Analysis of Personality,Suicide, and Self‐Injury in Emerging Adulthood

Nonsuicidal self‐injury (NSSI) is a maladaptive coping strategy that is of significant clinical concern for behavioral health professionals in college settings. Relationships between NSSI, acquired capability for suicide, interpersonal cognitions, and five‐factor model personality traits were assessed in a survey‐based study that included 192 young adults in a college setting. Results indicated that those with an affirmative suicide attempt history, greater acquired capability for suicide, and elevated neuroticism had an increased likelihood of lifetime NSSI.     

Increasing school personnel's self-efficacy,knowledge, and response regarding nonsuicidal self-injury in youth

Rates of students engaging in nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) are rising and additional supports in the schools are needed (Nock, 2010, Ann Rev Clin Psychol, 6, 339–363; Stargell et al., 2017, Prof Sch Couns, 21, 37-46). School psychologists, school counselors, and school nurses are key personnel in responding to self-injurious behaviors within the school setting. The results of a practice-based research project are described, in which school psychologists, school counselors, and school nurses participated in training to increase their self-efficacy, knowledge, and response in regard to NSSI. The training provided information regarding best practice in responding to NSSI in youth (Hasking et al., 2016, Sch Psychol Int, 37(6), 644–663; Kanan et al., 2008, Sch Psychol Forum: Res Prac, 2, 67–79; Walsh & Muehlenkamp, 2013, Sch Psychol Forum: Res Prac, 7, 161–171). This exploratory study indicated that training positively impacted participants' perceived self-efficacy and knowledge with respect to responding to youth who engage in NSSI. Handouts and resources for school-based staff are included. Limitations and future directions are discussed.     

Self–Efficacy Pathways Between Relational Aggression and Nonsuicidal Self–Injury

The authors recruited college students (N = 648) and investigated relationships among academic and social self–efficacy, relational aggression from parents and peers, and nonsuicidal self–injury (NSSI). Results indicated that both types of self–efficacy were related inversely to NSSI. Academic self–efficacy mediated the relationship between parental emotional abuse and NSSI, whereas social self–efficacy mediated the relationship between peer victimization and NSSI. Clinical implications of these findings for college counselors are discussed.     

Nonsuicidal Self-Injury: Characteristics,Functions, and Strategies

Nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) is a significant issue among college students but few resources are available to college mental health professionals. This article consolidates extant knowledge on NSSI from the empirical and clinical literature, including common NSSI characteristics (rates, methods, demographics, and concomitants), intrapersonal and social functions, and NSSI's relation to suicide. Practical strategies for assessing NSSI among students are presented, as are empirically informed treatments. With this knowledge, college mental health professionals will have a theoretical and practical understanding of NSSI and will be better equipped to work with students who self-injure.     

Patterns of Early‐Life Social and Environmental Exposures and Child Cognitive Development,Rhea Birth Cohort,Crete, Greece

Early‐life exposures are critical for later child cognitive development. McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities (MSCA) were used to assess cognitive development of 700 preschoolers (M_age = 4.2 years), derived from the “Rhea” birth cohort, in Greece. Principal component analysis (PCA) was applied on prospectively collected exposure data. Six components were extracted; five of them were associated with child cognition. Higher parental social status, preschool attendance and less TV watching, nonsmoking during pregnancy and breastfeeding, and parental involvement in child life were protective factors of child cognition at 4 years. Increased child birth order was negatively associated with child cognition. Offspring's size at birth was not associated with any cognitive outcome. These findings reveal the importance of early‐life exposures to child cognitive development.     

Child maltreatment, subsequent non-suicidal self-injury and the mediating roles of dissociation, alexithymia and self-blame

