This phenomenological study examines emotional partnership experiences among older adults living in Turkish nursing homes, employing Socioemotional Selectivity Theory (SST) as a critical theoretical lens to evaluate its cross-cultural applicability. The term emotional partnership is used to capture a continuum of relational orientations-including companionship, emotional intimacy, and romantic interest-that extends beyond strictly marital or sexualised categories and reflects culturally mediated expressions of late-life intimacy in Turkish nursing homes. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 30 residents (14 women, 16 men; aged 65-85) across two nursing homes in Ankara. Data were analysed using Braun and Clarke's reflexive thematic analysis, generating five themes: (1) "I Don't Want to Repeat That Experience": past relationships shaping new beginnings, (2) "We've Already Come to Life's End": temporal awareness and the foreclosure of new partnerships, (3) "The Children Didn't Want It, So I Gave Up Too": intergenerational gatekeeping of late-life partnership, (4) "Talking Too Much with a Man Creates Rumours": cultural and institutional boundaries on cross-gender interaction, and (5) "Will I Serve Him?": gendered caregiving expectations shaping partnership avoidance. While the findings partly support the core mechanisms of SST, they also reveal significant cultural and gendered variations that call for theoretical refinement. We propose a culturally situated extension of SST that incorporates family gatekeeping, patriarchal gender norms, and institutional contexts. Drawing on Kandiyoti's concept of patriarchal bargaining, we further argue that older women's avoidance of partnership may represent an active negotiation of gendered expectations rather than passive compliance with social norms. Overall, the findings suggest that SST's individualistic assumptions require reconsideration when applied to collectivist and tradition-oriented contexts, where relational autonomy is shaped by family approval and broader cultural norms. By foregrounding these dynamics, the study contributes to cross-cultural gerontological scholarship on aging, intimacy, and gender.
Following the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, children in affected regions exhibited everyday behaviors that challenge conventional psychological interpretations. Drawing on ethnographic field observations conducted in schools, shelters, and temporary housing in Miyagi Prefecture between March 2011 and March 2012, with follow-up observations from 2012 to 2013, this study examines five vignettes of children's post-disaster behaviors: hiding shoes, experiencing perceived scarcity related to school lunches, impulsive spending, giving away sweets and supplies, and engaging in silent play in communal spaces. The study aims to explore how these behaviors function as culturally and developmentally meaningful adaptations to disaster rather than as indicators of psychopathology. Analytically, these behaviors are interpreted through Japanese cultural frameworks-particularly group harmony (wa), reciprocal obligation (giri), and tacit social negotiation-alongside developmental theories of moral and cognitive growth in middle childhood. The findings suggest that these behaviors represent symbolic efforts by children to reassert moral agency, reconstruct temporal coherence, and restore social belonging in disrupted environments. The study concludes that culturally grounded, interpretive approaches are essential for understanding children's post-disaster responses and for developing psychosocial interventions that recognize children as active agents in communal recovery.
Social connection is a core determinant of mental and physical health, and connection-oriented services (e.g. peer programmes, groups, and social prescribing) are increasingly implemented. Yet social connection is culturally patterned. When participants' interaction styles align with a service's implicit organisational norms, belonging may be easier to achieve; when they do not, cultural mismatch may reduce recognition, constrain participation, and intensify loneliness, leaving some participants feeling more disconnected. This paper operationalises organisational norms around participation and help-seeking using three sociological elements (symbols, values, and norms), and proposes a brief reflective audit that can be embedded in routine quality improvement. The audit is intended to help services make implicit rules of engagement more visible (e.g. expectations around disclosure, turn-taking, help-seeking, disagreement, and what counts as "good participation"), and identify which interaction styles are more readily recognised versus under-supported. Two possible outputs are proposed: (1) a participant-facing, plain-language participation brief that may improve clarity about how participation works; and (2) an internal action plan intended to widen routes to connection (e.g. structured turn-taking, opt-in written or one-to-one routes, small-group formats, and facilitator prompts validating quiet participation). Making organisational norms more explicit may offer a practical reflective approach to strengthen inclusivity by design in connection-focused services.
