescents during the COVID-19 outbreak. The research was conducted on 165 adolescents aged 12 -18 who actively engage in social media. Social and Emotional Loneliness Scale for Adults (SELSA) was used to obtain the data. The Z-score shows that social loneliness has a more significant effect on adolescents. The study indicated that loneliness is associated with automatic thoughts and need fulfilments. Participants' automatic thoughts are acquired and discussed further. © 2023 Author(s).

Experiences and thoughts of nurses working in the covid-19 clinic: A qualitative study

Background: During epidemics, he spent a long time with patients and witnessed every moment of them closely. At the same time, he took an active role in the health team and continued both the organization and the care and treatment process with a superior effort. Objectives: Determine the experiences and thoughts nurses working in Covid-19 clinics about the care and treatment process pandemic patients. Methods: Phenomenological design, one of the qualitative research methods, was used in our research. Provided nursing services during the care and treatment of pandemic patients in the Covid-19 service and intensive care units, and worked in the pandemic clinic throughout the assignment process, interviews were held with nurses. The data were collected by a single researcher by video conferencing method. Colaizzi's phenomenological analysis method content analysis was carried out. Results: In our study, the findings regarding the experiences and thoughts of nurses working in the Covid-19 clinic;organization, psychological factors, social factors and professional factors are gathered under four main themes. Conclusion: Requiring physical and psychological resilience, During the Covid-19 pandemic, nurses have been exposed to work stress, although have experienced psychological and physical experiences that wont be forgotten, stated they remain committed to the profession and families are the biggest source of support. In line with our findings, it has been suggested that the initiative planning to reduce the difficulties experienced by the nurses working in the Covid-19 clinic in the care process should be supported by the institution managers, as well as the planning of motivationenhancing programs and activities for nurses. © 2023, Dokuz Eylul University. All rights reserved.

A Sociotheological Approach to Catholic Social Teaching: The Role of Religion in Moral Responsibility During COVID-19

This book introduces Catholic social teaching (CST) and its teaching on the common good to the reader and applies them in the realm of public health to critically analyze the major global issues of COVID-19 that undermine public interest. It uses the sociotheological approach that combines the moral principles of CST and the holistic analysis of modern sociology and also utilizes the secondary literature as the main source of textual data. Specifically, it investigates the corporate moral irresponsibility and some unethical business practices of Big Pharma in the sale and distribution of its anti-COVID vaccines and medicines, the injustice in the inequitable global vaccine distribution, the weakening of the United States Congress's legislative regulation against the pharmaceutical industry's overpricing and profiteering, the inadequacy of the World Health Organization's (WHO) law enforcement system against corruption, and the lack of social monitoring in the current public health surveillance system to safeguard the public good from corporate fraud and white-collar crime. This book highlights the contribution of sociology in providing the empirical foundation of CST's moral analysis and in crafting appropriate Catholic social action during the pandemic. It is hoped that through this book, secular scholars, social scientists, religious leaders, moral theologians, religious educators, and Catholic lay leaders would be more appreciative of the sociotheological approach to understanding religion and COVID-19. "This book brings into dialogue two bodies of literature: documents of Catholic social teaching, and modern sociology and its core thinkers and texts…The author does especially well to describe how taking ‘the sociotheological turn'…will benefit the credibility and dissemination of Catholic social thought.” - Rev. Fr. Thomas Massaro, S.J., Professor of Moral Theology, Jesuit School of Theology, Santa Clara University, Berkeley, California. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022.

Crisis of the Statehood Culture and the Lessons of the Pandemic

The research subject is the statehood culture. Transformations in the spiritual and material worlds are directly reflected in the system of state-building. Transformations in the spiritual and material worlds are directly reflected in the system of state-building. Never before has a crisis of social order been accompanied by such a devastating pandemic. Crisis phenomena have affected the main human-made attributes—the economy and the government. The government provides security, social protection, law and order, and justice as the common good. The COVID-19 crisis confirmed that even in the face of global shocks, the national economy becomes the guarantor of the well-being of its people and that there is a certain limit to economic security that cannot be left open. The destructive forces of transnational monopolies, who perceive national borders with their customs supervision and trade policies as a hindrance, have descended upon nation-states. The American way of democracy is realized through the destruction of nation-states and the forcible imposition of a single form of statehood on all people. This state of affairs necessitates the reconsideration of the assessment of the experience of countries using other forms of economic and social orientation and getting good results. It is necessary to turn to the historical experience of Russia, whose peoples have an unprecedentedly high national instinct, which allows overcoming the crisis of statehood. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