ObjectiveAlthough child maltreatment is associated with later non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI), the mechanism through which it might lead to NSSI is not well understood. The current retrospective case–control study examined associations between child maltreatment and later NSSI, and investigated the mediating roles of dissociation, alexithymia, and self-blame.MethodsParticipants were 11,423 Australian adults (response rate 38.5%), randomly selected from the Australian Electronic White Pages, aged between 18 and 100 (M = 52.11, SD = 16.89), 62.2% female. Data were collected via telephone interviewing. Main outcome measures were reported history of child maltreatment (sexual abuse, physical abuse, neglect) and reported 12-month NSSI. Dissociation, alexithymia, and self-blame were examined as potential mediating variables in the relationship between child maltreatment and later NSSI. All analyses were conducted using logistic regression and adjusted for age and psychiatric diagnosis.ResultsResults differed by gender. Compared to no child maltreatment, physical abuse (OR 2.75, 95% CI 1.68–4.51) and neglect (OR 2.56, 95% CI 1.65–3.99) independently increased the odds of NSSI among females. Physical abuse (OR 2.69, 95% CI 1.44–5.03) increased the odds of NSSI among males. Sexual abuse did not independently increase the odds of NSSI for males or females. For females, self-blame had the greatest effect on the child maltreatment–NSSI relationship (OR decreased by 14.6%, p < .000), although dissociation and alexithymia also partially mediated the relationship. For males, dissociation had the greatest effect (OR decreased by 12.9%, p = .003) with self-blame also having a relatively strong effect.ConclusionsThe results indicate that child maltreatment, and in particular, physical abuse, is strongly associated with the development of subsequent NSSI and may be partially mediated by dissociation, alexithymia, and self-blame for females and dissociation and self-blame for males. Altering attributional style (through cognitive therapy or emotion focussed therapy) and improving the capacity to regulate emotions (through dialectical behaviour therapy) may contribute to reduction or cessation of NSSI.     

Does shame influence nonsuicidal self-injury among college students? An investigation into the role of shame,negative urgency,and brooding

College students experience high levels of life stress that put them at increased risk for nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI). It is important to understand which vulnerabilities put students most at risk, in order to inform treatment in college counseling centers. This study investigated the joint contributions of specific vulnerabilities to lifetime history and frequency of NSSI among a sample of undergraduates (50% reported a history of NSSI). Results showed shame-proneness was uniquely associated with NSSI frequency beyond other negative emotions. Negative urgency and brooding exacerbated this effect. This study provides insights into the contributions of specific vulnerabilities to NSSI and implications for practice.     

Posthumanist Perspectives on Racialized Life and Human Difference Pedagogy

This discussion begins from the speculation that evaluating formulations of life has become one of the leading prerogatives of “novel” turns to matter, materiality, and the posthuman. However, moving with the Other (rather than simply representing them) has proven a difficult task for scholars in education concerned with decolonizing pedagogies by critiquing epistemological and ontological regimes of power disengaged from the interrogation of the metaphysics of race and sex at the center of Western metaphysical foundations of thought. There is an ongoing need for sustained engagement with the assumption of human primacy that runs through the nearly ubiquitous assertions of what Claire Colebrook calls active vitalism, which is characteristic of humanist approaches to education. In other words, the new conceptualizations of posthumanism only rarely challenge the lingering humanist concept of life itself. In this article, Petra Mikulan and Adam Rudder argue that posthumanist and neo‐vitalist materialist approaches to ontology must consider that racism is vitalist in the active sense because it begins with bodies (as bounded organisms always autopoetic and self‐proximate) and that vitalism is racist because it then distributes and discriminates racialized bodies according to their function as parts in a whole.     

Using Real‐Life Major League Baseball Data in an Introductory Statistics Course

A primary goal of introductory statistics courses is to develop a student's ability to think statistically. To motivate students to this end, the literature suggests that statistics courses use exercises that are relevant and familiar to students. Work in educational psychology highlights the importance of connecting new concepts to pre‐existing knowledge, mental models, or schema. One method to meet these criteria is to develop exercises and problems that use real‐life data. While real‐life data provide a context for the application of statistical methods, the data does not necessarily provide a context or process for developing the ability to think statistically. This teaching brief describes a set of logical, sequential, and ready‐to‐use exercises that motivate statistical inquiry and thought in line with the GAISE College Report recommendations. The exercises use real‐life data freely sourced from Major League Baseball and the nonfiction story of Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. Student reactions indicate that these exercises, which are anchored in real‐life data with a real‐life story, are successful in motivating student interest in statistics.     