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This study examines the relationship between adaptation difficulties in ageing, disaster awareness, disaster risk perception, and disaster risk communication among older adults. Data were collected from 385 older adults living in Niğde Province, Türkiye, through an online survey between October 31 and December 31, 2023, in this cross-sectional study. Adaptation to ageing was assessed through adaptation difficulties using the Scale for Assessing Adaptation Difficulties in the Elderly. The data were analyzed using independent samples t-tests and binary logistic regression. Lower levels of adaptation difficulty were associated with higher disaster awareness, stronger risk perception, and more effective disaster risk communication. Older adults with higher adaptation difficulty were more likely to experience loneliness during and after disasters and were less likely to seek support from family members despite limited self-sufficiency (p < 0.05). In addition, many participants framed disaster preparedness in spiritual terms and reported relying primarily on traditional media, particularly radio and television, as well as informal social networks for disaster-related information. Adaptation difficulties play an important role in shaping disaster-related awareness, perceptions, and communication among older adults. Strengthening psychosocial adaptation, enhancing perceived control, and promoting accessible, culturally sensitive, and multi-channel risk communication strategies may improve disaster preparedness in this population.
Sexual health has been defined as a human right and a key component of human well-being. In contexts of migration, its exercise is influenced by life trajectories, access barriers, and cultural factors that shape perceptions and care practices. In Chile, sexual health care for members of the Haitian population-a recently arrived group with a distinct language-poses communicative and cultural challenges for the provision of equitable and appropriate services. This study explores cultural beliefs and practices that shape sexual health care among Haitian migrants using a sequential mixed-methods design. It included semi-structured interviews (n = 33) and a survey (n = 251) among Haitian residents in the Metropolitan Region of the country. Survey participants were recruited by respondent driven sampling. Findings, based on both men's and women's perspectives, revealed practices such as the use of herbs and antibiotics during menstruation and postpartum rituals, rooted in traditions and beliefs about cleanliness, body self-care, economic hardship, and male approval. Tensions between biomedical and spiritual understandings of HIV were also observed. A mixed-methods approach made it possible to understand connections between the cultural, material and gender dimensions of sexual health, underscoring the need for culturally sensitive policies that recognise migrants' agency in shaping their sexual health.
Employed informal caregivers in Iran navigate caregiving responsibilities within a context of absent formal support infrastructure, rigid cultural expectations, and economic constraints. This study explored their lived experiences, focusing on work-care balance, stress management, and interactions with support structures. A qualitative descriptive study was conducted using semi-structured in-depth interviews with five employed female informal caregivers of older persons (aged 65 and above) in urban Iran. Interviews were conducted in Persian via Zoom between January and March 2025, lasting 60 to 120 min. Data were analyzed using Reflexive Thematic Analysis, informed by Role Theory and Lazarus and Folkman's Stress and Coping Theory. Six themes emerged: (1) onset and context of caregiving, (2) work-care role balance, (3) stress and coping strategies, (4) social and workplace support, (5) personal and cultural experiences, and (6) advice and future perspectives. Findings reveal a distinctive "triple burden" where structural barriers (absent caregiver leave policies, inadequate insurance coverage, limited respite services), cultural expectations (filial piety norms, gendered care obligations), and economic pressures (inability to reduce work hours, high caregiving costs) converge to create unsustainable caregiving conditions. Participants sacrificed sleep, personal relationships, and career advancement while experiencing chronic exhaustion, workplace discrimination, and social isolation. Coping strategies proved insufficient without formal support structures. Unlike developed countries with established support systems, Iranian caregivers operate within institutional silence where caregiving remains an exclusively private burden. Urgent policy reforms are needed: caregiver leave policies, subsidized respite services, insurance coverage for home care, workplace accommodations, and culturally sensitive counseling programs.
