Subjective Sense Of Well-being Research Articles

Multiple Predictors of Satisfactory Post-Divorce Adjustment of Single Custodial Parents

The study examined multiple factors related to satisfactory post-divorce adjustment of 204 single custodial parents. One hundred eighty-seven women and seventeen men were administered four instruments: Fisher Divorce Adjustment Scale; General Well Being Schedule; Single Parent Questionnaire; and a Single Parent Interview developed for the study. A survey format with delivery and pick up of test packets at participants' homes was used. Multiple regression statistical analysis was conducted. Findings indicate the strongest single predictor of divorce adjustment was the custodial parent's own subjective sense of well-being. Other significant factors included sense of social status and economic position, initiating the divorce, quantity and quality of friends, and employment satisfaction. Two other factors significant in a general equation were single parenting skills and overall relationship with the noncustodial parent.

Church Attendance, Religious Activities, and the Life Satisfaction of Older Adults in Middletown, U.S.A.

ABSTRACT The central focus of this study is to examine the patterns and relationships which may or may not exist between religious attendance and activity, sex, health, income, and age with regard to the sense of subjective well-being as expressed by older Middletowners. Based on a random sample of 400 persons, 60 years of age and older, a multiple regression analysis reveals that three variables account for the vast majority of variance in life satisfaction. Those variables are: SUBJECTIVE HEALTH STATUS, SATISFACTION WITH INCOME, and CHURCH ATTENDANCE. For those three variables R = .4780; R2 = .2284. When all seven independent variables were included R = .4851; R2 = .2351. In addition, further analysis was undertaken to examine the interrelationships between the seven independent variables.

Strength of Religious Affiliation and Life Satisfaction

This study examines the impact of the strength of religious affiliation on attitudes toward life satisfaction. The data are taken from the 1984 NORC survey. All things considered, religious persons should be happier, more satisfied, and more fulfilled than the nonreligious. This general assertion is tested with respect to happiness, family satisfaction, health satisfaction, and life excitement. The predicted association holds generally for happiness, family satisfaction, and life excitement. These three associations are confirmed under several, but not all, of the control conditions. Health satisfaction, by contrast, appears to be independent of the strength of an individual's religious affiliation. This study, based on data from the 1984 National Opinion Research Center (NORC) survey, examines the impact of the stregnth of religious affiliation on attitudes toward life satisfaction. Moberg (1972) found that religious activity is positively related to life satisfaction and morale. Not only does society as a whole develop its own system of beliefs and values to serve as guides for action, but each individual also needs to find a system of values to serve as a guide for personal activity. All need some absolute values to live by (Yinger, 1963), and in turn these values offer answers to problems of both life and death. In a review of the role of religion, Roberts (1990) underscores its importance in providing meaning and understanding for the individual. If religion does offer meaning and understanding, it should enhance the individual's subjective sense of well-being. Given these assumptions, religious affiliation should have a demonstrable impact on perceived satisfaction with life. All things considered, religious persons should be happier, more satisfied, and more fulfilled than the nonreligious. The following relationships can be hypothesized regarding the impact of religious affiliation on human satisfaction in general, as measured by attitudes toward happiness, family satisfaction, health satisfaction, and life excitement.

Erythropoietin-Behandlung der tumorassoziierten Anämie bei Patienten mit multiplem Myelom

Anemia of malignancy is a complication of neoplastic disease which causes impairing symptoms and often requires blood transfusions. In this clinical trial, we have treated 13 patients suffering from chronic anemia of malignancy and multiple myeloma with recombinant human erythropoietin (rHuEPO) three times a week. Eleven patients responded to the treatment by appropriate increases of their hemoglobin levels and the eventual correction of the anemic state, one non-responding patient had to terminate the treatment early because of transfusion requirements. Under rHuEPO therapy, the evaluated parameters of iron metabolism indicated the enhanced synthesis of hemoglobin. The symptoms of anemia subsided in the responding patients and most of them reported a hightened subjective sense of well-being. No adverse side effects, particularly no episodes of hypertension, were observed in any patient.

