Stephen Joseph

University of Nottingham | Notts · School of Education

The field of psychological trauma is changing as researchers recognise that adversity does not always lead to a damaged and dysfunctional life. Post-traumatic growth refers to how adversity can be a springboard to higher levels of psychological well-being. This article provides an overview of theory, practice and research.

This paper describes the validation of the Positive Functioning Inventory (PFI-12). This is a 12-item self-report tool developed to assess a spectrum of functioning ranging from states of mental distress to states of well-being. Two samples (Sample 1: N = 242, mean age = 20 years. Sample 2: N = 301, mean age = 20 years) completed self-report measur...

The Psychological Well-Being Post-Traumatic Changes Questionnaire (PWB-PTCQ) is an 18 item self-report measure to assess perceived changes in psychological well-being following traumatic events. The aim was to test its psychometric properties. Across three samples, evidence is provided for a single factor structure (invariant across clinical and ge...

Empirical studies (n = 39) that documented positive change following trauma and adversity (e.g., posttraumatic growth, stress-related growth, perceived benefit, thriving; collectively described as adversarial growth) were reviewed. The review indicated that cognitive appraisal variables (threat, harm, and controllability), problem-focused, acceptan...

Young carers (YCs) refer to children under the age of 18 who assume responsibilities that would normally be assumed by adults, such as caring for family members in need of care. In recent years, the concept of YCs has been expanding in Japan, and the government has been rapidly implementing strategies to support them. There is a need for a survey s...

Background: Young carers (YC) and young adult carers (YAC) have become of interest in research and practice. The 18-item Multidimensional Assessment of Caring Activities for Young Carers (MACA-YC18) was developed for identifying the extent and nature of caring activities across six domains: domestic chores, household management, financial/practica...

Young carers are children and adolescents who provide care to other family members or friends, taking over responsibilities that are usually associated with adulthood. There is emerging but still scarce knowledge worldwide about the phenomenon of young carers and the impact of a caring role on their health, social and personal development spheres....

Self-compassion offers profound benefits to well-being and healthy psychological functioning. Surprisingly however, the relationship assumed between compassion for self and others has been questioned by recent research findings and is at best inconsistently correlated. The aim of this study is to throw further light on this debate by testing whethe...

For the first time, this article will provide a cross-national profile of adolescents who provide unpaid care to their ill or disabled family members in six European countries with varied levels of awareness, policy and service provision regarding adolescent young carers. Utilising an online survey, 2,099 adolescent young carers were identified in...

In this chapter, the authors propose integrating two paradigms – positive psychology and salutogenesis – and suggest a joint conceptual framework, which they term as ‘salutogenic positive psychology’. Despite the differences between the two movements and their different theoretical roots, the authors believe that the integrative approach has greate...

Objective Humanitarian-specific psychological distress following deployment can elude detection using contemporary measures of trauma-related stress. This study assesses the unidimensional structure and convergent validity of the Post-deployment Altruistic Identity Disruption Questionnaire (PostAID/Q), an 18-item questionnaire underpinned by the co...

This qualitative study presents an analysis of the experiences of a teacher who had recently left working in an England state funded primary school. Using reflective lifeworld methodology, this study explored the teacher’s struggle to be authentic in the context of state funded education. Three prominent themes were identified as: 1) enhancement of...

Although the implementation of mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) in educational contexts appear to have demonstrated some benefits for students and teachers in research studies conducted over the last two decades, there are also those who criticize MBI's for their instrumental focus. Exploring this debate, this article offers a case for the im...

The Barrett-Lennard Relationship Inventory (B-L RI; Barrett-Lennard, (2015). The Relationship Inventory A Complete Resource and Guide. http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:101:1-201602103917) is the most widely used measure of the facilitative conditions described by Carl Rogers as important for constructive personality development in his person-cent...

Mindfulness, often defined as present-moment awareness, has in recent years become a topic of multidisciplinary interest. This article addresses methodological issues for researching mindfulness and education. It is argued that there are advantages to coherence between ontological and epistemological positions when designing research studies. The l...

The Barrett-Lennard Relationship Inventory was designed to assess the extent to which a person experiences unconditional positive regard, empathic understanding, and genuineness in a relationship. This study (N = 1,286) investigated measurement invariance between English, Chinese, and Spanish language versions of the inventory and partial scalar in...

Although prior research has shown that young carers may perceive benefits from their challenging situation, it is unclear how and when benefit finding leads to better mental health. This study examines pathways through which benefit finding may influence mental well-being. Self-reported data were obtained from 601 adolescents aged 15–21 (Mage = 17....

