A quantitative survey measure of moral evaluations of patient substance misuse among health professionals in California, urban France, and urban China.

BACKGROUND: The merits and drawbacks of moral relevance models of addiction have predominantly been discussed theoretically, without empirical evidence of these potential effects. This study develops and evaluates a novel survey measure for assessing moral evaluations of patient substance misuse (ME-PSM). METHODS: This measure was tested on 524 health professionals (i.e., physicians, nurses, and other health professionals) in California (n = 173), urban France (n = 102), and urban China (n = 249). Demographic factors associated with ME-PSM were investigated using analyses of variance (ANOVAs) and t-tests, with results suggesting that ME-PSM is higher among younger health professionals, nurses (when compared with physicians and other health professionals), and Chinese health professionals (when compared with French and American health professionals). RESULTS: Results provide preliminary support for the psychometric quality of the survey measure introduced in this study, including the existence of a single latent structure and partial invariance of collected data across countries. CONCLUSION: The survey measure for ME-PSM which was developed and tested in the current study appears to hold potential utility for use as a measure of moral views of patient substance misuse. With development, this measure may be used to examine moral evaluations, both as factors of stigma and of other clinical factors associated with the treatment of patients with substance use disorders.

Hospitality Towards People with Mental Illness in the Church: a Cross-cultural Qualitative Study.

Mental illness is a prevalent concern that affects Christian churches in North America in significant ways. Previous studies on the relationship between mental illness and the church have found that beliefs and practices within the church can contribute to stigma towards people with mental illness. Yet, the typical experience of people with mental illness who attend church has been found to be positive, suggesting that there are considerable resources within the church for supporting those who experience mental health problems. One such resource is the concept of hospitality, which promotes a sense of belonging for those with mental illness in the church. This qualitative study advances the construct of hospitality as a helpful paradigm for addressing mental health needs within the church, capturing perspectives and practices that are currently in place or seen as necessary by church attendees. The study methodology also emphasized the need to incorporate cultural considerations that are appropriate for the racial and ethnic make-up of particular churches. Semistructured focus group interviews were conducted with participants from eight churches that were either predominantly African American, Asian American, Latinx, or multi-ethnic. Findings resulting from content analysis of transcripts indicated that hospitality was a broadly helpful construct for addressing mental health concerns in the church, though some cultural differences existed in the understanding and application of hospitality. Both the interface of the findings with the existing scholarly literature and the relevance of findings for church leaders are discussed.

A critical test of the failure-to-engage theory of task switching.

When people switch between two tasks, their performance on each is worse than when they perform that task in isolation. One theory of this "switch cost" is the failure-to-engage (FTE) theory, which posits that observed responses are a simple mixture of prepared and unprepared response strategies. The probability that participants use prepared processes can be manipulated experimentally (e.g., by changing preparation time). The FTE theory is a binary mixture model and therefore makes a strong prediction about the existence of fixed points in response time distributions. We found evidence contradicting this prediction, using data from 20 participants in a standard task-switching paradigm. In this article, we examine reasons for the failure of the FTE theory, and we demonstrate that a generalized version of FTE theory accommodates our data.