Week 4 dis lab
Arianna
This week I added “literature review” or “systematic review” to the search terms that I used last week. As expected, the searches were not very fruitful with articles on my specific topic. I noticed many articles on spirituality/religion and different forms of abuse or other variables. Additionally, I found that I had to expand my search terms so that I could get more than one page of results. The two articles that I found this week were the closest to my topic. The keywords that I used are: Abuse & religion/religious/religiousness/religions/religiosity/spiritual/spirituality/faith & literature review. The database that I searched was APAPsycInfo.
The output from the search exposed the research gap for my study. I observed a pattern amongst the studies that appeared to leave a gap for my current research study idea. Religion and spirituality are often studied with other variables that are not centered on emotional/psychological abuse. I believe this is a true research gap because the results of my study could potentially provide insight to prevention and treatment methods for victims of non-sexual spiritual abuse. I have linked the two articles that I found this week below.
References
Briggs, S., & Whittaker, A. (2018). Protecting children from faith-based abuse through accusations of witchcraft and spirit possession: Understanding contexts and informing practice. British Journal of Social Work, 48(8), 2157–2175. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcx155
Tailor, K., Piotrowski, C., Woodgate, R. L., & Letourneau, N. (2014). Child sexual abuse and adult religious life: Challenges of theory and method. Journal of Child Sexual Abuse: Research, Treatment, & Program Innovations for Victims, Survivors, & Offenders, 23(8), 865–884. https://doi.org/10.1080/10538712.2014.960633
Nathan
How you went about your search this week
I utilized the literature review search option to find articles related to mental health and bariatric surgery.
The keywords and terms used
Mental Health, Bariatric Surgery, Literature Review, Interventions, Lifelong Success
The gap you identified and an explanation of why you believe it is a true gap
Sarwar and Heinberg (2020) identify that recently behavioral health professionals have started to conduct interventions to encourage lifelong postoperative success. The authors indicate the need for additional studies for patients who experience low weight loss or unwanted psychological changes. The review discusses the importance mental health professionals play in adherence of behavioral changes and addressing psychopathology.
Sahar and Riazi (2021) conducted a review to determine the pre-surgery experience (PSE) of patients. The review was to look at experiences but did not seek to identify what patients felt would have been beneficial in their PSE. The review discovered there was no standard evaluation, psychological testing, or pre-surgery process for patients. The review also identified that bariatric programs utilize the pre-surgical psychological process very differently. Some programs attempted to identify and address psychological challenges while other programs just viewed the psychological evaluation as a requirement for surgery.
Sahar and Riazi (2021) discuss the importance of future studies to work with patients and collaborate on creating an appropriate and beneficial process. The authors state that a good starting point is to look at patients’ perspectives to develop a more patient-centered PSE. The PSE would be more beneficial if it was constructive and identified barriers, psychological challenges, and the importance of support.
The research I cited demonstrates a need for mental health services prior to surgery. The gap I have found is an understanding of a patient-driven pre-surgery experience. It is my goal to understand the patient perspective on what is a beneficial behavioral health pre-surgical approach for clinicians to conduct.
References
Sahar, K., & Riazi, A. (2021). Experiences of the bariatric pre-surgery evaluation process in a national health service—An Interpretative Phenomenology Analysis. Surgeries, 2(2), 199-215. https://doi.org/10.3390/surgeries2020021
Sarwer, D. B., & Heinberg, L. J. (2020). A review of the psychosocial aspects of clinically severe obesity and bariatric surgery. American Psychologist, 75(2), 252–264. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000550