Both positive psychology and the person-centered approach share a common aim to promote human flourishing. In this article I will discuss how the person-centered approach is a form of positive psychology, but positive psychology is not necessarily person-centered. I will show how the person-centered approach offers a distinctive view of human natur...

Introduction Mental health conditions are a major contributor to productivity loss and are common after injury. This study quantifies postinjury productivity loss and its association with preinjury and postinjury mental health, injury, demographic, health, social and other factors. Methods Multicentre, longitudinal study recruiting hospitalised em...

Over the past decade or so, within this journal there have been critical debates concerning the role of mindfulness within education, the influence of neoliberalism on education, and the relevance of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger for critiquing both modernity as well as the nature and purpose of education. In this article we propose that these...

Objective Research has shown that some young carers face many negative consequences because of their caring experiences, whereas others seem to be unaffected or even report greater well-being. To understand how caring for a family member or close friend can have these different effects, this study compared benefit finding between young carers and t...

Objective Interest in the concept of well-being within clinical and applied psychology settings has increased, highlighting a need to develop appropriate measures. The aim was to adapt and test the validity of the 14-item Scale of General Well-Being (14-SGWB) originally developed by Longo et al. (2018), as a clinical outcome measure. Method Study...

Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) can result in positive “side effects,” such as concentration and individual well-being, highly desirable to schools operating within a neoliberalist agenda emphasizing performativity. However, employing a critical literature review, we argue that adverse side effects also occur, though under-researched. We eng...

Recent years have seen a surge of interest by clinical psychologists in the idea of psychological formulation. Interest in this idea has also been shown by humanistic psychologists as evidenced by a recent issue of this journal, in which formulation is offered as a possible antidote to diagnosis. In this article, I examine the idea of formulation f...

Teachers’ authenticity is a topic of emerging interest in the field of education. This paper systematically reviews existing qualitative research on the subject of teachers’ authenticity from the perspective of teachers and students. The findings from 12 studies are subject to a metasynthesis. Results show that the authentic teacher is conceptualis...

This study aimed to assess the empirical validity of Carl Rogers’ vision of the authentic person to be ecologically minded. 238 participants were asked to complete the Authenticity Scale, the Connectedness to Nature Scale, the Love and Care for Nature Scale, the Ethically Minded Consumer Behavior Scale, and the Brief Social Desirability Scale. It w...

Background Being sentenced to imprisonment can be traumatic. This may lead to further negative effects, including reoffending or disorders of mental health. Emerging research, however, has suggested that traumatic events can, at times, also lead to post‐traumatic growth, leading us to question whether prisoners could experience this. Aims Our aims...

Humanistic psychology has long been interested in authenticity. Carl Rogers proposed that authenticity leads to more fully functioning behavior. However, it is only in recent years that there has been empirical research into the correlates of authenticity. The aim was to test for association between authenticity and two individual difference factor...

This article examines the potentiality, acceptability and ethical considerations of a mindfulness-based intervention (MBI) for supporting pupils’ mental well-being in a junior school. To date, research has predominantly focused on the psychological or behavioural benefits of MBIs rather than broader and more philosophical issues of implementation....

The aim was to investigate the association between experiencing a therapeutic relationship and subsequent authenticity. Forty-six clients completed the Barrett–Lennard Relationship Inventory (B-LRI), Relational Depth Inventory (RDI), a measure of the therapeutic alliance (ARM-5) and the Authenticity Scale (AS) at intervals over 10 therapy sessions....

Recent years have seen much interest in positive education. In this article, we will show how person-centred education, like positive education, is concerned with the promotion of human flourishing. Both offer ways in which education goes beyond traditional skills and knowledge to a concern for the well-being of people. However, we argue that an aw...

Many children, adolescents, teenagers, and young adults have caring responsibilities for parents and family members. These young carers and young adult carers are present in every country. Their responsibilities include domestic chores as well as intimate personal care and other forms of helping which are generally seen as the responsibility of adu...

The aim of this paper is to critically examine the axiom of Cooper and McLeod that the person-centered approach should incorporate pluralistic practices based on clients’ goals and wants. First, we examine Cooper and McLeod’s argument that the uniqueness of clients means that therapeutic work should orientate around helping clients to identify what...

Relational depth (RD) refers to moments in a therapeutic relationship in which a person has feelings of aliveness, satisfaction and immersion. However, no research has yet tested for the association between RD and concepts closely aligned with Carl Rogers’ hypothesis of how people change in a growth-promoting relationship. In this study, 55 therapy...

Psychological Well-Being Post-Traumatic Changes Questionnaire (PWB-PTCQ) is an instrument for measuring positive changes after trauma that has shown reasonable psychometric properties in its original version in English. The aim of this study was to translate and validate the psychometric properties of an Arabic Psychological Well-Being Post-Traumat...