Cultural and intangible heritage has been part of human daily life since time immemorial, fulfils a function within the community and acts as an element of identity. Its potential as a stimulus in Reminiscence Therapy (RT), however, has been scarcely explored, despite well-documented evidence on the role of music, crafts or sports as facilitators of autobiographical recall. This pilot study had three operational objectives: (i) to design a reproducible protocol for selecting elements of intangible cultural heritage (traditional oral literature and traditional dances) suitable for personalised RT; (ii) to develop and field-test the first prototype of the LONG-REMI App, an AI-supported tablet application that delivers these stimuli in an individualised manner; and (iii) to examine the impact of those stimuli on memory recall, communication and interaction in older adults with and without neurocognitive disorder. Pilot, prospective, multicentre, mixed-methods study with a participatory observational component, conducted in six institutions (three Day Care Centres in Catalonia (Spain) and three centres in Portugal) between February 2021 and April 2022. Fifty-six participants aged ≥ 65 years were enrolled (n = 21 without cognitive decline, recruited from two centres; n = 35 with mild or moderate cognitive decline, recruited from four day-care centres). Mean age was 80.71 ± 6.82 years (range 66-94); 41 (73.21%) were women and 43 (76.78%) had a low educational level (including two illiterate participants). Cognitive status was classified using Reisberg's Global Deterioration Scale (GDS 3 and 4) and the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE; group with cognitive decline: 22.26 ± 5.90, range 7-30). Each participant attended four weekly individual 45-minute sessions on Android tablets. The App database contained more than 500 multisensory stimuli organised in two difficulty modalities (low / high). Data were collected through the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS, 1-10) for usability and satisfaction; the Spanish-adapted Computer System Usability Questionnaire (CSUQ, 7-point Likert); and the Spanish-validated PANAS, administered before and at the end of the intervention. In addition, a structured observation grid (memory recall, verbal and non-verbal interaction), audio-video recording and facilitators' field notes supported the qualitative arm. Content validation of the App database was carried out by the multidisciplinary research team itself, through consensus during project meetings; a formal Delphi with an external panel is foreseen for the planned randomised trial. Stimuli combining rhyme and music (songbook items and ballads) and stimuli supported by video produced the highest frequency of recall episodes and of communication / interaction events. Brief audio-only stimuli (proverbs and nursery songs without video) elicited fewer recall events and were associated with observed disengagement. Usability and satisfaction were highly perceived in both groups: VAS usability 7.75 ± 1.88 and VAS satisfaction 8.38 ± 1.57 on a 1-10 scale; the CSUQ overall score was 6.95 ± 0.22 in the group without cognitive decline and 5.44 ± 1.09 in the group with cognitive decline (1-7 Likert). PANAS scores showed a statistically significant shift in positive affect from pre- to post-intervention (28.86 ± 8.88 vs. 36.70 ± 9.43; Z = - 4.18; p < 0.001), while no significant change was observed in negative affect (12.09 ± 3.19 vs. 11.89 ± 3.00; p = 0.688). Participants completed on average 3.59 ± 0.40 of the four planned sessions. Traditional oral literature and traditional dance, when delivered through an AI-supported App, can act as effective triggers for reminiscence in older adults with and without cognitive decline. The study contributes (a) a replicable protocol for cross-cultural selection of intangible heritage stimuli, (b) preliminary evidence on which formats (audio + video, rhyme + music) are most effective, and (c) an open methodological framework for future randomised, longitudinal trials.
Sexuality fluidity is shaped by individual processes and cultural values and might thus be perceived and experienced differently across different sociocultural contexts. This qualitative study explored how sexuality fluidity was understood and experienced by Thai LGBTQ+ individuals. Using free association narrative interviews with 14 participants and reflexive thematic analysis, the findings show that sexuality fluidity in Thailand emerges as a relational and future-oriented process. Participants' experiences highlight a process of dual validation, involving exploration, self-acceptance, and recognition by others. Fluidity is also embedded within narratives shaped by cis-heteronormativity, homophobic discourses, and familial expectations, where possibilities for change were negotiated in relation to dominant ideals of marriage. Among participants in this study, rather than reflecting instability, fluidity functions as a culturally pragmatic strategy that balances personal authenticity with social harmony. Overall, the findings suggest that sexuality fluidity in the Thai context operates at the intersection of self-understanding, relational negotiation, and future-oriented adaptation.
Iran's ageing population presents distinct social challenges within a culture where belonging has been traditionally based on family relationships. While research suggests ageism may affect a sense of belonging, this association remains unexplored in non-Western contexts with traditionally family-centred values. This cross-sectional study investigated the association between ageism experiences and sense of belonging among older Iranian adults. A sample of 302 community-dwelling older adults (mean age = 67.75 years, SD = 6.59) from Tehran and Qazvin completed the Ageism Survey Scale and Sense of Belonging Instrument. Results showed that older adults who reported a lower sense of belonging also reported more experiences of ageism. Hierarchical regression analysis demonstrated that the full model, including demographic variables and sense of belonging, explained 8% of the variance in ageism experiences, with belonging accounting for 7% of the variance beyond demographic factors. Additionally, higher education levels, higher socio-economic status, and visits from relatives were associated with stronger psychological belonging. These findings contribute to understanding how demographic factors and a sense of belonging relate to ageism experiences in a non-Western, collectivist culture where older adults are traditionally valued.
