Strong Personal Beliefs Research Articles

Impact of Personal Cultural and Religious Beliefs on Medication Adherence among Patients with Chronic Diseases at University Hospital in Northwest Ethiopia

BackgroundSubjective beliefs about chronic disease conditions and their drug management are among factors determining adherence to medications that are amenable to interventions. Patient-level factors such as personal, cultural, and religious beliefs about diseases, and medication use may have a significant impact on medication adherence. The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of personal, cultural and religious beliefs on medication adherence behavior among patients with chronic follow-up.Patients and MethodsAn institutional-based cross-sectional study design was conducted among chronic ambulatory patients from July to August 2021. The data was collected through an interviewer administered questionnaire. Initially stratified sampling technique was used to include proportional participants from different disease conditions, and systematic random sampling was employed to enroll eligible patients from each subgroup. Descriptive statistics such as frequencies and percentages were computed for categorical variables and mean with (standard deviation ±SD) used for continuous variables. Logistic regression model was employed to determine variable with poor adherence. A 95% confidence interval with P-value ≤0.05 was used to declare statically significance.ResultsAmong the 404 participants, more than half (51%) were males. The mean (±SD) age of the patients was 47.8 ± 14.8 years. Patients with strong belief in the harm of medications were found 4 times more likely to have poor medication adherence than those with weak belief in the harm of medications (AOR = 4.027, 95% CI:1.232–13.161, P = 0.021). In contrast, having strong personal belief regarding the necessity of medications were found to be less likely to have poor medication adherence (AOR = 0.368, 95% CI: 0.220–0.615, P < 0.001).ConclusionThis study generalized that most of the patients were poor adherent to their medications. Personal beliefs were found to influence medication adherence of the patients. Future studies could be needed to explore and identify how these factors affect patients’ medication adherence.

State Versus Adolescent Override for Parental Refusals to Vaccinate Against COVID-19.

State Versus Adolescent Override for Parental Refusals to Vaccinate Against COVID-19.

Role of Religion and Spirituality in Managing Residual Schizophrenia: Article Review

Background: Residual Schizophrenia is a chronic condition of schizophrenia characterized by a history of leastwise one psychotic episode with more prominent negative symptoms. Schizophrenic patients who have persistent psychotic symptoms and patients with residual schizophrenia should receive adequate pharmacotherapy, and may consider additional cognitive therapy, as it has been shown to help reduce relapse rates, reduce psychotic symptoms, and improve or stabilize the patient's mental state. Objective: To determine the role of religion and spirituality in the management of patients with residual schizophrenia.Methods: The design of this research is a literature review or library review, which is a systematic, direct, and reproducible research method by identifying, evaluating, and synthesizing published research.Result: Patients with a higher level of religion or spirituality or their strong personal belief system are more likely to use positive appraisal to deal with their illness or problem which includes giving positive meaning to the situation and being optimistic. Conclusion: The presence of religion and spirituality help the coping mechanisms of residual Schizophrenia patients which also improves patient management, accelerate the healing process, and increases QOL of patients. Keywords: Spirituality, Religion, Residual Schizophrenia.

Heterogeneous norms: Social image and social pressure when people disagree

Social pressure has been successfully used to encourage prosocial behavior in a diverse range of settings. Some backfiring results, however, have prompted a closer look at the necessary conditions for success. I propose that disagreement about what the right thing is to do is one key underexplored factor that can explain these findings. Existing models of social image break down when personal norms are heterogeneous because it’s unclear which choice provides the best image. Some models have addressed this by assuming individuals seek the approval of a relevant reference network, but this approval seeking is qualitatively different from the signaling role of normative behavior that has been shown to be very important in homogeneous norm settings. I distinguish “respect” as the type of social image attained when one’s actions are inferred to be motivated by strong personal beliefs, from “approval”, which is obtained when one’s actions are judged to be normatively correct. Using a psychological game theoretic model, I show how these distinct motives lead to different outcomes in terms of consensus, hypocrisy, compromise, polarization, and destructive posturing. Results demonstrate how using social incentives to change behavior may easily backfire if heterogeneous norms, or approval and respect, are conflated.

New laws that prohibit conversion therapy pose no material risk to evidence-based and clinically appropriate practice.

To examine the extent to which the Sexuality and Gender Identity Conversion Practices Act 2020 (ACT) and Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Act 2021 (Vic) might pose a risk to evidence-based and clinically appropriate practice. Using a recent publication by Parkinson and Morris as a starting point, the provisions of the new legislation are carefully examined. The ACT and Victorian laws do not imperil psychiatrists undertaking evidence-based and clinically appropriate practice. While it may be wise for psychiatrists to abandon this area of practice if they hold strong personal beliefs that the failure to identify with one's natal gender is morally wrong, nothing in the new laws should deter psychiatrists from providing people with gender dysphoria with evidence-based and clinically appropriate care.