Background Many young people are involved in caring for parents, siblings, or other relatives who have an illness or disability. The aim of this study was to estimate the prevalence of caring by young people in England. Method A national survey of 925 English young people was conducted using the 18‐item survey version of the Multidimensional Asses...

An online survey of children in school grades 4–9 (mostly aged 10–15) was conducted in order to determine the prevalence of young carers in Switzerland using a 2‐stage stratified sampling approach. 4082 respondents were drawn from 230 schools. A total of 3991 respondents were included in the analysis and of these 307 (7.7%) were identified as young...

Objective: This study examined whether retrospective reports of posttraumatic growth (PTG) and depreciation (PTD) of individuals recently diagnosed with a spinal cord injury (SCI) coincide with prospectively measured changes in the conceptually close domains of general self-efficacy (SE) and purpose in life (PIL). The study also tested whether PTG...

Recent scholarship in the person-centered experiential (PCE) approach has theorized how organismic valuing might be an important process factor in the development of posttraumatic growth. In a test of this prediction we investigated the association between Gendlin’s focusing and posttraumatic growth in 87 participants. All completed measures of foc...

Many Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) in the United Kingdom (UK) now offer undergraduate and postgraduate courses in counselling. However, counselling is a relatively new and developing profession only beginning to nurture a future generation of research‐active scholars. As such, its development is vulnerable to pressures arising from HEIs prepar...

The aim of this article is to show how the theory and philosophy of the person-centred experiential approach, originally developed by the psychologist Carl Rogers, can usefully inform the development of professional practice, educational methods and critical social theory of social pedagogy. Social pedagogy is introduced, followed by a description...

Developing bullying interventions and testing their success depends on the valid and reliable measurement of peer victimization. The objective of this study was to examine the psychometric properties of the Multidimensional Peer Victimization Scale (MPVS, Mynard & Joseph, 2000). This systematic review examined 34 published studies demonstrating tha...

The aim is to discuss the issue of executive career derailment in relation to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and the developing field of posttraumatic growth (PTG). There is much research on PTSD and PTG in a variety of contexts but as yet they remain to be applied to the experience of derailment. As such, in this paper I will provide a theor...

The Scales of General Well-Being (SGWB, Longo, Coyne, & Joseph, 2017) is a 65-item tool assessing fourteen different constructs. The aim of this study was to develop a short 14-item version. One item was chosen from each of the fourteen scales following inspection of previously-published factor loadings and content validity ratings. In total, 446 r...

The aim was to contribute to an understanding of social processes of post-conflict healing, reconciliation and development, by reflecting on what lessons might be taken from posttraumatic growth research to inform trauma practitioners and researchers in Rwanda. Following a theoretical discussion on the implicit assumptions, limitations and dangers...

Research into post-traumatic growth describes the potentially transformative and positive impact that highly challenging and traumatic life experiences can have on an individual’s identity, relationships and worldviews. The positive changes individuals identify in the aftermath of challenging circumstances are theorised to be more than fleeting pos...

Purpose: In the current study, we aimed to examine two possible explanations for why higher levels of posttraumatic growth (PTG) were repeatedly found to be predicted by both approach- and avoidance-oriented coping, focusing on individuals recently diagnosed with a spinal cord injury (SCI). First, negative changes (posttraumatic depreciation, PTD)...

Research on the association between self-reports of post-traumatic growth and well-being show mixed findings. To resolve discrepancies, we suggest that selfreports of post-traumatic growth should not be taken at face value as indicating actual growth as in some cases such reports may be indicative of an illusory selfprotective mechanism. As such we...

Purpose: Unintentional injuries have a significant long-term health impact in working age adults. Depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder are common post-injury, but their impact on self-reported recovery has not been investigated in general injury populations. This study investigated the role of psychological predictors 1 month pos...

It has been suggested that self-reported posttraumatic growth could sometimes be considered as a way for people to protect themselves from the distress of trauma. In this case, reports of posttraumatic growth could be illusory. We suggest a theory on self-reported constructive (real) posttraumatic growth and illusory posttraumatic growth by using R...

Purpose: To demonstrate the impact of psychological morbidity 1 month post-injury on subsequent post-injury quality of life (HRQoL) in a general injury population in the UK to inform development of trauma care and rehabilitation services. Methods: Multicentre cohort study of 16-70-year-olds admitted to 4 UK hospitals following injury. Psychologi...

Childhood victimization impacts on the well-being of children and young people, particularly those experiencing an extreme amount of different types of victimization (i.e., poly-victims). However, limited attention has been given to the impact of different categories of extrafamilial victimization (experienced outside of the family), particularly i...

