Journal of community psychology最新文献

Closed religious communities cultivate a robust communal identity, shared faith, values, and norms among their members, providing them with social and emotional support. Deviance carries significant consequences, specifically disintegrating members’ sense of belonging. Gambling disorder (GD) is characterized by harmful gambling behaviors that negatively affect individuals’ lives. While gambling is a prevalent recreational activity, within closed religious communities, addiction, including GD, is viewed as a violation of religious teachings, values, and communal norms. This study explores GD's impact on the sense of belonging of Jewish Ultra-Orthodox men and their spouses in Israel. This research employed constructivist grounded theory, interviewing twenty-two men with GD and eleven spouses and uncovered two complementary themes. The first, “Depleting versus replenishing of the personal aspects of sense of belonging,” elucidates GD's different effects on the men and spouses’ sense of belonging. The second, “Paying the toll,” illuminates the emotional experiences and actions of the men and the spouses in reaction to societal conditional negative regard directed at them, disintegrating the sense of belonging of the men, but also that of the spouses who did not deviate from communal norms. The paper introduces the novel concept of “an empty pool/pull,” portraying these individuals’ limbo state. The “empty pool” represents the depletion of faith, adherence to religious commandments, and communal values for the men, while the “empty pull” signifies the inclination of the men and the spouses to conform amid the community's unfulfilled promise of protection. The study advocates for further research and offers clinical insights for therapists.

This study explores the development of adult mentors participating in a summer youth program, focusing on how mentoring relationships and shared activities with youth impact mentors' personal and professional growth. The analysis integrates focus group data and participant observations collected over the course of the weeklong program to identify key themes. Findings reveal that affirming mentor-youth connections within the program's youth-initiated, collaborative mentoring model enhanced mentors' sense of hope, purpose, and well-being. However, role ambiguity, particularly around how to collaborate with other adults to support youth, generated challenges for mentors. These insights contribute to the understanding of adult mentor development and adjustment and provide practical recommendations for designing youth programs that foster growth for both mentors and mentees.

Via observational data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods collected between 1994 and 2001, this study examined the degree to which neighborhood disorder, collective efficacy, and youth-centered institutional resources are directly associated with adolescents' depressive symptoms across time, and the mediating role of adolescents'neighborhood self-efficacy. Latent variable structural equation models were estimated among an unweighted representative sample of 1448 adolescents (59% male, mean age 15.19), across 79 neighborhoods in Chicago, to examine the direct effects of neighborhood disorder, collective efficacy, and availability of youth-centered resources at baseline (measured at timepoint 1; reported by an independent sample of Chicago adults) on adolescents' depressive symptoms (measured a timepoint 3), and the mediating effect of adolescents' neighborhood-anchored self-efficacy (measured at timepoint 2). Indirect effects were assessed using bootstrap testing. Adolescents' neighborhood self-efficacy partially mediated the effects of greater social and physical neighborhood disorder (indirect β = 0.03, 95% CI [0.008, 0.075]) and less availability of neighborhood youth-centered resources (indirect β = −0.01, 95% CI [−0.030, −0.001]) on depressive symptoms over time. Adolescents who perceived themselves to have greater neighborhood self-efficacy reported lower levels of depressive symptoms across time (β = −0.13, 95% CI [−0.24, −0.03]), as did those in neighborhoods with greater availability of youth-centered resources (β = −0.11, 95% CI [−0.19, −0.03]). Those living in neighborhoods with more disorder reported lower neighborhood self-efficacy (β = −0.24, 95% CI [−0.36, −0.11]). Neighborhood-anchored self-efficacy may be one mechanism by which adolescents internalize their neighborhood environments in ways that, over time, affect depressive symptoms. Interventions aimed at fostering community environments that nurture opportunities for youth to build efficaciousness may be promising for mitigating adolescent depression.

The purpose of the present interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) study was to understand how military service members and veterans (MSMVs) make sense of their reintegration experiences following deployment. IPA provides the ability to gain a deeper understanding of a shared experience, or phenomenon, such as reintegration following deployment. Data collection involved semi-structured interviews via Zoom. Participants included seven men and three women who met eligibility criteria. The present study provides important insights into how MSMVs make sense of their reintegration experiences following deployment through exploration of transitional challenges, transitional support aspects, and growth through deployment experiences, as well as the urgent need for comprehensive community-based, growth-focused initiatives to support their reintegration following deployment.