Impacts of dialogic scientific gatherings on mothers' participation in conflict prevention and school coexistence.

While a small body of work focuses directly on young people's experiences of psychotherapy following sexual abuse, to our knowledge, there are no existing reviews of this literature. This systematic review was conducted using Siddaway et al.'s guidelines. Inclusion criteria were: published between 2000 and 2022; used qualitative methodologies; and captured adolescents' perspectives. Eleven studies were identified, representing an aggregated sample size of 72 young people aged 12 to 18. Methodologies used included thematic analysis, content analysis, conversation analysis, and narrative analysis. A total of 9 of the 11 studies addressed experiences of individual therapy using semi-structured interviews; 2 studies explored experiences of group therapy through focus groups. The review identified three key processes that reflect adolescents' experiences: engagement, ambivalence to trust; painful processing: exercising agency; and integrating: taking responsibility. Young people struggled to engage in therapy, and it took time to build trust; they experienced improvements in mood and general well-being, facilitated by psychoeducation, talking about the abuse, experiencing difficult emotions, and learning coping skills. They described integrating their abuse experience into their life story, discovering their inner strength and resilience. The therapeutic experience was underpinned by two key support processes: the therapeutic relationship and a supportive environment outside of therapy. This review supports the components of trauma-focused therapy alongside personalizing psychotherapy to the needs of adolescents for agency and autonomy.

Online child sexual exploitation and abuse (OCSEA) is a complex and multifaceted form of offending that continues to increase in prevalence. Our understanding of OCSEA is challenged by evolving technologies, low rates of detection, and limited understanding of the aetiological pathways to engaging in this behaviour. The current study aimed to deepen our understanding of the aetiology of OCSEA through qualitatively exploring the lived experiences of nine men referred to New Zealand community treatment providers for OCSEA behaviours. Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, men's life stories were examined across the lifespan, including childhood, pre-offending, offending, and post-offending timeframes. Five superordinate themes were developed. These described the impact of the men's developmental environment on their understanding of healthy relationships; the desire for connection and feelings of not belonging; difficulties in coping with negative emotions; escalation of both legal and illegal sexual behaviours; and factors associated with ceasing offending. The application of findings to the prevention of OCSEA are considered and directions for future research are discussed.

Abstract Agency and communion are two core motivational themes in narrative identity, reflecting drives for independent control and relatedness, respectively. Despite significant attention to the salience of these narrative themes, no previous research has examined thematic change or associations with well-being and developmental outcomes in late midlife. In a diverse sample of 128 adults transitioning from middle to later adulthood, life story interviews were conducted at three time points (ages 55, 60, and 65, approximately). Five autobiographical scenes from each participant per wave were coded for agency and communion, for a total of 1,913 scenes. At the between-person level, adults who were highly generative and reported greater ego integrity at age 65 tended to tell life stories marked by fulfilled agency and communion. Higher levels of these themes across the three waves were also linked to greater well-being and life satisfaction at age 65. There was no significant within-person change in agency or communion across the three waves of this longitudinal study, and the small changes that did occur did not predict well-being or developmental outcomes assessed at age 65. Taken together, the findings suggest that fulfilled agency and communion function as enduring markers of narrative identity that significantly relate to adjustment in late midlife.

ABSTRACT Background Psychological distress associated with unresolved event memories is a primary motivator for seeking professional counselling and psychotherapy. Instinctive efforts to cope with such memories can perpetuate maladaptive rumination and negative self‐appraisals, particularly when events are central to identity. These posttraumatic cognitions can contribute to the development and maintenance of posttraumatic stress symptoms. It is therefore important to identify accessible interventions to support adaptive resolution. Although self‐compassion has been linked to health and well‐being, its application to unresolved event memories has never been explored. Objective This study experimentally investigated the effects of a tailored self‐compassion writing exercise on posttraumatic cognitions related to unresolved events, with particular attention to the moderating role of event centrality to identity. Method Eighty‐eight undergraduate participants identified an unresolved event and rated its centrality to their identity and life story. Participants were randomly assigned to complete either a tailored self‐compassion writing task or a descriptive control task. All participants completed measures of posttraumatic cognitions, posttraumatic growth and psychological closure. Results For events rated as highly central to identity, the self‐compassion condition reported significantly lower posttraumatic cognitions relative to the control condition. No significant differences were observed for events low in centrality. High (vs. low) centrality events were also rated significantly higher on posttraumatic growth and lower on closure. Conclusion Findings offer preliminary support for the effectiveness of a brief self‐compassion writing intervention for highly central unresolved events. We discuss implications, future directions and applications for counselling and psychotherapy contexts.

