“I could have done more”: Vicarious trauma expression and self-attribution among journalists’ social issues reporting

The ICU is a high-stress environment characterized by frequent exposure to patient suffering and traumatic events, making vicarious trauma a significant occupational hazard for nurses. Generation Z nursing interns face unique challenges during ICU rotations due to insufficient skills and limited resilience. However, their current status regarding vicarious trauma and the factors influencing it still remain underexplored. This study aims to investigate the levels of vicarious trauma and its key influencing factors within this cohort. A cross-sectional study was conducted in Zhengzhou, China, from July to September 2025, recruiting 240 Generation Z nursing interns through convenience sampling. The instruments used included a demographic characteristics questionnaire, the Vicarious Trauma Questionnaire for Disaster Rescuer (VTQ), the Simplified Coping Style Questionnaire (SCSQ), the Professional Identity Scale for Nursing Students (PISNS), and the Perceived Social Support Scale (PSSS). Data were analyzed using independent t-tests, one-way analysis of variance, Pearson correlation, and multiple stepwise linear regression. The mean VTQ score for Generation Z nursing interns was 80.50 ± 26.49, with one-fifth exhibiting vicarious trauma reactions. Significant associations were observed between VTQ and negative coping styles, PISNS, and PSSS (r = -0.195 to -0.216, p < 0.01), as well as between VTQ and positive coping styles (r = 0.250, p < 0.01). The coefficient of determination (R2 = 0.443) indicated that the ICU rotation sequence, daily working hours, night shift frequency, patient death exposure, perceived workload, sleep quality, coping styles, and perceived social support together explained 44.3% of the variance in vicarious trauma. This study offers a comprehensive understanding of vicarious trauma among Generation Z nursing interns by identifying multiple influencing factors, including the clinical environment, work arrangements, individual psychology, and social support. To address these issues, the nursing education system should implement measures such as optimizing the clinical environment, adjusting internship arrangements, and enhancing educational guidance to support the mental health of Generation Z nursing interns and reduce the risk of vicarious trauma.

Maternal and paternal emotion expression and youths’ negative emotions: The moderation of resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia

BackgroundThe war on Ethiopia’s Tigray broke out on November 4, 2020. Amid the armed conflict, governmental institutions were destroyed, people were displaced, and thousands of civilians were killed. The region was experiencing an on-and-off type of blockade since the war broke out until June 28, 2021, at which time the federal government of Ethiopia imposed a siege cutting off the region from the rest of the world. Due to the shortage of medicines and medical supplies, witnessing deaths that otherwise were preventable under normal conditions has become the daily predicament of healthcare workers. The burden of healthcare disintegration is particularly carried by patients with chronic medical illnesses including patients on dialysis.Main bodyAyder hospital, Tigray’s flagship healthcare institution, hosts the only hemodialysis center in the entire region. This center is currently unable to give appropriate care to kidney failure patients for a lack of access to dialysis supplies and consumables due to the ongoing war and siege. This has resulted in vicarious trauma manifested with compassion fatigue, irritability, a feeling of bystander guilt; sadness about the patient’s victimization, and hopelessness among healthcare workers caring for dialysis patients.ConclusionThe suffering of veteran patients and witnessing preventable deaths have continued to haunt and torment healthcare workers in the dialysis unit leading to vicarious trauma. Cognizant of the fact that vicarious trauma has serious health ramifications on healthcare workers; we call up the international community to advocate for a full resumption of access to healthcare and the provision of mental health support and educate and train healthcare workers dealing with end-stage kidney disease patients on hemodialysis.