Although Asklepios (Asclepius), the god of medicine, was the main and most famous healing deity of Classical Antiquity, other gods and goddesses also had healing aspects and abilities - especially Eileithyia, the goddess of childbirth and labour pains and the protector of pregnant and birthing women and newborns. Unlike the main ancient deities (including Asklepios/Asclepius), the cult of Eileithyia was practiced in smaller districts, centred around an altar with a statue (sometimes the statue was placed in a small temple) and sometimes located outside the main part of city-states or directly in nature. One such rural sanctuary of the goddess Eileithyia is located on the island of Paros, on the southern slope of Mount Kounados (267 m above sea level), situated about 3.5 km northeast of the centre of Parikia, the capital of the island. The southern, slightly lower peak of this mountain (254 m above sea level) forms a small plateau, along and below the edge of which there is a zone of distinctive rock cliffs, creating smaller overhangs or caves in some places. The sanctuary of Eileithyia is located on a narrow terrace in the zone of these rocky cliffs, about 30 m below the plateau of the lower peak. It is an important site of its kind in the whole of Greece. The centre of worship here was probably a sacred spring (under a rock shelter) and a small cave (or rock overhang). However, offerings and inscriptions were also placed in several niches in the rock face east of the cave (between the cave and the spring). Excavations in the sanctuary have yielded rich finds - inscriptions, votive reliefs and, above all, dozens of (fragments of) terracotta busts and statuettes of women and ceramic sherds. The oldest finds from this site date back to the Geometric period (8th century BC), and the cult persisted here until the Late Roman Empire - probably until the 3rd century AD.
This paper seeks to challenge the dominance of Global North frameworks in international work on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), arguing that decolonising this work requires centring Global South knowledge, lived experience, and culturally grounded understandings of sexuality, including sexual pleasure. Decolonisation is here understood as dismantling inequitable power relations, shifting epistemic authority away from Global North institutions, and prioritising Indigenous, local, and self-determined practices. Writing from within Global North academic institutions, we offer a reflexive critique that acknowledges the tension of advocating for decolonial change from inside the very systems that are under examination. We examine how dominant models have shaped SRHR research, policy, and practice, often limiting responsiveness to, and engagement with, Global South communities. Drawing on examples from Māori communities, Somalia, and West Africa, we demonstrate how culturally driven approaches that integrate pleasure and wellness can challenge inequality, broaden understandings and measures of sexual health, and open pathways to sexual liberation. In doing this, the commentary contributes to that reimagining by using real-world examples to show what becomes possible when pleasure and Global South narratives are centred - transforming how knowledge is produced, how research questions are framed, and how interventions are designed and implemented.
Following China's shift towards pronatalist governance, vasectomy has been reported as difficult to obtain in some public hospitals, even as online narratives frame male sterilisation as responsible partnership and protection of women's health. Treating access as an institutional and discursive problem, this article analyses public-facing justificatory discourse rather than clinical practice itself. Using qualitative document analysis and reflexive thematic analysis, it examines a purposive multi-genre corpus of policy and legal texts, statistical reporting, English- and Chinese-language journalism, hospital public accounts, and peer-reviewed studies on vasectomy trends, reversal demand, and social media narratives. Four linked logics recur across the corpus: eligibility tied to administratively legible marital/parental status; refusal justified through regret-and-risk talk that protects both patients and institutions under policy ambiguity; responsibility recognised mainly when aligned with pronatalist family-completion trajectories; and opaque service boundaries that shift information work onto individuals and couples. These dynamics produce conditional reproductive citizenship: vasectomy remains legitimate in principle but is practically available chiefly to men legible as stable husbands and fathers and low risk for hospitals.
This paper examines how island characteristics affect young people's sexual and reproductive health and rights in Aruba, a small island developing state in the Caribbean. Drawing on Baldacchino's notion that islandness can 'contour and nudge' behaviours, it employs assemblage theory to map how island-specific social structures, including redo (gossip culture) and reputation politics, produce affective flows that limit young people's capacities to act in support of their sexual and reproductive health and rights. Over 18 months of arts-based participatory research with 12 young people (aged 14-17), this study identified how the entanglement of colonial legacies, whose traces persist in religious institutions and small-island social surveillance, create restrictive conditions for meaning-making in respect of sexual and reproductive health and rights. Findings reveal how these dynamics fuel silence about sexual violence, restrict access to sexual and reproductive health services and limit the expression of gender and sexuality diversity. This paper offers both a theoretical contribution, operationalising assemblage theory to understand contour and nudge in an island setting and practical insights for sexual health provision in a small island developing state context where anonymity is rare, and community surveillance is pervasive.