A phenomenological study of new doctors\u2019 transition to practice, utilising participant-voiced poetry

Transition to practice can be a turbulent time for new doctors. It has been proposed transition is experienced non-linearly in physical, psychological, cultural and social domains. What is less well known, however, is whether transition within these domains can contribute to the experience of moral injury in new doctors. Further, the lived experience of doctors as they transition to practice is underexplored. Given this, we asked; how do newly qualified doctors experience transition from medical school to practice? One-to-one phenomenological interviews with 7 recently qualified UK doctors were undertaken. Findings were analysed using Ajjawi and Higgs’ framework of hermeneutic analysis. Following identification of secondary concepts, participant-voiced research poems were crafted by the research team, re-displaying participant words chronologically to convey meaning and deepen analysis. 4 themes were identified: (1) The nature of transition to practice; (2) The influence of community; (3) The influence of personal beliefs and values; and (4) The impact of unrealistic undergraduate experience. Transition to practice was viewed mostly negatively, with interpersonal support difficult to access given the 4-month nature of rotations. Participants describe relying on strong personal beliefs and values, often rooted in an ‘ethic of caring’ to cope. Yet, in the fraught landscape of the NHS, an ethic of caring can also prove troublesome and predispose to moral injury as trainees work within a fragmented system misaligned with personal values. The disjointed nature of postgraduate training requires review, with focus on individual resilience redirected to tackle systemic health-service issues.

Investigating the Imagination of Possible and ‘Like-to-Avoid’ Selves among Higher Education Students from Different Socioeconomic Backgrounds at a Selective English University

Access to and participation in higher education (HE) remains unequal, with social background continuing to influence decisions and experiences. In this paper, we undertake a proof-of-concept design to apply the theory of ‘possible selves’, as adapted by Harrison and published in Social Sciences (2018), to university students from different socioeconomic backgrounds. In 2019, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 12 first-year students, from different socioeconomic backgrounds, currently studying at a selective English university. We applied a deductive analysis based on Harrison’s adaptation of the ‘possible selves’ model originally put forward by Markus and Nurius in the 1980s. Students from disadvantaged backgrounds had a clear drive to ‘avoid’ future selves that would emerge without HE. Across all socioeconomic groups, we found a strong sense of agency, and a strong personal belief in success. Overall, our study shows that the model of possible selves is useful for understanding personalised and individualised student experiences, and the interrelation between social structure (socioeconomic condition) and agency. The model also offers a new way for practitioners to plan interventions for enhancing equity in HE access and participation.

The Life and Career of Matthew O. Howard

The Life and Career of Matthew O. Howard

How Should Physicians Make Decisions about Mandatory Reporting When a Patient Might Become Violent?

Mandatory reporting of persons believed to be at imminent risk for committing violence or attempting suicide can pose an ethical dilemma for physicians, who might find themselves struggling to balance various conflicting interests. Legal statutes dictate general scenarios that require mandatory reporting to supersede confidentiality requirements, but physicians must use clinical judgment to determine whether and when a particular case meets the requirement. In situations in which it is not clear whether reporting is legally required, the situation should be analyzed for its benefit to the patient and to public safety. Access to firearms can complicate these situations, as firearms are a well-established risk factor for violence and suicide yet also a sensitive topic about which physicians and patients might have strong personal beliefs.

Intention to Purchase Alcohol by Adults in the Country in Transition: the Effects of Health Consciousness, Self-efficacy and Religion Importance

The major trend in modern societies is towards encouragement of the reduction of alcohol use; however, this is not always in line with the various contexts and occasions. Individual factors may present rather non-homogeneous groups that often exert totally opposite influence on the intention to purchase alcohol. This research aims to examine the phenomenon of adult intention to purchase alcohol in Lithuania as a country in transition influenced by an individual’s health-consciousness, self-efficacy and religion importance. The nature of these factors is very different; their essence may lie in a rather individualistic concern about personal health, or can be linked with rather distant, but strong personal beliefs, priorities or lifestyles. Therefore, this research aimed to explore these effects. A total of 487 completed questionnaires were collected to perform the research. The findings reveal that health consciousness and religion importance have a significant influence on alcohol purchase intention among adults. However, self-efficacy proved to be of low influence.