Family is viewed as a hierarchically organized system, which is comprised of marital, parental and sibling subsystems. The interaction of family subsystems is important for understanding children's social development. Although numerous studies have indicated that marital and child-parent relationship are interrelated, it is unclear how marital relationship influences child-parent relationship. Researchers have argued that marital relationship impacts child-parent relationship through parenting behavior. Parents who experience harmonious marriage tend to exhibit sensitive parenting, and develop warm parent-child relationship, while parents who experience conflictive marital relationship may exhibit harsh parenting, and develop low quality parent-child relationship. In addition, parental emotional socialization behavior may serve as a mediator of links between marital relationship and child-parent relationship; marital conflict or ambivalence is associated with parents' negative expressiveness, and a supportive marital relationship is associated with parents' positive expressiveness. Positive or negative parental expressiveness in turn may affect parent-child relationships.The current longitudinal study explored the mediating effects of parental emotional expressiveness in family on relations between marital relationship and parent-child relationship during three preschool years. We hypothesized that parents with a good quality marital relationship would display more positive emotional expressiveness and inhibit negative emotional expressiveness in the family, which result in good relationships with their children. Four hundred and fifty four preschoolers(254 boys and 200 girls, Mage = 50.92 months, SD = 4.21 at the first stage) and their parents participated in this study. Fathers and mothers reported their marital quality and emotional expressiveness, and rated their relationships with their child. The path analysis revealed that paternal positive and negative emotional expressiveness and maternal positive emotional expressiveness in the second year completely mediated the relation between marital quality in the first year and child-parent intimacy in the third year when intimate child-father relationship or intimate child-mother relationship were controlled in the first year. Specifically, father who experienced higher marital quality in the first year tended to express more positive emotions and less negative emotions in family in the second year, and had more intimate child-father relationship in the third year when intimate child-father relationship in the first year was controlled. However, maternal negative emotional expressiveness in the first year did not mediate the relation between marital quality in the second year and intimate child-father relationship in the third year. Moreover, mother who experienced higher marital quality in the first year tended to express more positive emotions in family in the second year, and had more intimacy child-mother relationship in the third year when intimate child-mother relationship in the first year was controlled, and paternal negative emotional expressiveness in the first year did not mediate the relation between marital quality in the second year and intimate child-mother relationship in the third year. We discussed the results from the family system and parental emotional socialization perspectives, and provided suggestions for family education.

Although emotion socialization during preschool years is well studied, how mother-child mutual emotional responses unfold in naturalistic contexts remains largely unknown. This pilot study examined within-dyad associations between children’s emotion expressions and maternal socialization behaviors, and the moderating effects of maternal depressive symptoms and child negative emotionality. Forty mother-child dyads participated (42.5% girls; Mage = 5.16 years). Across two consecutive weekend days, mothers completed ecological momentary assessments 12 times, reporting children’s positive and negative emotion expressions, the intensity of child peak negative expressions, and their own emotion coaching (EC) and emotion dismissing (ED) behaviors. Children’s peak negative emotion was associated with mothers’ use of EC and ED, and the peak negative emotion and EC link was moderated by child negative emotionality. Maternal EC/ED also predicted children’s subsequent positive and/or negative emotion expressions, and the association between maternal ED and child negative expressions was further moderated by maternal depressive symptoms or child negative emotionality. Using an ecologically valid, real-time assessment approach, this study explored how the mother-child emotion socialization process unfolds in everyday life. Findings highlight the negative impact of maternal ED on children’s emotional experiences and highlight the potential value of early interventions targeting parental ED behaviors.

Secondary traumatic stress (STS), vicarious trauma (VT), and burnout (BO) are work-related outcomes commonly ascribed to mental health workers, given their exposure to clients' traumatic experiences. It is theorized that a worker's own history of trauma increases the occurrence of these outcomes, through retraumatization/activation of threat cues during client interactions and overinvolvement with a client's progress. Given the inconsistencies in the literature and the ubiquity of trauma among workers, a systematic review was conducted to examine the association of personal trauma and the 3 related, but separate, work outcomes. A systematic search strategy was used across relevant research databases (Cochrane, JSTOR, PsycINFO, PubMed) for empirical studies conducted from 2000-2021. In accordance with PRISMA guidelines, a four-phase selection process was used, resulting in 39 studies identified meeting the inclusion criteria. A clear (positive) association between personal trauma history and STS and VT were identified, whereas mostly null findings were observed in regard to BO. The majority of studies were conducted in Western countries, adopted questionnaires as the primary means of data collection, and all but one were cross-sectional in design. In addition to a lack of diversity in study design, there were conceptual limitations to the research conducted (e.g., treating victims as a unitary group, neglecting the inclusion of mechanisms). To assist in moving the field forward, five research recommendations are outlined with the goal of creating greater clarity in the work-outcomes literature and increased nuance in how personal trauma is understood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