Environmental deprivation in alcoholic, medical and psychiatric patients.

tion Score than did psychiatric outpatients and medical patients. Environmental and social support should accompany treatment o] their primary symptoms. There is philosophical and empirical substantiation for the hypothesis that adaptive behavior and a subjective sense of well-being are correlated positively with consistent environmental support. Cobb's (1) examination of the relevant literature emphasizes the importance of social support as a protective buffer against the negative consequences of crisis and change. For example, surgical patients given supportive care by an anesthetist needed significantly less medication for pain and were released an average of 2.7 days earlier than a control group without supportive care (2). Chambers and Reiser (3) observed that cardiac failure was associated with emotionally significant events and that emotional support from a physician tended to mollify or negate the stress. Related studies (4, 5) demonstrate the positive relationship of social support with reduced length of hospitalization, decreased reliance on medication and shortened convalescence. Incidence of influenza, syphilis, pneumonia and liver cirrhosis and even mortality are reported to be significantly higher among single than married people (6). Other stressful events which reduce social contacts (e.g., marital separation, loss of a job, moving to a different location, financial limitation) have been associated with the relative frequency of tuberculosis (6). The connection between affective disorder, especially depression, and loss is well established (4, 5, 7, 8). While the deprivation of vaguely defined environmental supports is more difficult to conceptualize than the loss of a limb, loved one or possession, reaction to this condition still involves the customary affective concomitance of loss. As in more tangible losses, the loser may be unaware of the relationship between maladaptive affect and environmental insufficiency. Individuals who are more predisposed to deviant social behavior (e.g., murder, theft, poor working habits, sexual promiscuity) than to affective expression of conflict or pain may further disguise the interface between their environment and their symptoms (9). In some patient populations, suicide is nine times more

Coin Rubbing and Related Folk Medicine

To the Editor.— Regarding the article by LTC Gentry W. Yeatman, MC, USA (1980;244:2748), about cao gio among the Vietnamese immigrants, as a matter of interest, this procedure is also popular in Indonesia as part of traditional medicine. It is known under several names, including kerok and kerik . There is a definite Chinese influence, it being much practiced by the Chinese and those of Chinese ancestry, especially among the older generations. Coconut oil or cajuput oil is usually used as a skin lubricant. Parts of the body frequently used as the site of application are the same, mostly the back and neck, and less frequently, the chest. It seems to give a fast subjective sense of well-being if applied to patients with colds and other flu-like diseases, especially with fever and malaise, and is used in children as well as in adults as a home remedy. The darker the color

Twenty-five years later: A limited study of the sequelae of the concentration camp experience

The central question raised is: To what extent does maladaptation and malfunctioning characterize survivors of the unimaginably extreme, prolonged trauma of the Nazi concentration camps, and to what extent do we find successful adaptation among such persons? The extensive literature on camp survivors is largely incapable of confronting this question. Even when not based only on a small number of patients in psychiatric treatment, most papers deal with select populations. Moreover, it is seldom that survivors are compared to appropriate controls. - A study which included Israeli women aged 45–54 of Central European birth and focused on problems of adaptation to climacterium provided data relevant to the central question. The respondents constituted a representative sample of all women in a middle-sized Israeli city meeting the criteria of age and nativity. Of the 287 women in the sample, 77 had been in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. The remaining 210 women were used as a control group. - Adaptation was measured from several different points of view: menopausal symptomatology, the subjective sense of wellbeing, physical and emotional health status, and role satisfaction. The detailed data show camp survivors to be more poorly-adjusted than the controls. - Of greater import, however, is the fact that a not-inconsiderable number of concentration camp survivors were found to be well-adapted, despite the extreme trauma. It is suggested that this finding requires serious investigation. Three complementary explanations of the fact of successful adaptation are proposed: an initial underlying strength, a subsequent environment which provided opportunities to reestablish a satisfying and meaningful existence, and a “hardening” process which allow the survivor to view current stresses with some equanimity.”