The Challenge of Research into Religion and Spirituality (Keynote 1)

There are many claims that religious and spiritual belief and practice lead to better physical and mental health. What is the evidence underlying these claims and how good is the research? This paper argues that although published research shows that there is a positive statistical relationship between religion and health, the size of that health gain is extremely small. Furthermore, it would seem that spirituality divorced from religious practice may be associated with worse mental health. Much of the research is poorly conducted and some researchers hold strong personal beliefs that may influence its interpretation. Differences between research findings in the USA and Europe may help us to understand why some findings conflict.This article was first delivered as a keynote speech at the Third International Conference of the British Association for the Study of Spirituality, Spirituality in a Challenging World.

“Imma march’ toward Ka’ba”: Islam in Swedish hip-hop

The common history of Islam and the hip-hop culture can be traced back to the early expression of the culture. Since the early days of hip-hop, Muslims have used hip-hop to convey Islamic messages. Artists driven, in equal parts, by a strong personal belief in Islam and a love for hip-hop music have taken Islamic-themed hip-hop outside its country of birth, the U.S., and have made it into a matter of global concern. In an attempt to contribute to and, hopefully, complicate the picture of what has been called the transglobal hip-hop umma, this article explores how Swedish Muslims articulate their beliefs through hip-hop in Sweden. With examples from both the Swedish mainstream and the underground, it highlights hip-hop music with an Islamic engagement whose aim is to promote and perform what is understood as “Islamic values,” such as ethics, peace, social responsibility, and a strong personal belief.

The Belief in a Just World as a Personal Resource in the Context of Inflation and Financial Crises

This paper examines the role of the belief in a just world as a personal resource when people are faced with the adverse consequences of inflation and financial crises by presenting results from two longitudinal studies. The first study, based on responses from 262 German residents, found that participants with a strong personal belief in a just world perceived a lower economic impact in light of price increases following a tax increase. This effect remained stable after controlling for the socioeconomic variables of gender, age, household income, and education. The second study, based on a sample of 177 German residents, found that residents with a strong personal belief in a just world perceived a lower economic impact in light of the global subprime mortgage crisis. Again, this effect remained stable after controlling for the socioeconomic variables of gender, age, household income, and education. Furthermore, the personal belief in a just world influenced perceived economic impact over time and the relationship between personal belief in a just world and perceived economic impact was partially mediated by differences between life satisfaction in the future as measured in a first wave and current life satisfaction as measured in a second wave.

Juvenile Travellers: Priscilla Wakefield's Excursions in Empire

While most discussions of juvenile imperial literature relate to the mid-nineteenth century onwards, this article draws attention to an earlier period by examining the children's books of Priscilla Wakefield. Between 1794 and 1817 Priscilla Wakefield wrote sixteen children's books that included moral tales, natural history books and a popular travel series. Her experience of the British Empire's territories was, in the main, derived from the work of others but her use of interesting characters, exciting travel scenarios, the epistolary form to enhance the narrative and fold-out maps added interest to the information she presented. Her strong personal beliefs are evident throughout her writing and an abhorrence of slavery is a recurring theme. She was also the grandmother and main caregiver of the young Edward Gibbon Wakefield and his immediate siblings. In contrast to his grandmother, Edward Gibbon Wakefield's experience of the empire was both theoretical and practical. He drew on, and departed from, the work of political economists to develop his theory of systematic colonisation and was active in both Canadian and New Zealand affairs. He began writing about colonisation in the late 1820s and his grandmother's influence can be seen in his wide use of existing sources and attractive writing style to communicate with his audience.

Socio-Cultural Influences of Self-Care among African Americans with Heart Failure