Surveilled bodies, governed lives: a Foucauldian reading of surveillance, power, and subjectivity in A. Revathi’s <i>the Truth about me: a Hijra life story</i>

ABSTRACT This paper questions the form of power attributed to migrant women entrepreneurs often emanating from their pre-established social positions, which limits their engagements to mere reaction and adaptation to dominant power holders (i.e. specific groups, contexts, structures). Drawing on the life stories of four migrant women entrepreneurs of Turkish origin in Sweden and the Netherlands, we examine how they experience power as an embodied and affective phenomenon through a multiple case study approach. Going beyond the positional power attributed to women, we adopt a critical feminist perspective on power and demonstrate how migrant women entrepreneurs actively exercise different ‘modalities of power’ (power-over, power-to and power-with) and build ‘power agility’. The study contributes to migrant women’s entrepreneurship by uncovering their power as an emergent attribute rather than as a fixed parameter and by articulating how this ‘agility’ is at the core of migrant women entrepreneurs’ capacity to generate transformative effects crossing over individual, relational, contextual, and systemic aspects and levels.

ABSTRACT This theoretical essay introduces Artistic Narrative Resonance Theory (ANRT), a novel framework examining how creative podcast storytelling facilitates emotional healing, empathy, and identity coherence. Grounded in narrative therapy, narrative medicine, and media psychology, ANRT conceptualizes individuals as authors of their evolving life stories rather than problems to be solved. As digital media democratizes personal narratives, podcasts emerge as transformative “aural communities” that extend therapeutic voices from clinical settings to mass audiences. Through a contemplative interpretation of an illustrated Greek artistic podcast, the study identifies authenticity, intergenerational resonance, and collective reframing as the core dimensions of narrative healing. The article contends that public narrative environments function as accessible, neighborhood-based sites for emotional reflection and communal growth. By positioning creative materials as a burgeoning field of participatory healing, the framework expands the boundaries of traditional counseling into the digital-artistic public sphere.

ABSTRACT This study investigates the complex and often challenging educational pathways of neurodivergent individuals from early childhood education through to higher education. Grounded in ecological systems theory and informed by qualitative data from retrospective life stories of neurodivergent young adults from Slovakia (N = 28), the study examines experiences across educational contexts. Rather than locating difficulty solely within the individual condition, the findings illustrate how educational and social contexts contribute to significant barriers that shape students’ trajectories. Using reflexive thematic analysis, the author identified three interrelated themes. The first theme, Otherness, Identity, and (Mis)behaviour, captures how participants were frequently positioned as different, with neurodivergent traits interpreted as behavioural problems, influencing identity formation and belonging. The second theme, The ‘Fix-It’ Mentality vs. Self-Acceptance, highlights tensions between deficit-oriented interventions aimed at normalisation and participants’ later processes of self-understanding and acceptance. The third theme, Disclosure, Stigma, and Help-Seeking, reflects ongoing dilemmas around revealing neurodivergent identities, navigating stigma, and accessing support within educational institutions. Participants reported experiences of minority stress and feelings of otherness that were socially constructed rather than inherent to neurodivergent condition. The study concludes by advocating for socially and psychologically safe educational environments from early childhood onward to support successful stories of inclusion.

ABSTRACT The Moravian memoir (Lebenslauf) has been an important part of the history and spirituality of the Moravian Church since the mid-eighteenth century. Thousands of memoirs are held in Moravian archives all over the world, in which individual Moravian members recorded their life stories and their encounter with the Moravian community. This article analyzes features of Moravian memoirs, which focus less on the “inner life” and global community of Moravian believers but rather on the socioeconomic context in which the memoirs are composed and the expression of this context in the memoirs. In doing so, the article examines what local conditions and customs are reflected in the memoirs. Such a reading goes purposely against the “grain” or intention of the text and thus sets aside the “why” of the production of the memoirs—which ultimately is the participation in and upholding of the “invisible church” or the global community. In such a reading, the Moravian memoirs are useful outside of their immediate context and demonstrate insight into the lives of ordinary men and women, and how these lives were impacted by socioeconomic change. The memoirs examined are from Fulneck in Yorkshire and Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland) and are chosen because they differ in some respects from the standard Moravian memoir structure.

Although we are all growing older every day and shaping our life stories, we rarely consider what this will mean for our old age. Preparing for old age differs from adapting to it. This paper aims to answer the question of whether Poles of pre-retirement age are preparing for old age, particularly with regard to the biological consequences of ageing and associated functional dependence on human beings. We are also interested in how they achieve this. The empirical section is based on quantitative and qualitative research carried out as part of the “Preparing for Old Age: Poles of pre-retirement age about their future”.