This paper presents the development and validation of a new well-being questionnaire: the Scales of General Well-Being (SGWB). A review of current measures identified fourteen common constructs as lower-order indicators of well-being: happiness, vitality, calmness, optimism, involvement, self-awareness, self-acceptance, self-worth, competence, deve...

Executive derailment refers to unexpected and unwanted changes in the trajectory of an executive career caused either by factors within the person or by organisational factors external to the person, or a combination of both, leading to loss of identity. This phenomenological study explored subjective experiences of four high functioning profession...

Two studies (n = 73, n = 132) explored the association between sense of humour and trauma related well-being outcomes. It was found that sense of humour was not associated with reports of posttraumatic growth as measured by the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI). Self-enhancing humour was positively associated with positive changes as measured b...

The theory of post-traumatic growth claims that, in the struggle to overcome difficult experiences, individuals may identify positive ways in which the experience has changed them. There is extensive evidence of survivors of extreme adversities reporting the phenomenon across different cultures. Although reconciliation involves facilitating positiv...

Supervision is an important component of coaching that can help practitioners work to the highest professional standards. The aim of this paper is to introduce a new conceptual tool for business coaching supervisors. SAFE TO PRACTISE is a framework that describes the functions of coaching supervision. Designed to provide a structure to assist super...

Background: The benefits of work for physical, psychological, and financial wellbeing are well documented. Return to work (RTW) after unintentional injury is often delayed, and psychological morbidity may contribute to this delay. The impact of psychological morbidity on RTW after a wide range of unintentional injuries in the UK has not been adequ...

The positive psychology movement has generated interest in topics such as optimism, hope, creativity, empathy, and gratitude and their application to educational, health, and workplace contexts. However, despite the feeling of innovation, it has also become clear that positive psychology has had a much longer past and has not fully acknowledged the...

Melchert (2016) argues that knowledge of psychological processes is now grounded in experimental tests of falsifiable theories that support a unified, paradigmatic understanding of human psychology. While his argument for leaving behind our preparadigmatic past of competing theoretical orientations is welcome, Melchert (2016) presents a perspective...

The past two decades have seen a surge of interest in the impact of working with trauma survivors on therapists’ psychological well-being. Existing literature assumes that therapists’ strong subjective responses to traumatic material adversely influence the therapeutic process. However, this has not yet been directly researched. Nine counselling ps...

Unconditional positive self-regard (UPSR) is regarded by humanistic psychologists as an important determinant of well-being. However, until recently it has received little empirical attention. The current study aims to examine the association between unconditional positive self-regard and several key constructs consistent with the ideas of well-bei...

The concept of posttraumatic growth refers to the positive psychological changes that some people experience as a result of their struggle with highly stressful and often traumatic circumstances. Research into posttraumatic growth has typically focused on survivors of violent victimization or other uncontrollable and tragic circumstances. However,...

A systematic search of the coaching literature for original peer-reviewed studies into business coaching supervision yielded seven research reports. Evaluation of these studies showed them to be low in the reporting of methodological rigour. However, as an emerging area of research with great importance for the development of the profession of busi...

Objective: Findings on the relationship of posttraumatic growth (PTG) with adjustment to potentially traumatic events are inconsistent, whereupon posttraumatic depreciation (PTD) has been suggested as a possible moderator. The objective of this study is to investigate the associations between PTG and PTD on one side and life satisfaction and indica...

Well-being is typically defined as positive feeling (e.g. happiness), positive functioning (e.g. competence, meaning) or a combination of the two. Recent evidence indicates that well-being indicators belonging to different categories can be explained by single “general” factor of well-being (e.g. Jovanovic, 2015). We further test this hypothesis us...

This chapter discusses the place of meta-theory in clinical psychology, followed by an examination of the three different ways in which clinical psychologists can introduce measures and assessment procedures into their research and practice. It offers the reader a practical framework for the selection and use of various measurement tools. The chapt...

This chapter introduces person-centered psychology, founded on the work of Carl R Rogers, as a vibrant, innovative, evidence-based, developing body of work relevant to clinical psychologists, psychotherapists and group workers, and more recently, applied positive psychologists. The person-centered approach conceptualizes a single organismic process...

Psychological care of humanitarian personnel exposed to high-risk environments is not standardized across the sector. Particularly, returnees experiencing reintegration distress specific to prior aid deployment is randomly addressed. The Postmission Altruistic Identity Disruption Questionnaire (PostAID/Q), an 18-item self-report screening tool, att...

Executive derailment refers to unexpected and unwanted changes in the trajectory of an executive career caused either by factors within the person or by organisational factors external to the person, or a combination of both, leading to loss of identity. This phenomenological study explored subjective experiences of four high functioning profession...