Global Counseling & Mental Health News

NEWSLETTER · 10月14日

Daily picks · 10月14日

10 picks

本期日刊聚焦心理健康领域的多元文化视角与结构性议题。学术前沿板块关注生态焦虑、艺术研究方法及性少数治疗师身份等交叉性研究;临床与实践、技术与数字化板块则涉及文化适配干预、成瘾康复及评估技术。

Research

  • The Weight of Warming Seas: A Feminist Analysis of Eco-Anxiety Among Indonesian Women

    填补气候焦虑研究中对南半球女性群体的忽视,揭示生态焦虑的性别与地域交叉性。

    Climate anxiety has attracted scholarly attention, yet research remains situated within Western, Global North populations, sidelining women in the Global South. This study examines eco-anxiety as a gendered phenomenon among Indonesian women ( N = 300) across urban, rural, coastal, and inland communities. Drawing on ecofeminist theory, intersectionality, and standpoint epistemology, we investigate how gender, class, geography, and religious meaning-making shape climate distress through a mixed-methods design combining a cross-sectional survey with semi-structured interviews ( n = 30). Findings show that rural, coastal women report the highest levels of eco-anxiety and that climate exposure is linked to distress through care labour and livelihood dependence on natural resources. Religious meaning-making functions as a complex moderator, buffering cognitive anxiety whilst leaving affective and somatic dimensions unmitigated. Interviews illuminate culturally situated idioms of ecological grief, including pasrah (resigned acceptance) and ikhlas (spiritual surrender), challenging Western-developed instruments. Findings demonstrate that Indonesian women's climate distress is structurally produced, intersectionally differentiated, and culturally articulated, contesting eco-anxiety's framing as a predominantly White, middle-class concern. This study contributes to feminist psychology by foregrounding Global South women's knowledge and reclaiming eco-anxiety as a site of gendered epistemic injustice.

    Feminism & Psychology | 妇女, 生态焦虑, 气候, 沿海农村, 宗教意义的创造

  • Beyond Words: Arts-Based Research Methods as an Intercultural Bridge for Work With Indigenous Women in Peru

    展示艺术方法如何跨越语言与权力差异,为跨文化参与式研究提供可操作范例。

    This commentary examines two arts-based techniques, Image Theatre and drawing, used in a participatory project carried out in 2025 in Condorcanqui, an Amazonian province of Peru, with 12 Awajún and Wampís leaders and 12 state workers. Spanish fluency, literacy and institutional position were unevenly distributed among participants, so purely verbal formats would have given fluent and institutionally positioned participants a structural advantage in defining what counted as a problem and as valid knowledge. We examine how embodied and visual work redistributed that advantage and what became visible through it: divergent constructions of Indigenous women's leadership and epistemic tensions between biomedical and ancestral understandings of health. We argue that arts-based methods produced the material the analysis rests on and in that sense operated as decolonial research practices.

    Feminism & Psychology | 土著妇女, 以艺术为基础, 方法, 工作, 秘鲁

  • Playing by the Rules: On Being a Gay Male South African Psychotherapist

    深入分析性取向与职业身份的交互,揭示男同性恋治疗师在异性恋规范职业中的主观张力。

    Being a gay male psychotherapist positions one at the juncture of gender and sexuality while inhabiting a professional identity that has its own complex relationship to heteronormativity. This paper explores how gay male psychotherapists subjectively experience themselves as both gay and a therapist, foregrounding the messy intermingling of how both the internal world and the social world frame gay psychotherapists’ experiences. Based on interviews with ten South African gay male psychotherapists and employing reflexive thematic analysis, and drawing on psychoanalytic theory, this paper explores the complexity, ambivalences and opposites inhabited by these men, where being gay and a therapist was imagined as contravening the “accepted” rules of normativity and psychotherapeutic practice. The analysis foregrounds four processes that were identified: the process of compartmentalising gay male identity, the experienced “rules” of being a psychotherapist, the ambivalence and “turbulence” of being a gay therapist, and experienced prejudice and pain as a source of empathy. The implications of experienced ambivalence for gay therapist identity are explored.

    Feminism & Psychology | Psychodynamic & Psychoanalytic | 同性恋, 男性, 南非人, 治疗师, 纸探索者

  • Tricky Subjects: A Feminist Relational Discourse Analysis of UK Mothers’ Sharing of Difficulties on Social Media

    分析英国母亲在社交媒体上分担育儿困难的话语,揭示性别义务与支持之间的张力。

    Research has established the role of social support in mitigating negative outcomes for women encountering mothering-related difficulties. As a gendered practice, supporting others is closely tied to social obligations for women. These obligations are complicated by one's own needs, particularly in challenging times. Using Feminist Relational Discourse Analysis, we explore mother's voiced accounts of writing or seeing posts about mothering difficulties on social media during the Covid-19 pandemic in England. A total of 35 interviews were conducted across the first and third lockdown. Participants were White British, heterosexual mothers of young children (aged 4–11 years). All but two were in relationships and all self-identified as middle-class. We explored contributing/viewing posts of difficulty through the construction of I-poems. We identified two overarching discourses: (1) Empathetic Solidarity and (2) Distressed Distancing. Findings showed that posting about mothering difficulties is complex where the needs of self and others sit in considerable tension. The prioritization of mothers’ voices in this study makes visible how asking/being asked for support on social media is nested within competing social obligations around feminine caring, mothering and normative expectations for online sharing. This is particularly relevant in current climates of austerity and crisis in which institutional social support for mothers is compromised.

