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Although the application of neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) has been reported worldwide, its scientific investigation is limited. Career consulting is one of the fields where NLP has been increasingly applied in Japan. This study explored why career consultants undertake NLP training, and what they find most useful to their practice. Thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with six career consultants, who had attended NLP certification training, revealed that they wanted to learn action-oriented NLP-based coaching skills in addition to their active-listening-based counselling skills. NLP provided frameworks to lead their clients' thoughts efficiently, deepened their understanding of the human mind, and developed their attitude to understand others and themselves. The NLP skills found most useful were reframing and the Disney strategy.

Social isolation can have a negative impact on well-being, yet important strengths can emerge in adversity. Our aim was to explore how pre-university students in Singapore responded to the social isolation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. We conducted a thematic analysis of in-depth semi-structured interviews with six pre-university students (three males and three females). Singaporean pre-university students found a "lack of face-to-face contact" (Theme 1) with friends challenging. However, they utilised "acceptance" (Theme 2), and "adaptability and resilience" (Theme 3) to cope with the changes associated with the COVID-19 restrictions. Educators, counsellors, parents and researchers may better support pre-university students' well-being by discussing how to enhance the students' strengths, rather than solely attempting to alleviate negative mental health outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parenting a child with autism spectrum disorder is believed to present challenges that lead to increased levels of stress, as well as a reduction in the quality of the relationship between parent and child. This study aims to investigate parental perceptions toward a compassionate parenting style of parenting to better understand how this style may influence relationships and quality of life in parents. Parents from the United Kingdom (six parents) and the Netherlands (five parents) were invited take part in semi-structured interviews, whereby the data collected were subsequently analysed using thematic analysis. Data from both British and Dutch groups were overall similar to each other. Four themes were identified from the aggregated data: (a) "Parents believe compassionate parenting is important" (parents believed that compassion is an essential element of their parenting style and improves situational outcomes); (b) "Compassionate parenting de-escalates stressful situations" (compassionate parenting reduces stress and improves the quality of life); (c) "High pressure situations as a threat to practice compassion" (challenges and limitations to compassionate parenting style); and (d) "Greater public and professional awareness of autistic behaviours" (the general public and professional services often lack awareness to recognise autistic behaviour traits). Results are consistent with research examining the perceptions of parents of neurotypical children, in that a more compassionate approach to parenting is valued, as it is believed to create a greater connection with the child. Our findings inform researchers and educators as to what parents of children with ASD find useful, important, and worthwhile. Future research needs to investigate how compassionate parenting impacts autistic children's quality of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose Though several work-related mental health training initiatives have been implemented in Japan, the effectiveness of such approaches remains unclear. Consequently, some Japanese corporations prefer using interventions such as neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) to improve employee mental health and wellbeing. This language-based development methodology has been the subject of debate in terms of the quality of the underlying empirical evidence. However, a perspective missing from this debate is an evidence-based understanding of the first-hand experiences of employees that have undertaken NLP training. The purpose of this paper is to inform this debate by conducting a rigorous qualitative examination of the experiences of Japanese senior managers who had recently received training in NLP.Design/methodology/approach Semi-structured interviews attended by 11 Japanese NLP master practitioners were analysed using thematic analysis.Findings Four themes emerged from the data set: improving work-related mental health, NLP fosters a better understanding of the mind, NLP helps to reframe perspectives relating to work and mental health, and challenges of NLP training.Originality/value While managers found NLP training skills such as reframing and neuro-logical levels useful to their managerial practice and mental health more generally, they raised concerns about NLP's reputation as well as the utility of some of the techniques employed in NLP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the application of neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) has been reported worldwide, its scientific investigation is limited. Career consulting is one of the fields where NLP has been increasingly applied in Japan. This study explored why career consultants undertake NLP training, and what they find most useful to their practice. Thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with six career consultants, who had attended NLP certification training, revealed that they wanted to learn action-oriented NLP-based coaching skills in addition to their active-listening-based counselling skills. NLP provided frameworks to lead their clients’ thoughts efficiently, deepened their understanding of the human mind, and developed their attitude to understand others and themselves. The NLP skills found most useful were reframing and the Disney strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]