Visualizing the Unspeakable in Thought: A Multi-Model Discourse Analysis of Cartoons as a Device for Communicating COVID-19 Messages in Ghana

Cartoons have become one of the social artifacts used to express ideas in the world. These ideas often represent the views, perspectives, behaviors and the core patterns of human life. This is so because cartoons are designed to contain social events or activities, typically combining satiric and hyperbolic features to reflect various social mores that affect all facets of society. Such a development has demonstrated a genuine role of cartoons in providing knowledge to specific human activity. this esoteric role of cartoons in edifying human society has led to the development of several studies of which the current study is not exceptional. By this, the nature of the current study is to examine how cartoons have been used as a social model to communicate COVID-19 messages in Ghana.The study employs content analysis in its development and applies (Kress, van Leeuwen's (1996) Reading images: the grammar of visual design. Routledge, London;Kress, van Leeuwen's (2006) Reading images: the grammar of visual design. Routledge, London) Grammar of Visual Design theory as the core theoretical framework. The data for the study are taken from the canon of ‘Tilapia Da Cartoonist' of Media General Group. In all, seven different forms of cartoons were purposively sampled and used for the study. The study later revealed that cartoons were used to signal hope, caution, relief, warning and anxiety on the dangers associated with COVID-19 pandemic. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

"This Person is Safe": An Exemplar of Conducting Individual Interviews in Qualitative Research with Black Women

Significant conceptual and empirical evidence has been found through qualitative research about the benefits, limitations, and uses of individual interviews. However, there is scant research illustrating how researchers use specific techniques that center participants' intersecting identities to build rapport, trust, and authentic connections during individual interviews, and especially during interviews with Black women. We illustrate how we used eight empirically grounded techniques in our qualitative individual interviews with Black women. Through our analysis of the interviews, the concept of safety emerged. "This person is safe" reflects the combined stories the women reported regarding their experiences engaging in individual interviews. In this article, we provide a brief background on individual interviewing in qualitative research, followed by the framing of our work. Thereafter, we provide context about the exemplar study, outline techniques shown to be effective in the literature, and provide examples from the exemplar study to show how each technique was used. Further research is needed to examine how researchers use various techniques in qualitative individual interviews in general, but with Black women more specifically.

Drug abuse and suicidal thoughts among employees: an emerging economy perspective

Purpose: Anchored with turbulence emanating from the COVID-19 pandemic, the work environment has become more stressful with debilitating effects on the well-being of employees. Employees rely on varying means of coping including drug abuse. However, the association between drug abuse and suicidal thoughts among employees in Ghana is unknown. Therefore, this study sought to examine the relationship between drug abuse and suicidal thoughts among employees in Ghana. Design/methodology/approach: In a cross-sectional survey, this study purposively sampled 470 employees from three sectors of the Ghanaian economy (telecommunication, banking and manufacturing). The data was analysed using the multivariate analysis (MANOVA), Pearson's r test and hierarchical regression. Findings: Analysis of data revealed a positive relationship between drug abuse and suicidal thoughts, indicating that drug abuse is a risk factor for suicidal thoughts. Besides, it was also revealed that banking sector employees have a higher risk of having suicidal thoughts than employees in the telecommunication and manufacturing sectors. Practical implications: Managers of organisations need to redesign work to embrace the challenging circumstances brought about as a result of COVID-19 and post-COVID implications. The work environment needs to be more supportive to shield employees from the physical and emotional demands of work during and after this period of the COVID-19 pandemic. Today than ever, investment in the implementation of employee-assisted programmes (EAPs) and employee well-being programmes (EWPs) to equip employees with the needed skills to cope with stressful conditions has been more than justified. Originality/value: From a broader perspective, this study identifies drug abuse as a key risk factor for suicidal thoughts among employees, thereby highlighting the fact that smoking cessation programs and drug management therapies are an integral part of well-being programmes aimed at establishing equilibrium and gradually creating a wide gap between employees and suicidal thoughts. © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Implicit intertemporal trajectories in cognitive representations of the self and nation.