    Feminism & Psychology | 社会, 困难, 女权主义关系, 关系话语, 母亲

Clinical Practice

  • Psychological Transformation and Integration: The Convergence of the I Ching and Jungian Psychology in Supporting Cancer Patients

    融合《易经》与荣格心理学,为东方文化背景的癌症患者提供更具文化一致性的心理支持框架。

    A cancer diagnosis brings not only physiological suffering but also plunges the individual into a profound existential crisis, often leading to the erosion of social connections and a loss of life’s meaning. While existing psychological models may lack cultural congruence for individuals from Eastern backgrounds, they also frequently prove insufficient for addressing the profound existential and spiritual threats faced by any patient globally when confronting a fatal illness. This theoretical analysis places the cosmological life-view of “producing and reproducing” from the Chinese classic, the I Ching , and Carl Jung’s theory of psychic integration, “Individuation,” within a single framework. The philosophical wisdom of the I Ching can be regarded as a unique manifestation of the individuation archetype in Eastern culture, providing indigenous cultural and spiritual guidance for cancer patients worldwide on their path toward psychological transformation and integration. This integrated framework offers robust theoretical support for understanding how cancer patients can convert a life crisis into post-traumatic growth and provides crucial insights for developing culturally adaptive psychological intervention models addressing patients’ deeper needs for meaning and spiritual transcendence. The ultimate goal is to advance psychological assistance from mere symptom alleviation to a profound reconstruction of life’s meaning and personality integration.

    The Journal of Humanistic Psychology | Humanistic (Person-Centered) | 癌症患者, 心理, 转化整合, 深刻的存在, 程

Education & Careers

  • Identifying Item Preknowledge Through Convergence Iteration Count Analysis in Ability Estimation

    提出基于迭代收敛过程的项目先验知识检测新方法,弥补传统静态指标的不足。

    Item preknowledge (IP) is a severe form of cheating that fundamentally undermines the fairness and score interpretability of educational assessments. Existing detection methods for IP are predominantly constructed under the item response theory (IRT) framework, but these conventional indicators are inherently static: they rely solely on the final converged estimates of item parameters and examinee ability, while completely overlooking the rich dynamic information embedded in the iterative convergence process of ability estimation. To address this core limitation, this paper proposes a novel dynamic detection indicator—the convergence iteration count (CIC)—defined as the number of iterations required for the IRT model to converge to a stable ability estimate for each examinee. We validate the effectiveness of the CIC indicator through Monte Carlo simulated experiments across diverse scenarios, with varying proportions of compromised items and levels of misclassification uncertainty of compromised items, covering both known and unknown compromised item range conditions. Results show that the CIC indicator significantly outperforms traditional static indicators (including the TW, KL, and SR indicators) in identifying IP examinees. Notably, even in the extreme complex scenario with a 60% high proportion of compromised items and 50% high misclassification uncertainty, the area under the curve of the CIC indicator remains approaching or exceeding 0.8. The CIC indicator also exhibits strong robustness in scenarios where the range of compromised items is unknown, with detection performance surpassing most conventional non-prior-information based indicators.

    Applied Psychological Measurement | 项目, 能力, 收敛迭代, 迭代计数, 指标

Technology & Digital

  • Reconfiguring Anxious Affects as Temporal Modes of Becoming: Thinking–Making–Doing With Zines in Feminist Materialist Inquiry

    将焦虑重新概念化为时间体验,为女权主义唯物主义方法在心理健康研究中的应用提供新路径。

    In this paper we engage with feminist materialist zines as embodied, creative, sociomaterial methods to ask what else – and what more – anxiety can be/come for young women (inclusive of gender diverse subjectivities). Zines, as self-published and handmade magazines, offer a site for feminist inquiry where time, subjectivity, and affect can be rethought through collective creative processes. In our inquiry, zine-making workshops were conducted with young women who self-identified as experiencing anxiety, fear, or worry. We return to the zines to think further with feminist materialist temporal concepts, offering three zine scenes that suggest critical reimaginings of anxiety. Our thinking–making–doing of these zine scenes provides situated accounts of women's embodied subjectivities, mapping intra-actions across pasts, presents, and feminist futures. We propose that zine-making in conjunction with feminist materialist thought can disrupt normative and pathologizing constructions of women's distress. Eschewing universal, representational accounts, we engage with the shifting and entangled sociomaterial histories and futures of young women's embodied encounters with anxiety to reimagine other ways of becoming with/in worrying times.

