Journal of Medical Psychology

The COVID-19 pandemic has seen working practice in Cystic Fibrosis (CF) move to more remote clinical models. This study assesses the impact of shifting working models on the relationships between families of young people with CF and CF Multi-disciplinary Teams (MDT) as well as parents perceptions of working remotely.

Six semi-structured interviews with parents of young people under the care of a regional UK CF specialist centre were analysed using Inductive content analysis.

Three domains emerged: Interpersonal Relationships, Remote Clinics and CF in the Context of COVID-19. The enduring and close relationships between the MDT and families were discussed as well as the acceptability of remote clinics moving forwards.

The importance of the quality in the relationship between families and CF MDTs is vital to enhance ongoing care. Remote working was acceptable in the context of COVID-19 and with some considerations could be useful moving forwards.

Previous studies have shown that medical students are more prone to suffer from symptoms related to depression than other students. Even though there is some evidence that psychology students also experience such symptoms, research concerning the mental health of future psychologists is scarce.

The aims of this study were threefold: (a) to determine the prevalence of symptoms related to depression among medical and psychology students (b) to investigate risk factors, which may have a potential influence on the development of depressive symptoms and (c) to examine resilience factors in order to indicate possible approaches to improve the mental health of the students.

A total of 673 medical and psychology students completed the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) to assess depressive symptoms, a neuroticism scale, and a standardized questionnaire for 13 risk and eight resilience factors derived from the literature.

While the results of previous research concerning the prevalence of depressive symptoms could be replicated for medical students (22% exceeding the cut-off in the BDI-II), psychology students demonstrated an even higher prevalence (28%). Ten potential risk factors and five potential resilience factors could be identified, which also showed a cumulative effect: The more risk factors students reported, the more depressive symptoms they experienced; the inverse effect was observed for resilience factors.

Not only medical but also psychology students show elevated depressive symptomatology. In the university context, notably, the pressure to perform represents a potential risk factor, whereas the presence of just two resilience factors such as emotional support and study satisfaction contribute to a decrease of symptoms.

Sleep is a central factor for a healthy lifestyle and thus a health-related resource.

The present study clarifies the origin and importance of sleep hygiene behaviour as a possible coping strategy of students and examines the extent to which students use sleep to cope with stress.

For this purpose, in this longitudinal study a total of N = 145 students reported on sleep hygiene behaviour in everyday study life, health-related intention formation, subjective experience of stress and sleep quality over a period of two weeks. Multiple regression and moderation analyses were calculated.

Intentions to enact sleep hygiene behaviour were not triggered by current stress experiences. However, significant interaction between intentions to and actually enacted sleep hygiene behaviour was found. In students with high intentions, sleep hygiene behaviour leads to decreased stress experiences.

Students’ sleep hygiene behaviour supports coping with stress in students with high intentions. Further research must identify specifics of sleep hygiene behaviour and ways of increasing intention to use it as coping strategy in students’ health-promotion.