We examined individual trajectories, across four time points, of children's (N = 301) expression of negative emotion in classroom settings and whether these trajectories predicted their observed school engagement, teacher-reported academic skills, and passage comprehension assessed with a standardized measure in first grade. In latent growth curve analyses, negative expressivity declined from kindergarten to first grade with significant individual differences in trajectories. Negative expressivity in kindergarten inversely predicted first grade school engagement and teacher-reported academic skills, and the slope of negative expressivity from kindergarten to first grade inversely predicted school engagement (e.g., increasing negative expressivity was associated with lower school engagement). In addition, we examined if prior academic functioning in kindergarten moderated the association between negative expressivity (level in kindergarten and change over time) and academic functioning in first grade. The slope of negative expressivity was negatively associated with first grade school engagement and passage comprehension for children who had lower kindergarten school engagement and passage comprehension, respectively, but was unrelated for those with higher academic functioning in kindergarten. That is, for children who had lower kindergarten school engagement and passage comprehension, greater declines in negative expressivity were associated with higher first grade school engagement and passage comprehension, respectively. The findings suggest that negative emotional expressivity in school is associated with academic outcomes in first grade and, in some cases, this association is more pronounced for children who had lower kindergarten academic functioning.

Considerable scholarly discussion, in broad terms at least, has focused on the disruptions that the Internet has delivered to journalistic norms and the changes to perceptions that journalists hold of their role. However, such discussion tends to emphasize the Internet as a globally used form of technology with a singular impact on journalism; it mentions only in passing that its understanding of this concept is mainly based on an Anglo-American model. This article explores Chinese journalists’ ideas about disruption in China. It finds that Chinese journalists use of the Internet falls within the margins of the censorship system, leading to a grey area surrounding the practice of online journalism within which certain specific constraints supposedly enforced by administration law and departmental policies can be broken without punishment. While working in this grey area signals a disruption of journalistic norms in China, the characteristics of this disruption differ from those found in western countries.

The connections between vicarious trauma and the viewing of violent User-Generated Content (UGC) are becoming an increasingly important topic in journalism. As more journalist work begins to rely, or at least incorporate UGC, the risks to journalists have been shown to increase. This can lead to short, unpleasant careers, and in some cases, serious, long-lasting mental health risks. Yet while this discussion is beginning to unfold in the newsroom, universities are lagging behind in their understanding of the topic. This article, through content analysis of undergraduate course materials, and through interviews with lecturers and journalists, found that almost no course in the United Kingdom is teaching the risks of vicarious trauma or UGC. It was found that while some educators wish to make more of the topic, a number of institutional factors, such as lack of training and time, worries over duty of care, and available resources make this a difficult, if not impossible task. The article recommends a new emphasis is placed on vicarious trauma, coupled with training and interdepartmental support.

Although children’s negative affectivity is a temperamental characteristic that is biologically based, it is framed within and shaped by their emotional environments which are partly created by maternal emotion expressivity in the family. Children, in turn, play a role in shaping their family emotional context, which could lead to changes in mothers’ emotion expressivity in the family. However, these theorized longitudinal bidirectional relations between child negative affectivity and maternal positive and negative expressivity have not been studied from toddlerhood to early school-age. The current study utilized a cross-lagged panel model to examine the reciprocal relations between children’s negative affectivity and maternal expressivity within the family over the course of early childhood. Participants were 140 mother–child dyads (72 boys, mean age = 2.67 years, primarily White). Mothers reported the positive and negative expressivity in the family and children’s negative affectivity in toddlerhood (T1), preschool (T2), and school-age (T3). Maternal negative expressivity and child negative affectivity at T1 were significantly correlated. Maternal negative expressivity at T1 significantly predicted child negative affectivity at T3. Children’s negative affectivity at T2 significantly predicted mothers’ negative expressivity at T3. Mothers’ positive expressivity was not related to children’s negative affectivity at any of the three time points. The findings demonstrate the reciprocal relations between children’s negative affectivity and maternal negative expressivity in the family, suggesting the importance of the interplay between child temperament and maternal expressivity within the family emotional context.

