RESUMO
INTRODUCTION: It has been proposed that sailing can improve quality of life, personal and social skills of people with severe psychosocial disabilities. This study aimed to assess the efficacy of a psychosocial rehabilitative intervention focused on sailing on quality of life, self-efficacy and sense of coherence in people with severe psychosocial disabilities. METHODS: The study was a randomized, with parallel groups, waiting-list controlled trial. Participants were 51 people with severe psychosocial disabilities. The intervention was a structured course to learn sailing in a crew lasting three months. A randomized group began the sailing course immediately after a pre-treatment assessment; the waitlist group began the sailing course after a three months period of treatments as usual. Participants were assessed before and after the sailing course, or the waiting list period, on the General Self-Efficacy scale (GSES), Sense Of Coherence scale (SOC) and Health Survey-short form (SF-12). RESULTS: Self-efficacy significantly increased after the sailing course and decreased after treatment as usual (p=0.015). Sense of coherence and the levels of quality of life tended to improve after the sailing course, albeit below levels of statistical significance. CONCLUSION: When compared to more traditional psychosocial rehabilitative activities, an intervention focused on sailing in a crew positively impacts the sense of coherence and the levels of quality of life and significantly improves self-efficacy of people with severe psychosocial disabilities. Further longitudinal research is required.
RESUMO
Background : bullying (and cyberbullying) is a widespread phenomenon among young people and it is used to describe interpersonal relationships characterized by an imbalance of power. In this relationships often show aggressive behavior and intentional "harm doing" repeated over time. The prevalence of bullying among youth has been reported to vary widely among countries (5.1%-41.4%) and this behavior seems generally higher among student boys than girls. Several school interventions have been developed to reduce bullying, but reported inconsistent results possibly related to limitations in the study design or to other methodological shortcomings. Aims : evaluating randomized-controlled trials (RTCs) conducted between 2000 and 2013 to assess the effectiveness of school interventions on bullying and cyberbullying. Methods : a systematic search of the scientific literature was conducted on Pubmed/Medline and Ebsco online databases. We also contacted experts in the field of preventive bullying research. Results : 17 studies met the inclusion criteria. The majority of studies did not show positive effects in the long term; the interventions focused on the whole school were more effective in reducing bullying than interventions delivered through classroom curricula or social skills training alone. Conclusion : while there is evidence that programs aimed at reducing bullying can be effective in the short term, their long-term effectiveness has not been established, and there are important differences in the results based on gender, age and socio-economic status of participants. Internal inconsistency in the findings of some studies, together with the wide variability of experimental designs and lack of common standardized measures in outcome evaluation, are important limitations in this field of research.