This article draws on the analysis of semi-structured interviews to compare the immigration experiences of queer individuals from the Global North with those of their counterparts from the Global South. It examines the process of racialization experienced by some of these individuals upon arrival in Quebec/Canada, the transformation of this process when it had already been experienced in the country of origin, and the continued social recognition as white people for others. The article then examines the impacts of these processes on the construction of these immigrants' life stories in the host society, particularly in relation to their social class. It also demonstrates that the privilege enjoyed by individuals socially recognized as white manifests itself in the absence of challenges related to racialization in their life trajectories.

ABSTRACT The Afro-Brazilian poet, abolitionist and lawyer Luiz Gama, is one of Brazil’s most celebrated historical figures, not only because of his decades of activism in the struggle to bring an end to slavery but also because of his singular life story. Born in the northeastern province of Bahia, as a child he was sold into slavery by his own father, living in captivity for eight years before escaping. Although Gama’s writings and professional life have inspired numerous scholarly works, thus far information about his childhood has been limited to an autobiographical sketch he provided in a letter to a friend. Using his recollections as a point of departure, this article presents the results of extensive archival research that yielded the first empirical data about Gama’s early life. The new information provides nuance and context to his memories, also stimulating reflections about the narratives that arose about him and his family after his death. The discrepancies and convergences between these various sources of information highlight the unstable relationship between the lives of legendary figures from the time of slavery and the narratives that circulate today about them.

BackgroundStorytelling interventions have demonstrated substantial potential in improving emotional well-being, cognitive function, and quality of life for older adults. However, its effectiveness is often limited by the challenges of processing disorganized and redundant life stories, which impose substantial cognitive demands on caregivers. Although storytelling interventions are a well-established therapeutic approach, current practices depend heavily on manual narrative organization, restricting both the scalability and consistency of treatment delivery. Prior research has primarily focused on validating the clinical outcomes of storytelling interventions, with insufficient attention given to technological solutions that could enhance narrative processing while preserving therapeutic integrity. Digital approaches to life story structuring remain underexplored, despite their potential to amplify storytelling benefits by reducing cognitive load and improving recall accuracy.ObjectiveThis study aims to design an event timeline generation algorithm to optimize the prior work of the Story Mosaic system. The optimized system enables (1) the automatic extraction of event elements from life narratives, (2) the automatic organization of fragmented life stories into structured timelines, and (3) the preservation of clinically relevant contextual details during compression. The goal is to reduce manual intervention costs while increasing treatment efficacy through artificial intelligence–driven narrative structuring.MethodsWe have designed a novel method, CARE event timeline (CARE-ET), which combines a temporal attention mechanism with graph-based event relationship modeling. Furthermore, we used the CARE-ET algorithm to optimize existing story collage systems. The system uses multifeature extraction technology to capture event clues from oral histories, prioritizes the 6 elements of events through a hierarchical attention mechanism, and uses adaptive compression algorithms to reduce redundancy while maintaining narrative continuity. To verify the effectiveness of the CARE-ET method, this paper adopts a multidimensional evaluation framework, which encompasses event summary assessment, timeline quality evaluation, and usability testing of the optimized system.ResultsThe proposed CARE-ET algorithm outperforms the baseline in both narrative flow and temporal accuracy. The Story Mosaic system, optimized by the CARE-ET algorithm, underwent usability evaluation by 10 caregivers recruited for this study. Based on standardized assessment metrics, the system received an A rating for usability. The comprehensive experimental results demonstrate that the CARE-ET method can effectively structure fragmented narratives from older adults, enhancing the usability of the Story Mosaic system.ConclusionsThe proposed method enables the structured extraction of representative event summaries, transforming disorganized life stories into an event timeline for caregiver-supported older adult well-being interventions. Future research should investigate longitudinal effects on cognitive preservation and explore integration with existing dementia care protocols. This work establishes a critical foundation for intelligent assistive technologies in geriatric mental health interventions.

Instability appears to be a key symptomatic feature of borderline personality disorder (BPD); subjects commonly exhibit affective dysregulation, an unstable sense of self, and instability in their interpersonal relationships. To conceptualize how trauma plays a key role in generating instability, I propose that the persistent activation of 'traumatic imprints' involves distortions to central elements of what Shaun Gallagher (2024) terms 'the self-pattern'. Since music therapy can tap into the embodied, affective, prereflective, and cognitive processes that comprise the self-pattern, it holds great potential to foster a more stable sense of self. I examine how instrumental improvisation, in particular, can target narrative processes of the self-pattern by allowing subjects to explore their life story and make sense of painful memories. I then discuss how joint improvisation with a therapist has potential to target intersubjective processes of the self-pattern, which can help subjects with BPD to build their capacities for co-regulation and for navigating misattunements in social interaction.