Studying political interviews and press conferences is significant as it may provide a special insight into the change in the policy of a country, and perhaps even the well-being of a society as a whole. Previous studies on broadcast interviews have identified adversarial questioning as an increasing and pervasive style in journalistic practice in the western world (Clayman and Heritage 2002a/b). The use of such adversarial style has emerged in Hong Kong-a metropolitan city deeply influenced by both Chinese and western cultures (Yip 2003). However, the general knowledge of how journalists treat public figures in other parts of the Chinese-speaking world remains relatively unknown. This study attempts to investigate the questioning and answering patterns, in particular adversarial questioning, in Chinese government press conferences which has thus far received little scholarly attention. Drawing on Clayman and Heritage's coding system for measuring adversarial questioning in U.S. press conferences (2002b), the current study examines the question-answer sequences based on a corpus of ten government press conferences held in mainland China, and aims to present a questioning format by showing any differences in the design of questions by Chinese journalists and their foreign counterparts. The study further explores the format of the response of Chinese officials typical of these events and some possible correlation between government officials' question-taking and their setting of the political agenda.

In support of cognitive processing models, emotional expression appears to reduce associations between intrusions and psychological distress. Past research has focused primarily on the role of the expression of negative emotion, or emotion in general, in cognitive processing and adjustment. In the present study, we examined the role of both positive and negative emotional expressivity on relations between intrusions and both distress and avoidance among 93 individuals diagnosed with and treated for cancer. We hypothesized stronger negative associations between intrusive thoughts and both distress and avoidance for those individuals lower in positive or negative expressivity. Results generally supported hypotheses with regard to relations of intrusions and distress in association with positive expressivity. Negative expressivity, however, moderated relations between intrusions and distress, but not intrusions and avoidance. These findings underscore the importance of examining the impact of individual differences in negative, as well as positive, emotional expression on cognitive processing and psychological adjustment.

Previous literature has explored how the penetration of platforms into the news sector influences the organization, production, and dissemination of journalism. However, it has overlooked the platformization within the backstage of journalism - how journalism scholarship intersects with practice. Utilizing the concept of relevance gap , this study explores whether the platformization of journalism scholarship can meaningfully contribute to journalistic practices. Focusing on the case study of China’s WeChat Public Accounts (WPAs), and drawing from in-depth interviews with 26 Chinese journalists, our findings reveal four perceptions that journalists hold towards various journalism research on the quadrants of readability and relevance, as well as three different ways these perceptions influence their subsequent journalistic practices. We argue that platformization, as a driving force, improves the access gap on the technological level between journalism research and its potential audience. However, increased visibility struggles to bridge the content gap at the socio-political level and may exacerbate the discord and debates between academic work and journalistic practice.

Affect expression in mother–infant interaction and subsequent attachment development

Workplaces that provide services and deal with abuse cases are often associated with high levels of work stress, burn out, and high expressed affect. The current intervention aimed at a more effective management of stress and affect in the workplace. EMDR therapy is an evidence-based treatment for PTSD and anxiety disorders. A Group EMDR protocol was applied to professionals working at “the House of the Child”, an innovative specialized Mental Health Unit that provides multi-disciplinary assessment, diagnosis and treatment services for children and adolescents survivors of abuse and neglect operated by the Association “The Smile of the Child”. The intervention included two sessions. The stabilization session took place for purposes of screening and preparation (self-regulation) and lasted 45 minutes. In the second session, which lasted 90 minutes, participants processed a recent stressful event that occurred in the workplace. The stressful event was not shared in the group. There were twenty participants and two facilitators, all of whom working at the unit. The Job Affect Scale, the Impact of Event Scale–R, the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and the Subjective Units of Distress (SUD’s) were administered. The dependent (paired) t test showed significant reduction of the SUDs related to the stressful event, decrease in the avoidance, intrusion and hyperarousal symptoms. Moreover, reduction in the negative affect in the workplace was noted. The current pilot intervention provided indications for the usefulness of workplace interventions aiming at more effective stress management and better communication among the members of the multi-disciplinary team. Further research is needed to evaluate the efficacy of Group EMDR in workplace stress management and the prevention or processing of vicarious/secondary trauma.