The collective trauma of COVID-19 has had a negative impact on people’s experiences of their bodies and eating, as demonstrated by studies showing increased disordered eating and body dissatisfaction during this time. The pandemic has also been shown to have had a unique and disproportionate impact on transgender and gender nonbinary (TGNB) individuals (e.g., lost gender affirming care access, elevated levels of job loss). Given that TGNB individuals already face increased risk of body distress and disordered eating compared to cisgender individuals in a nonpandemic context and have been disproportionately impacted by contextual changes with COVID-19, it is likely that the pandemic has had a distinct impact on TGNB individuals’ experiences of body and eating distress. The present study aims to understand these impacts through an inductive, reflexive thematic qualitative approach. Participants were 13 TGNB individuals (10/13 gender nonbinary/gender queer; 8/13 White). They completed semistructured audio interviews about their broad experiences of body and eating during COVID-19, as well as how they understood changes across domains of family, community, access to resources, and intersectional identities interacting with these experiences. Themes included (a) Losing Affirming Spaces and Security, (b) Gaining Affirming and Supportive Spaces Online, (c) Reflecting on Embodied Gender and Identities, (d) Realizing New Connections and Insights, and (e) Considering the Self in Social Context. Notably, each of these themes interacted with participants’ self-reported experiences of body and eating distress and, in some cases, healing. Our results illuminate risk and resilience factors and areas requiring innovation during and after COVID-19.
Health psychology research emphasizes biological and positivist methods, giving less attention to the multifaceted sociocultural and political forces at play in health processes and outcomes. In this article, we present a new sociostructural approach for working toward racial equity in health psychology research, consistent with public psychology goals. This new approach uses the multicultural orientation framework (MCO) to guide health psychologists to consider the sociocultural and political history of their work, systems of oppression and privilege embedded in health research, and a path toward using research to achieve social change, antiracism, and health equity. We identify MCO as a tool for health psychology researchers to engage in ongoing self-reflection, cultivate cultural humility, and act upon opportunities to examine cultural factors at each step of the research process. After describing the MCO’s components of cultural humility, cultural opportunities, and cultural comfort, we introduce questions that researchers can use to guide self-reflexivity and the implementation of MCO into health psychology research focused on racial equity. Specifically, we present the issue of Black women’s perinatal health to embody the importance of applying MCO to health disparities research. We then walk through how to apply MCO in health research study development, data collection, and data dissemination. As we outline how to apply MCO to promote antiracist health research, we aim to enact social change consistent with the public psychology goals of building and fostering strong community relationships that inform social policy.
Objectives Preliminary research on self-compassion as a target for reducing forms of bias is promising, yet healthcare provider self-compassion has not yet been explored in relationship to weight bias. Healthcare providers commonly endorse weight stigma and bias, contributing to health disparities for patients with “obesity.” The current study explores the feasibility of the self-compassion loving kindness meditation (LKM) as a brief intervention that reduces weight bias in nursing students. Method Participants (189 nursing students) were randomly assigned to the LKM condition or body scan control condition before engaging in an implicit bias task and answering self-report measures of internalization of the thin ideal, weight bias, positive attitudes towards people with “obesity,” positive emotions, self-compassion, cognitive flexibility, and compassionate care. Results Statistically significant differences in self-compassion, cognitive flexibility, weight bias, and compassionate care failed to be found between the groups. Participants in the LKM condition endorsed significantly higher levels of positive emotionality compared to the control condition. Higher levels of self-compassion were related to lower levels of weight bias for participants in both conditions. Multiple linear regression analyses revealed that internalization of the thin ideal and self-compassion accounted for 19.2% of the variance in positive attitudes towards people with “obesity.” Conclusions This study suggests the importance of examining self- and other-compassion in the context of weight stigma. Its findings exemplify the complexity of weight stigma and the need to further explore the mechanisms to be targeted to effectively reduce healthcare professionals’ bias. Pre-registration This study is not preregistered.
This introductory article to the special section on addressing health in psychotherapy offers the Community Wellness Model (CWM) as a useful framework for addressing illness in the context of therapy at the sites of personal, relational, and collective well-being. We provide information on the prevalence of health concerns in the general public and clients seeking psychotherapy, and how health psychology intervention research largely focuses on outcomes without attending to therapeutic processes. In this introductory article, we then highlight the nine articles that comprise the following two parts in the special section: (a) Identifying What is (Un)Known About Health in Psychotherapy and (b) Focus on Psychotherapy for Specific Health Conditions and Populations. This introductory article concludes with suggestions to psychotherapy practitioners and researchers on how to incorporate the CWM when integrating health into psychotherapy.
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