Journal of Professional & Applied Psychology

Standardized Outcomes Measure in Urdu – Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation Outcome Measure – Translation, Cultural Challenges and Implications

2025-07-10T14:33:12+00:00

One global public health challenge is the increasing recognition of real magnitude of mental health problems and the need for effective, and affordable interventions and prevention strategies. The development of such resources requires usable measurement tools which should ideally bring some inter-cultural and trans-linguistic comparability of scores while also being genuinely culturally appropriate in the target populations. The current study describes the translation and adaptation of a widely used self-report measure, the CORE-OM (Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation-Outcome Measure) from English into Urdu. The translation and the whole process was run across both the UK and Pakistan. This process followed a stringent protocol involving 20 independent forward translations, a focus group discussion and finally two back translations and a vital qualitative field testing with ten people across Pakistan. A number of items were challenging to translate into Urdu, some for linguistic reasons and more for cultural reasons and the qualitative field testing proved vital to achieve a final version that was acceptable across diversity of geography and language (Urdu as first, second or even third language). The findings provide reassuring evidence that the translation was culturally appropriate and successful in achieving a measure that is now available to use worldwide, without reproduction fees.

The Living among the Dead: A Phenomenological Study of Cemetery Workers’ Mental Health

2025-07-10T14:33:11+00:00

The study aims to examine the way cemetery workers make sense of their experiences at cemeteries and what strategies they incorporate in dealing with the everyday deaths of people. Semi-structured interviews with three cemetery workers (N=3) were conducted to explore and understand these workers' intrapsychic and external experiences. The audio interviews were recorded and transcription was done to provide the verbatim for thick and rich description of the phenomena. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) approach was used to analyze the data. The analysis generated themes i.e., workplace problems, fear of death, spirituality, coping with fear, relating with the deceased, and uncanny religious and meaningful experiences. There were some over-arching negative emotional features like depression, anxiety, and fear observed in the participants. However, they seemed to use emotion focused strategies in a direct or indirect way to cope i.e., uncanny experiences that are meaningful, escape, support of colleagues, spirituality, and humor. The study concluded that while the cemetery workers incorporated religious coping to deal with their stressors, they were susceptible to mental health issues as they oscillated between anxious and depressive features, hence, requiring psychological assistance. The study encourages to understand how cemetery workers experience the everyday burying of the dead; whether they are desensitized towards their job, as commonly understood, or it is a continued battle for them, and if so, then attention should be drawn towards their need for psychological interventions.

Psychological Impact of Pakistan India War

2025-07-09T19:32:36+00:00

Impact of Expressive Writing on Affect, Psychological Distress, and Quality of Life of Breast Cancer Survivors in Pakistan

2025-07-09T19:32:40+00:00

In this experimental study, effectiveness of expressive writing was assessed on affect, psychological distress and quality of life of survivors of breast cancer in Pakistan. To evaluate this impact, seventy-two breast cancer survivors who fulfilled the inclusion criteria were recruited from oncology clinics of Lahore, Pakistan. Participants completed the baseline assessment including The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS), The Depression Anxiety Stress Scale-21 (DASS-21) and WHOQOL BREF.The participants were assigned to experimental and control groups. The expressive writing group had 35 participants (EW) and the control group had 37 participants. After 4 weeks, the same measures were completed by the experimental and control group participants for the post assessment. A debriefing session was also conducted following data analysis. The control group participants were provided with the option to engage in the expressive writing task. The results of the MANOVA suggest that the writing intervention had significant positive effects on the dependent variables including depression, anxiety, stress, affect and quality of life. These results suggest that the expressive writing intervention facilitated the breast cancer survivors to overcome some of the psycho-social costs associated with cancer survivorship.

Imposter Phenomenon and Burnout in University Students: Moderating Role of Coping Strategies