Individual selves and the collectives to which people belong can be mentally represented as following intertemporal trajectories-progress, decline, or stasis. These studies examined the relation between intertemporal trajectories for the self and nation in American and British samples collected at the beginning and end of major COVID-19 restrictions. Implicit temporal trajectories can be inferred from asymmetries in the cognitive availability of positive and negative events across different mentally represented temporal periods (e.g., memory for the past and the imagined future). At the beginning of COVID-19 restrictions, both personal and collective temporal thought demonstrated implicit temporal trajectories of decline, in which future thought was less positive than memory. The usually reliable positivity biases in personal temporal thought may be reversable by major public events. This implicit trajectory of decline attenuated in personal temporal thought after the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions. However, collective temporal thought demonstrated a pervasive negativity bias across temporal domains at both data collection points, with the collective future more strongly negative than collective memory. Explicit beliefs concerning collective progress, decline, and hope for the national future corresponded to asymmetries in the cognitive availability of positive and negative events within collective temporal thought.

The Pandemic Consumer Response: A Stockpiling Perspective and Shopping Channel Preferences

Covid‐19 has changed consumer behaviour, probably forever. Initial consumer stockpiling led to stockouts, threat and uncertainty for consumers. To overcome shortages, consumers expanded their use of channels and many consumers started buying online for the first time. In this paper, we aim to address important research gaps related to consumer behaviour during the pandemic and especially stockpiling. Our paper starts by presenting the findings of our pre‐study, which used social media to elicit or confirm potential constructs for our quantitative models. These constructs complemented the protection motivations theory to explain stockpiling behaviour, forming the basis for study 1, the stockpiling preparation stage and study 2, the effects of the Covid‐19 pandemic disruptor on customer service logistics and lockdown shopping channel preferences. For studies 1 and 2 we gathered data via a UK online panel‐structured questionnaire survey (n = 603). Results confirm that consumer‐driven changes to supply chains emanate largely from consumer uncertainty. Lockdown restrictions led to consumers feeling socially excluded, but enhanced consumers' positive attitudes towards shopping online and increased consumers' altruism. In response, consumers stockpiled by visiting physical stores and/or ordering online. Lockdown restrictions led to feelings of social exclusion but, importantly, stockpiling helped to minimize consumer anxiety and fear and even increase wellbeing.

The effect of involvement on attitude formation and strength in the digital domain

The spike in e-commerce caused by COVID-19 mandates a re-evaluation of the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) vis-à-vis digital marketing communications. The experiment presented here focuses on product involvement on attitude formation and strength. A sample of 185 students was exposed to mock websites of fictitious high- and low- involvement products (a laptop and a soft drink) chosen through a free-association exercise with the involvement level measured using two independent samples of 20 and 30 students respectively. Exposure to the high involvement product website elicited a greater number of product- and website-related thoughts (central route processing) than exposure to the low involvement one (peripheral route processing). Involvement was found to influence attitude formation, but it did not affect attitude strength (measured at a later time after a single exposure). The efficacy of the measurement scales and the applicability of the ELM to the digital domain are confirmed but e-commerce marketers are advised to encourage the constantly connected 21st century consumers to regularly revisit their website to strengthen the attitudes their Marcoms have formed. Further research is required to further elucidate the changes to consumers' cognitive processes that were brought about by the COVID-19 lockdown-imposed switch to e-commerce and assess their stability.

