RESUMO
The New York State (NYS) Office of Mental Health created the NYS COVID-19 Emotional Support Helpline and enlisted graduate students to provide phone-based emotional support initially to the NYS community. This NYS-funded initiative transformed into providing psychosocial support for callers across the United States. Four NYS doctoral students acted as the helpline agents and received 251 individual calls from May-August 2020. The agents documented the calls with clinical notes which cannot be traced back to specific callers. The purpose of this retrospective qualitative study was to explore the themes that emerged from the calls to give voice to the trauma that callers were reporting during the early phases of the pandemic, and the resilience they demonstrated as they engaged with the Helpline. The agents' clinical transcripts were converted into codes using a critical-constructivist grounded theory approach (Levitt, 2021) with the NVIVO qualitative data analysis software. A second research team audited the initial codes for construct clarity. Emergent themes detailed the unique traumas that helpline callers divulged, how the agents provided support, and the callers' capacities for resilience. Recommendations are suggested to inform clinicians working with pandemic survivors, to offer guidance on providing distance or virtual interventions as well as to enhance policymakers' understanding of addressing mental health needs across populations served via the NYS COVID-19 Emotional Support Helpline.
RESUMO
The present meta-analysis synthesizes the emerging literature on the relationship of Big Five personality traits to autism spectrum disorder. Studies were included if they (1) either (a) measured autism spectrum disorder characteristics using a metric that yielded a single score quantification of the magnitude of autism spectrum disorder characteristics and/or (b) studied individuals with an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis compared to individuals without an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis and (2) measured Big Five traits in the same sample or samples. Fourteen reviewed studies include both correlational analyses and group comparisons. Eighteen effect sizes per Big Five trait were used to calculate two overall effect sizes per trait. Meta-analytic effects were calculated using random effects models. Twelve effects (per trait) from nine studies reporting correlations yielded a negative association between each Big Five personality trait and autism spectrum disorder characteristics (Fisher's z ranged from -.21 (conscientiousness) to -.50 (extraversion)). Six group contrasts (per trait) from six studies comparing individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder to neurotypical individuals were also substantial (Hedges' g ranged from -.88 (conscientiousness) to -1.42 (extraversion)). The potential impact of personality on important life outcomes and new directions for future research on personality in autism spectrum disorder are discussed in light of results.