School Life and Adolescents' Self‐Esteem Trajectories

This study investigates heterogeneity in adolescents' trajectories of global self‐esteem (GSE) and the relations between these trajectories and facets of the interpersonal, organizational, and instructional components of students' school life. Methodologically, this study illustrates the use of growth mixture analyses, and how to obtain proper student‐level effects when there are multiple schools, but not enough to support multilevel analyses. This study is based on a 4‐year, six‐measurement‐point, follow‐up of 1,008 adolescents (M_age = 12.6 years, SD = 0.6 at Time 1.) The results show four latent classes presenting elevated, moderate, increasing, and low trajectories defined based on GSE levels and fluctuations. The results show that GSE becomes trait‐like as it increases and that school life effects, moderated by gender, played an important role in predicting membership in these trajectories.     

Is it Possible to Live a Philosophical,Educational Life in Education,Nowadays?

I consider if and how far it is possible to live an educational philosophical life, in the fast‐changing, globalised world of Higher Education. I begin with Socrates’ account of a philosophical life in the Apology. I examine some tensions within different conceptions of what it is to do philosophy. I then go on to focus more closely on what it might be to live a philosophical, educational life in which educational processes and outcomes are influenced by philosophy, using examples taken from published sources and from conversational interviews with philosophers carried out by myself with Kenneth Wain, Bas Levering and Richard Pring. I then outline the directions of current European policy for Higher Education. Finally I discuss how far current policies and trends leave room for doing philosophy of education, concluding that it is possible, but only for individuals who are very much in sympathy with current policy trends or who are creative in constructing smoke screens.     

“Everything Happens for a Reason”: Children's Beliefs About Purpose in Life Events

Do children believe that “everything happens for a reason?” That is, do children endorse purpose‐based, teleological explanations for significant life events, as they do for social behavior, artifacts, biological properties, and natural kinds? Across three experiments, 5‐ to 7‐year‐olds (N = 80), 8‐ to 10‐year‐olds (N = 72), and adults (N = 91) chose between teleological and nonteleological accounts of significant life events and judged how helpful those accounts were for understanding an event's cause. Five‐ to 7‐year‐olds favored teleological explanations, but this preference diminished with age. Five‐ to 7‐year‐olds and 8‐ to 10‐year‐olds also found teleological explanations more helpful than did adults. Perceiving purpose in life events may therefore have roots in childhood, potentially reflecting a more general sensitivity to purpose in the social and natural worlds.     

Serious Leisure,Health Perception,Dispositional Optimism,and Life Satisfaction Among Senior Games Participants

This study investigated factors that explain the life satisfaction of Senior Games participants. One 193 older adults from the 2005 Michigan State Senior Games and the 2005 New York State Senior Games participated in the study. The results of the study show that one of the indicators of serious leisure (affective attachment) was positively correlated to optimism (.16, p <.05), age (.28, p <.01), and the number of years participated (.28, p <.01). Regression analysis was also used to identify which variables contribute to predicting life satisfaction. It was found that dispositional optimism (β =.308, p <.001) and perceived health (β =.185, p <.05) were significant predictors of life satisfaction.     

Life events,self‐concept,and adolescents' positive subjective well‐being

This study investigated the interrelationships among global self‐concept, life events, and positive subjective well‐being (positive affect [PA], negative affect [NA], and life satisfaction [LS]) in a sample of 92 high school students. The results demonstrated that life events contributed significant variance to predictions of PA, NA, and LS, over and above that of global self‐concept. Also, daily events contributed variance over and above that of major life events. Looking at the specific event types that related uniquely to the positive well‐being measures, only negative daily events related significantly to PA and NA, and only positive daily events related significantly to LS. The results also indicated that the positive well‐being constructs each contained unique variance and had different correlates, thus providing strong support for the multidimensionality of adolescent positive well‐being reports. Implications for further research and intervention programs are discussed. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

How Early Life Adversity Transforms the Learning Brain

For educators to help children exposed to adverse life experiences, it is necessary to understand how adversity impacts different mechanisms of learning, emotion, and planning as these capacities underpin success in schools and beyond. The goal of this paper is to review essential findings on how early life adversity transforms the brain which, in turn, impacts educational outcomes. Part 1 begins by discussing the species‐specific and expectant experiences that guide typical development, and then turns to early life adversities and their relationship to both physical and mental health outcomes. Part 2 summarizes four dimensions of adversity—type, timing, term, and toxicity—and how each differentially impacts the developing brain, including individual differences in psychopathology. Part 3 discusses the relevance of these findings for educators, highlighting how behavior can be modified to build resilience and greater academic and social–emotional competency.     