Poetic discourse analysis: The roles of education in prison abolishment and futures of public health and safety

This document engages with discourses surrounding prison abolishment, defund/refund movements, COVID-19, and education as it relates to the Prison-Industrial Complex through a critical, poetic discourse analysis. Through a combination of artistic and analytic considerations, the work seeks to examine how systemic structures are being confronted in our temporal frame, focusing on the discourses of activists, government statements, and media outlets. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

How political orientation, economic precarity, and participant demographics impact compliance with COVID-19 prevention measures in a Dutch representative sample

We examine the relationship between individuals' political orientations and their compliance with and attitudes towards COVID-19 prevention measures using a Dutch nationally representative online sample. Due to ideological differences, we predict that people with left-wing and progressive orientations will comply more with and have more favourable attitudes towards COVID-19 prevention measures than people with right-wing, populist, and conservative orientations, while right-wing extremists will have lowest levels of compliance and least favourable attitudes towards prevention measures. Our results support these predictions. Furthermore, we test the effect of individuals' economic precarity and demographic characteristics on compliance and attitudes towards prevention measures. Results show that people experiencing economic difficulties do comply yet have less favourable attitudes towards the measures, while fear of economic loss is related to both lower compliance and less favourable attitudes towards measures. Older citizens have higher levels of compliance and more positive attitudes, whereas gender and education are not consistently related to compliance and attitudes. We further explore how these three sets of factors (political orientation, economic precarity, and demographics) are related to policy preferences for either reducing infection rates or reducing the economic impact of the pandemic. Our results suggest that all three sets of predictors are important in shaping measure compliance as well as attitudes and policy support and should all be considered for a comprehensive understanding of individuals' responses to COVID-19 measures.

Workers' individual and dyadic coping with the COVID-19 health emergency: A cross cultural study

The aim of this study was to examine workers' psychological distress during the COVID-19 pandemic as a function of their individual coping, dyadic coping, and work-family conflict. We also tested the moderating role of gender and culture in these associations. To achieve this aim, we run HLM analyses on data from 1521 workers cohabiting with a partner, coming from six countries (Italy, Spain, Malta, Cyprus, Greece, and Russia) characterized by various degrees of country-level individualism/collectivism. Across all six countries, findings highlighted that work-family conflict as well as the individual coping strategy social support seeking were associated with higher psychological distress for workers, while the individual coping strategy positive attitude and common dyadic coping were found to be protective against workers' psychological distress. This latter association, moreover, was stronger in more individualistic countries.

Refused-knowledge during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Mobilising Experiential Expertise for Care and Well-being

Since the early period of the COVID-19 pandemic concerned groups of people have produced knowledge refused by institutional science of how to manage public health and individual well-being in everyday pandemic life. Research in science and technology studies seeks to understand the social and cultural conditions under which contestation over scientific knowledge claims occurs. In the Italian case, ‘refused' knowledge claims emerging outside institutionalised science play a performative role in questioning the current models for managing individual and public health. Such refused claims ascribe novel meanings to the COVID-19 pandemic and orient the ways in which people manage their own health and well-being during their everyday life. Two interrelated dimensions are at stake in the production and enactment of refused knowledge: (1) how experiential expertise is mobilised to reframe one's body in a process of self-care, thus validating a corpus of refused knowledge through personal experience, and (2) how narratives demarcate between a body of refused knowledge and the prevalent biomedical paradigms as a way of gaining experiential epistemic autonomy.

The Parish Communion Movement: The Body's Discipleship

This essay explores the corporate and social dimensions of discipleship by examining the theological vision of the Parish Communion movement of the last century. It outlines what the Parish Communion movement sought to achieve liturgically and how that was under-girded by its underlying ecclesiology. Elements of the theology underpinning the movement are examined, including its corporate Body theology and its social theology. How these themes contribute to contemporary elaborations of discipleship are then explored, including a reflection on the legacy of the movement in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press.

Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Kwazulu-Natal Generation Z Attitude towards Domestic Tourism

The study examined the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on KwaZulu-Natal generation z attitude toward domestic tourism. Generation Z represents much of the consumer groups at present and is considered a very important cohort because it prioritizes experience over possession, which increases their motivation to travel. The study investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on KwaZulu-Natal Generation Z members' attitudes towards domestic tourism in South Africa, while focusing on the effect of the pandemic, the study examines whether there are differences in their attitude toward domestic tourism before and during the pandemic. Data was collected online from November to December 2021 using a structured questionnaire survey sampling 200 respondents. Through the theoretical lens of planned behaviour, this study explored the relationship between attitude, perceived behaviour control, subjective norms and risk factors that influences the travel choices of Generation Z members during the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings reveal that despite the impact the COVID-19 pandemic had on the KwaZulu-Natal Generation Z members, they portray a positive attitude towards domestic tourism. The results also show that Generation Z members appreciate and acknowledge the positive quality of life (QOL) they get from participating in tourism activities especially within their domestic space. However, because of the peculiarities of the pandemic and the need to ensure safety, respondents prefer individual trips to group trips, and individual accommodation to group accommodations. This research contributes to scholarship that examine how COVID-19 pandemic influenced travel behaviours and deepened the uncertainty associated with domestic tourism across various regions of the globe.