2025-07-09T19:32:39+00:00

Imposter phenomenon (IP) is the fear of being exposed as a fraud or an imposter. Recent studies have examined the rise of IP in students. Hence, this study was focused on the detrimental effects of IP on students’ mental health. It examined the relationship between IP, and burnout (along with its 2 subscales; i.e., exhaustion and disengagement) of university students, along with the moderating effect of coping strategies. It was hypothesized that there is correlation among IP, coping strategies and burnout. Further, IP is likely to predict burnout. Moderating effect of coping strategies on the relationship of IP and burnout was also hypothesized. Lastly, gender differences were hypothesized among IP, coping strategies and burnout. Non-probability snowball sampling was used to recruit samples of N = 160 university students. Clance Imposter Phenomenon scale (Clance & Imes, 1978), Oldenburg Burnout Inventory (Baker & Demerouti, 2008) and Coping Scale (Hamby et al., 2015) were used. Pearson-product moment correlational analysis, multiple hierarchical regression and independent sample t-test were used to evaluate results, which showed positive correlation among IP, exhaustion, and disengagement. IP was also a significant predictor of exhaustion and disengagement (i.e., burnout). No moderating effect of coping strategies was found. Only IP, exhaustion and coping strategies had gender differences. Hence, all hypotheses were justified except one. The findings will give a better understanding of students’ mental health and will be helpful in designing coaching programs that will help them alleviate frequent imposter feelings, managing burnout associated with it and enhancing coping strategies.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) for the Treatment of Antenatal Depression and Anxiety in Pakistan: A Feasibility Study

2025-07-09T19:32:40+00:00

Untreated antenatal depression and anxiety is a major public health concern due to its detrimental effects for mother’s during pregnancy as well as children’s longer-term health outcomes. Antenatal depression and anxiety have a significant adverse impact on mothers’ postnatal mental health, maternal caregiving, mother-infant relationship quality, and children’s longer-term developmental outcomes. These findings highlight the need to address antenatal mental distress by employing contemporary therapeutic interventions. The objective of the present study was to assess the feasibility and preliminary effectiveness of a culturally adapted Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) intervention for women presenting with antenatal depression and anxiety in Pakistan. The current study used an uncontrolled pilot study design and a purposive sampling strategy. Pregnant women (N = 10) were recruited from five different Gynecology or Psychiatric hospitals in Pakistan. Women completed the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), and the Multidimensional Psychological Flexibility Inventory (MPFI) at pre and post treatment. Participant’s pre and post intervention scores on these three questionnaires were compared using a Wilcoxon signed-rank test. The intervention completion rate was 70% (7 in 10). For the 3 women who dropped out of the study the reason was childbirth. At post-treatment, participants who completed the intervention showed significant improvements in depression and anxiety symptoms and increased psychological flexibility. Our findings indicate that ACT is a potentially feasible and effective treatment for antenatal depression and anxiety in Pakistan.

Emotional Regulation and Quality of Life among Substance Users

2025-07-09T19:32:37+00:00

A substance use disorder is a chronic physical & mental health concern caused by obsessive use of substance, regardless of its adverse effects. A key objective of this study was to examine emotional regulation and its relationship to quality of life among substance users. The study used purposive convenient sampling to collected data from 250 participants with substance dependency aged over 18 years from various rehabilitation facilities spread across five cities. Study measure included drug history Performa with a demographic information sheet using Urdu translated versions of scales Emotional Regulation questionnaire (Gross & John, 2003) which comprises Suppression and Reappraisal subscales and WHOQOL-BREF. According to a descriptive analysis of sample characteristics, the majority of participants were from the middle class and had a family history of substance use. The finding of the correlation of cognitive reappraisal showed a positive relationship with quality of life while expressive suppression showed a negative relationship. However, significant gender differences were found concerning emotional regulation & quality of life. Future study planning can benefit from the findings. Further, therapeutic intervention strategies of emotional regulation for substance users must take these studies into account.

The Development and Validation of an Aesthetic Treatment Psychosocial Experiences Scale: The Mind Behind the Mirror

2025-07-09T19:32:38+00:00

Aesthetic treatment procedures have got increased attention during current era, however, there is a significant gap in assessing the psychological aspect linked to these procedures. The current research found the manifestation and expression of treatment experiences of adults taking aesthetic procedures in Pakistan. The scale development was carried out in four phases. In phase I, in-depth interviews were conducted to elicit the key characteristics of treatment experiences from 20 adults. In the Phase II, the content validity index was established and in phase III, pilot testing was done on 20 participants to check the feasibility, layout and comprehension of the scale. In the main study, phase 300 adults (Men=45%, Women=55%) were given the Treatment experiences scale along with Depression, Anxiety, Stress Scale (DASS) to determine the psychometric properties. The principal component factor analysis using varimax rotation generated three factors of treatment experiences namely need for appraise, fear of treatment failure and result oriented thinking. Furthermore, results depict the high internal consistency, split half reliability, test-retest reliability and construct validity. The reliability of the aesthetic treatment experiences scale was (r=. 86, p< .001) and validity was (r = .25 p < .001).