Psychosocial Peer Support to Address Mental Health and Burnout of Health Care Workers Affected by COVID-19: A Qualitative Evaluation.

Health care workers in the U.S. are experiencing alarming rates of burnout. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic has worsened this issue. Psychosocial peer-support programs that address general distress and are tailored to health care systems are needed. A Care for Caregivers (CFC) Program was developed at an American metropolitan university hospital and outpatient health care system. The CFC program trains "Peer Caregivers" and managers and has four components: the identification of colleagues in need of support; psychological first aid; linkage to resources; and the promotion of hope among colleagues experiencing demoralization. Qualitative interviews (n = 18) were conducted with Peer Caregivers and Managers participating in the initial piloting of the program. Results suggest that the CFC program shifts the organizational culture, teaches staff skills for recognizing and supporting others in distress, and supports those staff who are already providing these services informally. Findings suggest that staff distress resulted primarily from external factors and secondarily from internal organizational stressors. External stressors were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the program has promise for addressing staff burnout, other organizational efforts are needed to simultaneously promote staff wellness. Ultimately, psychosocial peer support programs for health care workers are feasible and potentially impactful, but also require other systemic changes within a health care system to improve and sustain staff well-being.

Challenging fat talk: An experimental investigation of reactions to body disparaging conversations.

Although "fat talk" is associated with increased eating disorder risk, the predictors of fat talk engagement and viable alternatives to these pervasive conversations remain unclear. The current experiment examined responses to fat talk versus feminist-oriented challenging fat talk scenarios. Undergraduate women (N=283) completed baseline questionnaires assessing body dissatisfaction, fat talk engagement, and positive impression management. One week later, they were randomized to view one of the two scenarios, followed by assessment of mood, fat talk engagement, social acceptability, and social likeability. Results indicated that the challenging fat talk vignette (versus the fat talk vignette) yielded less negative affect and fat talk and was perceived as more socially attractive with a more likeable target character. Baseline body dissatisfaction, baseline fat talk tendencies, and momentary negative affect predicted post-exposure fat talk engagement. Current findings highlight possibilities for implementing feminist language and psychoeducation in fat talk prevention efforts.

Seeing things differently: An experimental investigation of social cognition and interpersonal behavior in anorexia nervosa.

OBJECTIVE: Interpersonal difficulties among individuals with anorexia nervosa (AN) may stem in part due to misperceiving social cues. The current study investigated social functioning by comparing interpersonal self-efficacy, perceptions of dominance/submission (i.e., agency) and coldness/warmth (i.e., communion), and hypothetical behavioral reactions among individuals with and without AN. METHOD: Seventy-seven women (AN/Other Specified Feeding or Eating Disorder OSFED-AN n = 41, nonclinical comparison group n = 36) completed questionnaires assessing mood symptoms and interpersonal self-efficacy, followed by an experimental video-rating task in which they received critical feedback from job supervisors varying in degrees of agency and communion. RESULTS: AN respondents perceived more coldness overall, even after adjusting for differences in depression and anxiety symptoms, and tended to respond with coldness even to videos that they perceived as being warm. However, perceptual accuracies for agency were similar across groups. Interpersonal self-efficacy moderated the relationship between diagnostic status and behavioral responses: among those who felt competent being cold-submissive, AN respondents selected cold-submissive responses more frequently than did the nonclinical comparison group. DISCUSSION: Among those with AN symptoms, there may be a tendency toward social perceptual inaccuracies regarding communion and non-complementary cold behavioral responses. Results suggest that improving social perceptions may be a fruitful intervention target for enhancing interpersonal functioning among individuals with AN. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (Int J Eat Disord 2016; 49:499-506).