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Objective: The authors sought to assess military veterans' functioning in college by comparing their experience with that of civilian students. Participants: The study, conducted from April 2012 to February 2013, included 445 civilian and 61 student service member/veteran (SSM/V) undergraduates, drawn from a community college and two 4-year Catholic colleges, in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York. Methods: Participants completed anonymous online surveys. Six areas of functioning in transition to college were examined: Health, Fitting In, Emotional Adjustment, Productivity, Perceived Career Support, and Social Engagement. Results: Students, both SSM/V and civilian, with past exposure to a potentially traumatic event fit in worse than students without such exposure. Past exposure to trauma was associated with poorer emotional adjustment in civilian students, but not in SSM/V. Conclusions: Implications of results were discussed.

Women with metastatic breast cancer (MBC), a life-threatening illness, stand to benefit a great deal from online support groups, but none have been studied specifically within this population. The present mixed-method study was carried out to determine which therapeutic factors occurred in online MBC support groups, and to see how such factors might have acted to benefit participants. Participants were 20 women with MBC who participated in online peer support groups. Most reported benefiting in some way from their groups. Six therapeutic factors theorized to be helpful in online support groups and cancer support groups were present in the groups studied: group cohesiveness, information exchange, universality, instillation of hope, catharsis, and altruism. However, although participants reported being able to discuss many other concerns freely, they had difficulty discussing death and dying, which are critical issues for this category of women with BC. KEYWORDS metastatic breast cancer, self-help, peer support, online support groups, computer-mediated support, therapeutic factors, disclosure DOI: 10.1080/03630240903238719

Background: Voice hearing experiences, or auditory verbal hallucinations, occur in healthy individuals as well as in individuals who need clinical care, but news media depict voice hearing primarily as a symptom of mental illness, particularly schizophrenia. Aims: This article explores whether, and how, public perception of an exaggerated association between voice hearing and mental illness might influence individuals’ need for clinical care. Method: A narrative literature review was conducted, using relevant peer-reviewed research published in the English language. Results: Stigma may prevent disclosure of voice hearing experiences. Non-disclosure can prevent access to sources of normalizing information and lead to isolation, loss of social support and distress. Internalization of stigma and concomitantly decreased self-esteem could potentially affect features of voices such as perceived voice power, controllability, negativity and frequency, as well as distress. Increased distress may result in a decrease in functioning and increased need for clinical care. Conclusion: The literature reviewed suggests that stigma has the potential to increase need for care through many interrelated pathways. However, the ability to draw definitive conclusions was constrained by the designs of the studies reviewed. Further research is needed to confirm the findings of this review. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The authors sought to assess military veterans' functioning in college by comparing their experience with that of civilian students. Participants: The study, conducted from April 2012 to February 2013, included 445 civilian and 61 student service member/veteran (SSM/V) undergraduates, drawn from a community college and two 4-year Catholic colleges, in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York. Methods: Participants completed anonymous online surveys. Six areas of functioning in transition to college were examined: Health, Fitting In, Emotional Adjustment, Productivity, Perceived Career Support, and Social Engagement. Results: Students, both SSM/V and civilian, with past exposure to a potentially traumatic event fit in worse than students without such exposure. Past exposure to trauma was associated with poorer emotional adjustment in civilian students, but not in SSM/V. Conclusions: Implications of results were discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inner speech is theorized to be the basis for auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs), but few empirical studies have examined the phenomenology of inner speech, particularly while reading. One hundred and sixty posts from a popular question and answer community website were analyzed using a qualitative content analysis approach, to examine the phenomenology of inner reading voices (IRVs). Results indicated that many individuals report routinely experiencing IRVs, which often have the auditory qualities of overt speech, such as recognizable identity, gender, pitch, loudness and emotional tone. IRVs were sometimes identified as the readers’ own voices, and sometimes as the voices of other people. Some individuals reported that IRVs were continuous with audible thoughts. Both controllable and uncontrollable IRVs were reported. IRVs may provide evidence for individual variation in imagery vividness and support for inner speech accounts of AVHs. IRVs may be a useful model for studying AVHs in the non-clinical population and need further investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article looks at a study which examined the characterization of auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) in the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition." Topics mentioned include the occurrence of AVH in individuals who are psychologically healthy and its public perception, impact of public perceptions on how individuals with AVH interpret their experiences, and an overview of newspaper articles on public depictions of AVH.

Objective:To compare the experiences of women with metastatic breast cancer (MBC) in computer-mediated and face-to-face support groups.Method:Interviews from 18 women with MBC, who were currently in computer-mediated support groups (CMSGs), were examined using interpretative phenomenological analysis. The CMSGs were in an asynchronous mailing list format; women communicated exclusively via email. All the women were also, or had previously been, in a face-to-face support group (FTFG).Results:CMSGs had both advantages and drawbacks, relative to face-to-face groups (FTFGs), for this population. Themes examined included convenience, level of support, intimacy, ease of expression, range of information, and dealing with debilitation and dying. CMSGs may provide a sense of control and a greater level of support. Intimacy may take longer to develop in a CMSG, but women may have more opportunities to get to know each other. CMSGs may be helpful while adjusting to a diagnosis of MBC, because women can receive support without being overwhelmed by physical evidence of disability in others or exposure to discussions about dying before they are ready. However, the absence of nonverbal cues in CMSGs also led to avoidance of topics related to death and dying when women were ready to face them. Agendas for discussion, the presence of a facilitator or more time in CMSGs may attenuate this problem.Significance of results:The findings were discussed in light of prevailing research and theories about computer-mediated communication. They have implications for designing CMSGs for this population. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]