Heart failure (HF) places a disproportionate burden on African Americans including poorer outcomes than other populations. Self-care, which encompasses adherence to diet, medication and symptom management behaviors, is the cornerstone of HF management and linked to improved health. However, self-care is significantly poorer among African Americans, who report low adherence rates to medication, diet and symptom monitoring even after interventions to improve self-care. Purpose: Since culture is central to the development of self-care (e.g., food preferences, medication adherence, symptom meaning), we sought to explore the socio-cultural influences of self-care among African Americans with HF. Methods: In this mixed methods study, 20 African Americans (mean age 66.71 ± 15 years; 57% male, 77% NYHA III) participated in in-depth interviews about HF self-care, culture (values and beliefs about HF and self-care) and social norms; and completed standardized instruments measuring self-care (Self-Care of Heart Failure Index) and illness-related factors in order to describe the sample.Thematic content analysis was used to elicit themes about the influences of socio-cultural factors on self-care in this population. Results: Overall, self-care was poor in this sample (mean SC maintenance 67.67 ± 12.03; SC management 62.55 ± 15.97). Narrative accounts of self-care revealed strong personal beliefs about adherence to low-salt diet and exercise. Cultural food preferences (“Island food…I will not give that up…”) and social factors including limited access to exercise programs due to financial or safety concerns served as potent barriers to daily self-care activities. A theme that emerged from the qualitative data was spirituality as an influence on individuals' beliefs about self-care (“my heart is in God's care”). One women described her delay in initiating a newly prescribed medication, “the doctor may order it, but I will pray on it…” Although support from church-based friends and family members was integral to daily activities for many (“they bring me what I need”…), many reported selectivity in whom they confided their health issues (“I don't tell them <children/friends> everything”) that led to delay in symptom management or confounded self-care practices. Conclusions: Research to develop and test culturally sensitive interventions is critically needed. Community-based interventions (e.g., faith-based) that may promote inclusion of trusted family and friends who can provide ongoing self-care support to individuals with HF should be explored. Heart failure (HF) places a disproportionate burden on African Americans including poorer outcomes than other populations. Self-care, which encompasses adherence to diet, medication and symptom management behaviors, is the cornerstone of HF management and linked to improved health. However, self-care is significantly poorer among African Americans, who report low adherence rates to medication, diet and symptom monitoring even after interventions to improve self-care. Purpose: Since culture is central to the development of self-care (e.g., food preferences, medication adherence, symptom meaning), we sought to explore the socio-cultural influences of self-care among African Americans with HF. Methods: In this mixed methods study, 20 African Americans (mean age 66.71 ± 15 years; 57% male, 77% NYHA III) participated in in-depth interviews about HF self-care, culture (values and beliefs about HF and self-care) and social norms; and completed standardized instruments measuring self-care (Self-Care of Heart Failure Index) and illness-related factors in order to describe the sample.Thematic content analysis was used to elicit themes about the influences of socio-cultural factors on self-care in this population. Results: Overall, self-care was poor in this sample (mean SC maintenance 67.67 ± 12.03; SC management 62.55 ± 15.97). Narrative accounts of self-care revealed strong personal beliefs about adherence to low-salt diet and exercise. Cultural food preferences (“Island food…I will not give that up…”) and social factors including limited access to exercise programs due to financial or safety concerns served as potent barriers to daily self-care activities. A theme that emerged from the qualitative data was spirituality as an influence on individuals' beliefs about self-care (“my heart is in God's care”). One women described her delay in initiating a newly prescribed medication, “the doctor may order it, but I will pray on it…” Although support from church-based friends and family members was integral to daily activities for many (“they bring me what I need”…), many reported selectivity in whom they confided their health issues (“I don't tell them <children/friends> everything”) that led to delay in symptom management or confounded self-care practices. Conclusions: Research to develop and test culturally sensitive interventions is critically needed. Community-based interventions (e.g., faith-based) that may promote inclusion of trusted family and friends who can provide ongoing self-care support to individuals with HF should be explored.

MATTHEW ARNOLD AND RELIGION'S COSMOPOLITAN HISTORIES

Matthew Arnold cuts a familiarfigure in narratives of Victorian secularization, although commentators often cast him in contradictory roles. In some accounts we meet him as an elegiac liberal who laments the loss of a no-longer-tenable faith but feels powerless to produce an alternative – “Wandering,” in a famous couplet, “between two worlds, one dead, / The other powerless to be born” (Arnold, “Stanzas from the Grand Chartreuse” 85–86; see Miller 212–69). Meanwhile other studies portray Arnold as a cautionary example of aggressive counter-secularization, a humanist whose vaunted ideal of “Culture” becomes as absolutist as the religion it is designed to replace (Williams,Culture and Society125–26). What both accounts share, however, is an understanding of secularization as the process whereby a definite thing called religion lost its hold upon European public life, leaving worried intellectuals to search for substitutes. Since the Second World War this view of secularization has come under increased scrutiny from sociologists, historians, anthropologists, and lately some literary critics; yet it remains difficult to imagine nineteenth-century literary history without it, largely because it is a narrative that was first developed by major Victorian writers like Arnold himself. Perhaps the best way, then, to engage Victorian crisis-of-faith writers is to follow the lead of recent commentators like Talal Asad and Michael Kaufmann and reframe the problem in discursive terms. Rather than retrace the rise and fall of two definite things called religion and secularity, Kaufmann argues, we should instead assume from the outset that “[t]here is no idea, person, experience, text, institution, or historical project that could be categorized as essentially . . . secular or religious” and mark how the significance of this opposition gets reordered in “varying discursive contexts” (Kaufmann 608; see Asad 25–26). We can see such thinking at work in recent scholarship that effectively replaces “secularization” with the conceptual emergence of religion as such – that is, the modern redescription of religion as a specific and limited sphere of human life, marked by certain energies (the irrational, the affective), whose role within the public is considered problematic. Anthropologist Timothy Fitzgerald, for instance, suggests that the Enlightenment turn toward regarding religion as the arena of strong personal belief was instrumental in establishing the space of the secular in the first place, insofar as it helped to define by contrast the new public sphere of “this-worldly . . . freedoms, laws, and markets” (Fitzgerald 5). Similarly, historian Callum Brown argues that late eighteenth-century Evangelicalism produced, as a sort of necessary pair, both the sociological idea of religion as an empirically discrete thing and our popular notion of religion as under threat or in decline (C. Brown 1–34).