"Authentic Warmth in These Uncertain Times”: The Impact of Authenticity in COVID-19 Advertising on Brand Warmth and Consumer Responses

This study investigated the impact of the perceived authenticity of brands' COVID-19 advertisements on consumers' perception of brand warmth and the subsequent responses on brand attitude and engagement intention. An online survey was used to acquire consumers' evaluations of COVID-19 video ads published between March and August in 2020. Results showed that the message authenticity significantly increased consumers' perception of brand warmth, brand attitude, and engagement intention. Furthermore, the serial mediation results revealed the underlying mechanism that authentic ads evoked positively valenced emotional responses, which increased perceived brand warmth and further resulted in positive brand attitudes and engagement intentions. Practical implications and theoretical advancement are also discussed.

Prevalence of Suicide Ideation and Attempt during COVID-19 Pandemic: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

An epidemic of infectious diseases such as COVID-19 can affect mental health, which may be associated with suicidal behaviors. This study was conducted based on the systematic review and meta-analysis methods for evaluating the prevalence of suicide ideation during COVID-19. This study used Preferred Systematic Review Reporting System and Meta- Analysis guideline and valid keywords. The articles related to the prevalence of suicide ideation during COVID-19 pandemic were obtained by searching among different databases including Scopus, Web of science, PubMed, ISC, Google scholar, SID, and Magiran. All of the articles published from the beginning of January 2020 to the end of May 2021 were reviewed. Among 478 articles screened, 377 articles were related to the studied topic, among which 38 articles were selected after assessing the title and abstract of which for reviewing the full text and finally 18 studies were included in the meta-analysis. Based on the results, the prevalence of suicide ideation and attempt among all studies were equal to 13% (95% confidence interval = 0.11-0.15, I2 = 99.7%, P = 0.00) and 1% (95% confidence interval = 0.00-0.01, I2 = 95.5%, P = 0.00), respectively. Based on the results, the prevalence of suicide attempt and ideation is possible during the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, health officials should pay attention to mental health issues in addition to the protective measures for preventing or reducing the infection with COVID-19. The increase of psychological consequences is probably related to the effect of lifestyle changes which associates with the spread of the disease. In the current meta-analysis performed, the prevalence of suicidal ideation and suicidal attempt was examined during the COVID-19 pandemic period and compared to the previous period without COVID-19. The effect of COVID-19 on suicidal ideation and suicidal attempt has never been studied.

The technocratic reason in the government of emergency. A theoretical analysis on the management of the Covid-19 epidemic

The assumption on which this contribution is based that in liberal democracies the "political space" represents the confrontational space of coexistence in which lives are governed by "legitimate" power of politics. What we have observed over the course of about two years now is that the epidemic must be understood within this space and, as happens for the observation of all "social facts", it cannot be considered as an isolated phenomenon. The history of epidemics is therefore mainly a "social and political history";just think of the way in which the use of measures to counter the contagion redesigns the meaning of coexistence and power relations. The Covid-19 epidemic comes at the end of an economic crisis that began in 2008 and should not be disconnected from this, despite the tendency in public opinion and the media to consider it an "external factor", exclusively a health issue relating above all to "vital processes". Therefore, this contribution intends to propose an examination of the "government of the emergency" in liberal, capitalist, de-collectivized societies through a theoretical approach (biopolitical and dialectical) which, on the one hand, investigates the relationship between government, power and contagion control devices and, on the other hand, explores the presuppositions of the crisis of knowledge that increasingly gives way to "technique" which becomes an administrative tool.