    Feminism & Psychology | 女权主义唯物主义者, Zines, 年轻女性, 思考, 做事

  • From Self-Centered to Selfless Happiness: The Mandala Model of Self Beyond WEIRD Contexts

    系统回顾曼达拉自我模型,为超越自我中心、促进无私幸福提供实证基础。

    This systematic review examines how the transformation of self-centered desires into selfless motivations contributes to human happiness through the Mandala Model of Self (MMS). Following PRISMA guidelines, 19 empirical studies published between 2020 and 2025 were analyzed to explore the roles of selflessness, prosocial engagement, and mindfulness in fostering happiness, conceptualized as a multidimensional construct encompassing hedonic pleasure, eudaimonic well-being, inner harmony, and life satisfaction. The MMS, rooted in Eastern philosophical traditions, offers a holistic framework in which the self is understood through four interconnected dimensions: person, individual, knowledge/wisdom, and action/praxis. Although the MMS originates from non-WEIRD traditions, most studies were conducted in WEIRD or East Asian contexts; therefore, findings are interpreted as theoretically informed rather than universally generalizable. Results indicate that selfless orientations and prosocial behaviors are associated with higher and more sustainable well-being, with mindfulness and inner harmony functioning as key mediating mechanisms. Mindfulness-based and adolescent-focused interventions were linked to improvements in emotional regulation, compassion, life satisfaction, and prosocial motivation, even under conditions of social uncertainty. Overall, the review highlights the value of integrating culturally grounded frameworks in understanding human happiness and psychological well-being.

    The Journal of Humanistic Psychology | Mindfulness-Based Therapies | 曼达拉模型, 模型自我, 无私, 幸福, 妈妈

  • Reclaiming Power and Meaning: A Participatory Intervention Based on the Power Threat Meaning Framework in Addiction Recovery in Greece

    将PTMF应用于希腊成瘾康复,展示批判心理学在去病态化实践中的具体操作。

    This study explores a pilot application of the Power Threat Meaning Framework (PTMF) through a participatory psychoeducational group with individuals in the social reintegration phase of the public addiction recovery program 18ANO in Greece. Grounded in Critical and Liberation Psychology, the intervention aimed to de-pathologize psychological distress and addiction by reframing them as meaningful survival strategies in response to power imbalances, trauma, and systemic exclusion. Over five sessions, participants engaged in reflective dialogue and narrative reconstruction using PTMF’s core dimensions: Power, Threat, Meaning, Threat Responses, and Strengths. The findings highlighted the complex social roots of addiction, including poverty, gendered violence, symbolic invalidation, and familial disconnection, while opening space for counter-narratives of resistance, agency, and care. Although a digital storytelling component was originally envisioned, it was not implemented due to the group’s transitional status. Nevertheless, the process fostered psychosocial empowerment and critical conscientization. The study captures the PTMF’s potential as a liberatory interpretive tool that challenges biomedical reductionism and supports the rehumanization of psychological suffering through community-based, narrative and praxis-oriented approaches.

    The Journal of Humanistic Psychology | Humanistic (Person-Centered) | 权力, 威胁意义, 成瘾, 意义框架, Ptmf

Explainer

  • Speaking Black Queer Grief(s): Toward Transformative Care for Black TLGBQIA2S+ Communities

    拓展悲伤研究的边界,关注黑人酷儿群体非死亡损失及结构性暴力对哀伤的影响。

    While literature has spoken to the wealth of loss experienced by Black and queer communities separately, limited empirical literature has focused on how people living at the intersection of these identities grieve and make meaning of these losses. Moreover, when examined, these experiences overwhelmingly highlight physical death and exclude the pervasive impact of nondeath losses facilitated by confluent anti-Black and heterosexist systems. As such, the present work is guided by critical and Liberation frameworks to understand how structural violence shapes the way that Black queer communities diversely experience grief. Using semi-structured interviews, the present qualitative study explored how 10 Black queer adults (range 18–41) made meaning of their grief experiences through a critically conscious lens. An inductive thematic analysis revealed three main themes: Body, Mind, and Spirit—Naming and Claiming Grief as Disempowerment Across Dimension and Beyond Binaries , Severance—Grieving Separation as “the Other” within the Collective , and Defiant Reconstruction—World Building in the Aftermath of Loss through New Imaginings . Authors provide grief-informed considerations for transformative liberational practice with Black queer communities.

    The Journal of Humanistic Psychology | Existential Therapy | 黑人酷儿, 悲伤, 酷儿社区, 文学, 意义

Newsletter 2026-10-14 – 2026-10-14