Personal Initiative Sparks Innovation

OVERVIEW:Although innovation is often seen as a technological breakthrough and/or a startling new idea, it is also very much the act of an individual who has triumphed over the status quo. This triumph requires personal initiative. There are four common behaviors associated with successfully taking initiative: Asking questions in order to identify problems and opportunities; teaching oneself new skills; taking action; and aligning strong personal beliefs with the organization's values and goals. At the same time, there are actions that leaders can take to encourage such personal initiative, including focusing more on the act of taking initiative than on the possible outcome.

Null Hypothesis Models in Legislative Studies

P olitical scientists often refer to the existence of coalitions in Congress, but remarkably little effort has been made to discover the reasons why the votes of various congressmen might be similar. It may be that formation-the explicit coordination of voting decisions-has indeed occurred. But the congressmen may have voted alike simply because they had similar beliefs or similar constituencies. In fact, the reasons for any congressman's vote may be unique to the individual and unrelated to the reasons for any other individual's vote: one congressman may be heeding the president's call out of party loyalty, a second may be fulfilling a campaign promise, a third may have strong personal beliefs about the wisdom of the bill under consideration, and so forth. Several congressmen may thus vote alike without any explicit coordination among them at all. Determining the relative explanatory power of these hypotheses for why some congressmen vote alike would be a major undertaking. It is possible, though, to develop a standard for evaluating how good any one explanation is. One can determine whether the coalitions observed in the roll call data occur at rates different from what would be expected and then whether the substantive hypothesis explains the deviations of actual rates from the rates expected chance. The problem is to decide what the phrase by chance means. We interpret it (Hammond and Fraser, 1983) as what would happen if congressmen vote flipping unbiased (p = 0.5) coins. We chose this value of p because any theory of coalition formation should be required, at the very least, to outperform a model with no substantive content whatever.

LEGISLATIVE STUDIES

P olitical scientists often refer to the existence of coalitions in Congress, but remarkably little effort has been made to discover the reasons why the votes of various congressmen might be similar. It may be that formation-the explicit coordination of voting decisions-has indeed occurred. But the congressmen may have voted alike simply because they had similar beliefs or similar constituencies. In fact, the reasons for any congressman's vote may be unique to the individual and unrelated to the reasons for any other individual's vote: one congressman may be heeding the president's call out of party loyalty, a second may be fulfilling a campaign promise, a third may have strong personal beliefs about the wisdom of the bill under consideration, and so forth. Several congressmen may thus vote alike without any explicit coordination among them at all. Determining the relative explanatory power of these hypotheses for why some congressmen vote alike would be a major undertaking. It is possible, though, to develop a standard for evaluating how good any one explanation is. One can determine whether the coalitions observed in the roll call data occur at rates different from what would be expected and then whether the substantive hypothesis explains the deviations of actual rates from the rates expected chance. The problem is to decide what the phrase by chance means. We interpret it (Hammond and Fraser, 1983) as what would happen if congressmen vote flipping unbiased (p = 0.5) coins. We chose this value of p because any theory of coalition formation should be required, at the very least, to outperform a model with no substantive content whatever.

Nonoperative Aspects of Pediatric Surgery.

This monograph is a collection of personal views of selected areas in pediatric surgery by a man who is both pediatrician and pediatric surgeon. The author states the intention of providing a source of information of preoperative and postoperative care for the physician unfamiliar with the care of the pediatric surgical patient. As in any text of single authorship, there is uniformity of style. However, the author does take license to preach strong personal beliefs regarding the deficiencies of pediatric care in the southeast and surgical fees which are not of universal interest or value. In addition, there is no mention of the controversies which exist in the management of the lesions being discussed. In a brief text of instructions, that approach may be useful. However, the author states that his recommendations reflect the attitudes of surgeons in several other recognized pediatric surgical centers. I question whether they would concur.