Provision of gender affirming care among medical and allied health practitioners: The influence of transnormative beliefs in working with gender diverse patients.

Gender diverse patients (including gender diverse, transgender, and non-binary people) deserve quality health care, which has been referred to as gender affirming care. Given that practitioners' attitudes and competence can influence their provision of gender affirming care, this study used a lens of transnormativity (Bradford & Syed, 2019; Johnson, 2016) to develop a measure of practitioners' transnormative beliefs. The aim of the study was to determine if these beliefs were related to practitioners' gender affirming attitudes and perceptions of competence in gender affirming practice. Survey data were collected from Australian medical and allied health practitioners (N = 95). Exploratory factor analysis was applied to items measuring transnormative beliefs, with the results supporting three higher order factors; conditional approval, narrative, and gender role beliefs. Conditional approval reflected belief in gender diverse identity as authentic and worthy of intervention. Narrative beliefs reflected understanding of common developmental experiences among gender diverse populations, specifically experiences of victimisation and nascence. Gender role beliefs reflected belief in the existence of gender roles. In models that regressed gender affirming attitudes and self-perceived competency on all transnormative beliefs, controlling for demographics and work history, practitioners higher in conditional approval were lower in gender affirming attitudes and practitioners higher in narrative beliefs were higher in gender affirming attitudes and competency. Conditional approval was not significantly associated with competency, and gender role beliefs were not significantly associated with attitudes or competency. Results indicate that practitioners' transnormative beliefs are related to their gender affirming attitudes and suggest that targeting these beliefs through training opportunities could bridge the gap between gender diverse people's healthcare needs and the ability of healthcare practitioners to provide high quality care.

Daily use of digital technologies to feel better: Adolescents' digital emotion regulation, emotions, loneliness, and recovery, considering prior emotional problems.

INTRODUCTION: Adolescents report using digital technologies for emotion regulation (digital ER), with the aim of feeling better (i.e., improving emotions and reducing loneliness). In this 7-day diary study, we investigated associations of digital ER, emotions, and loneliness, and tested whether prior emotional problems moderated these associations. METHOD: Participants were 312 Australian adolescents (Mage = 13.91, SD = 1.52; 44% boys). Daily surveys measured digital ER; end-of-day happiness, sadness, worry, anger, and loneliness; and peak sadness, worry, and anger. End-of day emotions were subtracted from peak emotions to calculate emotion recovery for sadness, worry, and anger. Participants were randomly selected from two symptom strata (high/low) defined by depression and social anxiety measures collected before the diary. Data were analyzed using multilevel path modeling. Cross-level interactions tested whether symptom strata moderated associations. RESULTS: Digital ER was associated with more recovery from peak to end-of-day sadness and worry, but also with increased sadness, worry, anger, and loneliness by the next end-of-day. Higher end-of-day loneliness was associated with increased next-day digital ER. Prior emotional symptoms were not a significant moderator of daily digital ER and emotion associations. CONCLUSION: Adolescents who report more digital ER in a day show more recovery from the peak of negative emotion that day, but this recovery dissipates, with digital ER also associated with increased negative emotion and loneliness by the next day for all adolescents, regardless of prior symptom status. Lonelier adolescents use more digital ER by the next day, suggesting they need support to make social connections-online or offline.

Parental Support and Adolescents' Coping with Academic Stressors: A Longitudinal Study of Parents' Influence Beyond Academic Pressure and Achievement.

Adolescents face many academic pressures that require good coping skills, but coping skills can also depend on social resources, such as parental support and fewer negative interactions. The aim of this study was to determine if parental support and parental negative interactions concurrently and longitudinally relate to adolescents' ways of academic coping, above and beyond the impact of three types of academic stress, students' achievement at school (i.e., grades in school), and age. Survey data were collected from 839 Australian students in grades 5 to 10 (Mage = 12.2, SD = 1.72; 50% girls). Students completed measures of support and negative interactions with parents; academic stress from workload, external pressure (teachers/parents) to achieve, and intrapsychic pressure for high achievement; and ways of academic coping that were grouped into two positive and two negative types. Hypothesized associations were tested concurrently and from one year to the next using path modeling. Beyond the numerous significant influences of academic stress and achievement on coping, and control for age and COVID-19 timing, adolescents with more parental support reported more use of engagement coping (e.g., strategizing) and comfort-seeking, whereas those who reported more negative interactions with parents reported more use of disengagement coping (e.g., concealment) and escape. In the longitudinal model, parental support predicted an increase in engagement and comfort-seeking and a decrease in disengagement coping, whereas negative interaction with parents predicted an increase in disengagement coping. Overall, the findings support the view that coping with academic stressors will continue to depend on parent-adolescent relationships even into the teen years.

What Predicts Online Disinhibition? Examining Perceptions of Protection and Control Online and the Moderating Role of Social Anxiety.

With the pervasive nature of social media and Internet use among young adults, researchers have begun to explore experiences of online disinhibition, defined as reductions in restraint in online versus face-to-face settings. In contributing to this literature, this study aimed to test whether perceptions of the Internet as a place where one has the ability to be invisible, anonymous, and exercise control over interactions promotes greater online disinhibition. A sample of Australian young adults (N = 687; 59.8 percent female; Mage = 19.45 years, SD = 2.07) were included in the study. The sample was split to enable exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses on the measures of Internet perceptions, with results finding two subfactors; (a) perceptions of the ability to be protected, invisible, or feel safe online (labeled protection), and (b) perceptions of control over interactions and self-presentation online (labeled control). Links between perceptions of protection and control, and online disinhibition were then examined, before testing social anxiety as a moderator of these links. Results demonstrated that perceptions of protection, but not control, significantly predicted online disinhibition in young adults. Furthermore, this relationship was moderated by social anxiety such that young adults high in both social anxiety and perceptions of protection reported the highest online disinhibition. This study highlights novel perceptions of online contexts, illustrates their links with online disinhibition, and demonstrates how social anxiety may interact with perceptions of protection in predicting online experiences.