Based on an ongoing research project, this abstract combines modern representation with reconstructed history. With the use of virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and high-definition screens, Oman's stunning natural beauty and rich historical legacy might be transformed into engaging, accessible, and instructive experiences. (Alrihani, N., 2022)The objective is to preserve history while making it more appealing to audiences both locally and globally. Optical technology may be both an effective narrative tool and a preservation support by minimizing direct interaction with fragile monuments and landscapes. Visitors may interact with historically significant periods and experience these stories in real life through digital reconstructions, such as ancient cities, traditional handicrafts, and maritime trade. Through the provision of engaging, technologically enhanced experiences, this approach fosters the expansion of eco-friendly travel. More tourists will be attracted as a result, and new job opportunities in the areas of innovation and historical preservation will arise. Using contemporary visual technology in a cultural context encourages more community involvement, information transfer across generations, and keeps heritage interesting for a younger generation. (Sullivan, A.M., 2015) Through the integration of creative, artistic, and technological approaches with historical narratives, the initiative establishes Oman as a potential leader in the Gulf region's cultural tourism innovation. Heritage professionals, government officials, and innovative innovators looking to incorporate advanced technology interpretation methods while preserving history will be interested in them.

"Growing up, my home never felt like a place of comfort": A narrative exploration of childhood exposure to Intimate Partner Violence among young Badaga men.

Teen motherhood is a growing global problem that affects thousands of young girls annually, especially in developing countries. It causes complex challenges that can affect the future opportunities of teen mothers if strong coping strategies are not in place. This study aims to explore resilience and coping strategies of single teen mothers in the face of adversity. This study employed a qualitative research approach. Life story interviews were conducted with 10 single teen mothers, and semi-structured interviews were conducted with six mothers of these single teen mothers. Using thematic analysis, recurring themes and patterns were identified in the participants’ narratives. Single teen mothers faced sleeplessness and energy loss, feelings of aimlessness and self-defeat, and limited social support networks as key hardships associated with early motherhood. Single teen mothers’ agency and resilience were supported by both informal and formal social support systems that enhanced coping skills, optimism, and access to some opportunities. Single teen mothers face complex adversities, for which solutions require resilience-oriented interventions that can thus lead to sustainable solutions grounded in the strengths of single teen mothers. As such, future research should explore single teen mothers’ perspectives on future opportunities by examining the long-term advantages of supporting interventions.

Suicidality is frequently examined through psychiatric or epidemiological lenses, with culture treated as a secondary factor or explanatory variable. This essay advances an alternative view, positioning culture as the lived horizon through which suffering is interpreted, narrated, and acted upon. To examine how culturally grounded systems of meaning shape suicidal experience and to translate these insights into practical guidance for nursing suicide risk assessment and care. Drawing on cross-cultural suicidology, narrative identity theory, and ethically constructed clinical illustrations, the essay explores suicidal meaning making across Indigenous, Japanese, and Muslim minority contexts. Suicide risk is framed as a narrative crisis in which a person's life story constricts towards a single perceived ending while avoiding cultural essentialism. Across contexts, cultural worlds shape how distress is voiced, which forms of disclosure feel permissible, and what protective anchors remain accessible. Clinically salient meanings include duty, shame, exile, faith, and belonging. Protective resources often emerge through land, language, ritual, creativity, spirituality, and community relationships. Rather than offering causal explanations, the essay provides practice-oriented guidance for nurses. This includes culturally attuned listening, documentation of cultural resources alongside standard risk elements, collaboration with Elders or faith leaders when appropriate and with consent, and the use of relational and family-centred pathways of support. Centring culture as the medium of meaning allows suicide assessment and care to become more accurate, humane, and responsive to patients' lived worlds, supporting narrative reopening rather than symptom management alone.

This study aims to enhance understanding of child maltreatment (CM) in connection with problematic parental substance use (PPSU) and to identify related individual and familial support needs. Using inductive qualitative content analysis, we examined the life stories of trained experts-by-experience (N = 11) who had experienced PPSU and various forms of CM, including physical and emotional violence and neglect in their family during childhood and adolescence. Several family-related and parental risk factors for CM emerged, such as intergenerational transmission of substance use, socioeconomic disadvantage, unemployment or excessive work, parental physical and mental health issues, social wellbeing challenges such as social isolation, violent behaviour, and inadequate parenting practices. Participants also described mitigating factors that partly buffered adverse effects. The findings highlight diverse and persistent support needs. PPSU can expose children to a wide range of harmful CM experiences. Effective early identification of both PPSU and related CM requires close collaboration between social and health services, as well as inclusive and active client engagement. A holistic understanding of individual and family circumstances affected by PPSU is essential for preventing CM and its intergenerational transmission.