Happiness,Life Satisfaction,Resiliency and Social Support in Students with Dyslexia

Many people with dyslexia experience numerous failures in their lifetime. This can reduce their life satisfaction and the sense of happiness. However, external support and one’s personal resources, for example resiliency, aid in dealing with difficult situations. Our study verified the importance of resiliency and perceived social support for the level of life satisfaction and the sense of happiness in Polish students with and without dyslexia, studying at both state and non-state universities. We used the Cantril Self-Anchoring Scale, SHI-PL Questionnaire, Resiliency Scale, and Social Support Questionnaire. The results showed that students with dyslexia demonstrated lower levels of: life satisfaction, positive emotions, resiliency, perceived/expected emotional and practical support, and general social support. The difference in happiness remained at the level of a statistical trend. Therefore, we conclude that dyslexia may be treated a risk factor in terms of happiness and life satisfaction in young adults.     

Genetic and Environmental Influences on Negative Life Events From Late Childhood to Adolescence

This multiwave longitudinal study tested two quantitative genetic developmental models to examine genetic and environmental influences on exposure to negative dependent and independent life events. Participants (N = 457 twin pairs) completed measures of life events annually from ages 9 to 16. The same genetic factors influenced exposure to dependent events across time and increased in magnitude during the transition to adolescence. Independent events were less genetically influenced than dependent events in boys, but not girls. Shared environmental influences decreased in magnitude as youth transitioned into adolescence. Nonshared environmental influences were mostly age specific and contributed significantly to both types of events at all ages. Results provide theoretical implications for developmental risk pathways to stress exposure and stress‐related psychopathology.     

First‐Generation Undergraduate Students' Social Support,Depression, and Life Satisfaction

First‐generation undergraduate students face challenging cross‐socioeconomic cultural transitions into college life. The authors compared first‐ and non‐first‐generation undergraduate students’ social support, posttraumatic stress, depression symptoms, and life satisfaction. First‐generation participants reported less social support from family and friends, more single‐event traumatic stress, less life satisfaction, and marginally more depression symptomatology than non‐first‐generation participants, but significant generation–gender interactions showed first‐generation women doing worse and first‐generation men doing better than others.     

A Pedagogic Reading of Wittgenstein's Life and Later Works

This article establishes a pedagogic reading of Wittgenstein's later work, which explores the significance of teaching and learning themes through close textual analysis and archival work on his Nachlass. I argue for the prevalence and importance of Wittgenstein's references to teaching, learning and training by showing the role these references play in the structure and central points of his later works. The opening passages of the Philosophical Investigations and the Brown Book about how we learn language are a framing device for arguments later in the texts; one to which Wittgenstein repeatedly returns at crucial junctures. Learning is the process that weaves together our practices and their expected outcomes, which in turn shapes and reshapes the norms operative in our shared forms of life. Reading Wittgenstein with sensitivity to pedagogic themes thus undermines interpretations that rely on rule‐following as the explanatory mechanism by which linguistic use generates meaning. Instead, we learn to use language that carries meaning by being taught the patterns, norms and judgements that come with particular uses. I thus argue that these references to learning and teaching are far from incidental and are instead central to understanding major concepts such as rule‐following, experience and judgement.     

Quality of Life of Children with Learning Disabilities: A Comparison of Self‐Reports and Proxy Reports

This study aimed to explore how children with learning disabilities (LD) perceive their quality of life (QoL) and to compare self‐reports and proxy reports regarding their QoL. Children with LD, their typically developing peers, their parents and teachers responded to the child, parent, and teacher forms of KINDL^R Questionnaire for Measuring Health‐Related Quality of Life (Ravens‐Sieberer & Bullinger, 1998). Findings showed that children with LD reported significantly lower QoL scores than those reported by typically developing peers. Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) and t‐test results showed that agreement between child reports and parent‐proxy reports was either low or moderate on each QoL dimension. Findings of the study may be used to raise awareness regarding the social and educational needs of children with LD in Turkey.