Psychology

On the basis of qualitative thematic analysis, this study explored psychotherapy through a Sufi Islamic lens. Through purposive sampling of Muslim scholars/practitioners with Sufi affiliations or sympathies, we conducted one-to-one interviews, the content of which revealed an emphasis on meditation among other therapies against a dialectic of
transcendence and acceptance. This dialectical framework offers a lens through which current Islamically integrated interventions may be viewed. It, also, has a dialogic potential with mainstream movements within psychology that are informed by varied spiritual traditions.

The relevance of the Western health model for the health needs of people in non-Western parts of the world is being increasingly criticized today. Concerns are voiced about the appropriateness of global mental health care. Central to these concerns is that labels and constructs are not neutral, and misconstruing them as such could lead to hegemonic and possibly pathologizing interpretations of human responses. In this chapter,
pathologizing is primarily discussed as a function of overlooking contextual factors necessary for understanding a given human response. Decontextualized trends of research and practice are examined against
the realities and needs of individuals and communities in the Arab world with particular reference to the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). Recommendations are made for developing a valid mental health discourse in the Arab world.

Strong inter-rater reliability has been established for the Hare Psychopathy
Checklist–Revised (PCL-R), specifically by examiners in research contexts.
However, there is less support for inter-reliability in applied settings. This study examined archival data that included a sample of sex offenders (n = 178) who entered federal custody between 1992 and 1998. The offenders were assessed using the PCL-R on two occasions. The first assessment occurred at Millhaven Institution, the intake unit for federally incarcerated offenders in the province of Ontario. The second assessment took place upon inmates’ transfer to the Regional Treatment Center, which admits federal inmates with intense psychological and psychiatric needs. Intra-class correlation coefficients (ICCs) were calculated for item, total, factor, and facet scores. The ICC absolute agreement for the PCL-R total and factor scores from raters across both settings was slightly better than
what has been previously reported by Hare. Results of this study show that the reliability of PCL-R scores in field settings can be comparable to those in research settings. Authors conclude by highlighting the importance of training, consultation, considering different scores for a given item, following the guidelines of the manual in addition to considering measures that enhance neutrality and reliability of findings in the criminal justice system.

The present study evaluated the subjective happiness of Lebanese college youth using a multi-item rather than a single-item subjective happiness measure. An Arabic translation of the Subjective Happiness Scale (SHS) was administered to 273 Lebanese college youth from state- and private-run higher institutions of learning, as was the Arabic Adult Parental Acceptance-Rejection Questionnaire (Arabic PARQ). The reliability and validity of the Arabic SHS was tested in terms of factor analysis, internal consistency, and correlation with Arabic PARQ scores, as was the factorial invariance and relation of the scale across age, sex, marital status, birth order, and college campus. The Arabic SHS showed a reliable unitary structure similar to those found in other cultures, and factorial invariance across sex, marital status, birth order and college campus. While age, sex, marital status and birth order were independent of happiness scores, college students attending the private university reported greater happiness than those from the state-run academic setting. It was concluded that the Lebanese Arabic SHS is a reliable and valid measure of global subjective happiness, its factor structure is similar across other translated versions of the scale, and its scores are independent of age, sex, marital status and birth order.

Lamia Moghnieh is a PhD candidate in social work and anthropology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her dissertation thesis focuses on humanitarian and communal representations and interventions of violence during "war" and "peace" in Lebanon. INGRESS: In 2009, the Red Cross started implementing a community-based health program for marginalized regions in Lebanon. While designed to privilege equal community participation and local knowledge, community-based programs sometimes end up disempowering the marginalized communities they serve, thereby reifying global principles of health, participation and community. In 2009, the International Red Cross proposed a new humanitarian program for the Lebanese Red Cross society: Community-Based Health and First Aid (CBHFA), to be implemented for underprivileged communities in Lebanon. Having experienced massive political and social upheavals, in the form of a 15-year civil war, Israeli invasion, occupation and intermittent outbursts of internal political violence, Lebanon represented an exemplary site for CBHFA, designed as a preventive program against conflicts. More recently, the war in Lebanon in 2006 resulted in at least 1,109 deaths, 4,399 injuries and the displacement of an estimated one million individuals. 1 Community-based programs have become a universal trend in humanitarian relief organizations due to their attractive premises of community empowerment and costeffectiveness. 2 They emerged as a response to global health projects that neglect embodied social experiences of health; community-based programs privilege local knowledge of the community being served, and demand its active and equal participation at each step in the design and implementation. 3 Unlike other global projects that advocate standardized implementation, community-based programs are meant to have local flavor and cultural embeddedness. 4

This paper relies on ethnographic and archival research to  narrate the humanitarian trouble in finding trauma in the July 2006 war in Lebanon. The humanitarian inability to easily locate a visible trauma shared by war-affected communities intersected with other political, social and public health debates on the modern ways of suffering from war and violence in 2006 Lebanon. This paper provides a preliminary reading of these debates, as I argue that trauma, whether defined and framed by psychiatry, psychology and humanitarianism as Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), or evoked in popular Lebanese culture and discourse to express suffering, takes many material, political and ideological values for different stakeholders and communities in Lebanon. This multi-faceted meaning of trauma in Lebanon, sometimes intersecting, other times clashing, provides us with an understanding of the contemporary politics of suffering from violence in Lebanon.

Explaining radical group behaviour: Developing emotion and efficacy routes to normative and non-normative collective action. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101,[129][130][131][132][133][134][135][136][137][138][139][140][141][142][143][144][145][146][147][148] Emotion and Efficacy Routes to Normative and Non-normative Collective Action 2 Abstract A recent model of collective action distinguishes two distinct pathways; an emotional pathway whereby anger in response to injustice motivates action, and an efficacy pathway where the belief that issues can be solved collectively increases the likelihood that group members take action (van Zomeren, Spears, Fischer, & Leach, 2004). Research supporting this model has, however, focused entirely on relatively normative actions such as participating in demonstrations. The authors argue that the relations between emotions, efficacy and action differ for more extreme, non-normative actions and propose (1) that non-normative actions are often driven by a sense of low efficacy and (2) that contempt, which, unlike anger, entails psychological distancing and a lack of reconciliatory intentions, predicts non-normative action.