Accounts of digital infrastructure have privileged corporate, military, and countercultural origins, but this article identifies genealogy and religion as central-if overlooked-sites of infrastructural innovation. Focusing on twentieth-century developments among microcomputer hobbyists and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), the article draws on archival analysis of hobbyist newsletters and Church publications. It shows how genealogists built nationwide networks, negotiated technical constraints, and helped shape durable data standards and systems for networked information sharing. By demonstrating how Mormon theology materially informed system design and implementation, the article reframes digital infrastructure as an outcome of domestic, religious, and kinship practices rather than Silicon Valley alone.
Scholarship on security technologies has focused on states and infrastructures, but this article shows how security logics reshaped everyday manners inside the home. Introducing the concept of "securitized etiquette," the article examines how video intercoms transformed domestic interaction in modern Japan. Situating contemporary practices within a longer history from the Meiji period to the present, it traces a shift from a "voice-calling culture" (koe o kakeru bunka) to technologically mediated interaction governed by logics of security and risk. By focusing on the materiality of manners, the article highlights domestic technologies as active participants in the reconfiguration of social relations and everyday governance.
Healthcare settings are contexts where Black and Latine sexual minoritised individuals experience stigma when accessing HIV services. Negative experiences have the potential to shape an individual's beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours regarding future HIV prevention. To understand their experiences accessing HIV preventive care, this study used an abductive approach to explore (1) Black and Latine sexual minoritised individuals' experiences with providers when accessing HIV prevention; and (2) how these interactions shaped subsequent feelings and behaviours towards accessing such services. Thirty semi-structured interviews were conducted with Black and Latine sexual minoritised individuals (Mage = 26.30, SD = 2.97) living in the USA. Participants described both negative (stigmatising and uncomfortable) and positive (openness and trusting) patient-provider interactions in healthcare settings. The combination of these negative and positive patient-provider interactions shaped the emotional experiences attached to access experiences in healthcare settings that, in turn, shaped behavioural responses (e.g. impression management or intentions to seek care from more culturally competent providers). Together, these findings highlight mechanisms that underpin the link between patient-provider interactions and the sustained use of HIV preventive services, as well as the importance of further training for healthcare providers.
This article examines how resilience and its key tool, adaptability, were defined, mobilized, and contested during Shanghai's Zero-COVID period, foregrounding the understudied perspectives of psychological counsellors. Drawing on 30 interviews with 25 counsellors and a discursive analysis of 268 posts from the Shanghai Mental Health Centre (SMHC), it shows how state discourse framed resilience as optimism, acceptance, and disciplined self-adjustment, while counsellors reinterpreted it through trauma, helplessness, delayed collapse, and relational care. As intermediaries increasingly woven into state institutions through outsourcing arrangements, counsellors negotiated between official prescriptions and the lived crises of clients whose distress was shaped by uncertainty, family conflict, gendered burdens, and economic precarity. By tracing these quiet negotiations, the article argues that resilience in Shanghai was neither a universal trait nor simply a neoliberal injunction. Rather, it functioned as a culturally situated, politically charged field of interpretation through which mental health, citizenship, and crisis survival were negotiated. Situating Shanghai within wider debates on resilience, the article shows how resilience became a "multiple": at once demanded, embodied, contested, and re-signified through the interactions of state institutions, professional ethics, and the uneven temporalities of crisis.
This paper explores migrant men's sexual and affective desires, the constraints on their sexuality, and how unmet needs are managed during migration and transit across Europe. Drawing on participant observation and repeated in-depth interviews with 39 migrant men in Brussels and Calais, the analysis shows that sexuality is neither suspended nor fully enacted, but shaped by legal precarity, material insecurity, homelessness, the volatility of mobility, and religious, cultural, and moral constraints. While participants expressed the wish for intimacy and affection, these desires were frequently managed through situational sexual encounters, intentional abstinence, refusal, or self-restraint. Findings demonstrate how legal surveillance extends into the sexual realm, impacting men's sexual behaviours and rendering sexuality a site of self-monitoring. By foregrounding migrant men's lived experience, this paper challenges narratives of migrant male hypersexuality and highlights how migration policies may govern not only borders, but also bodies, desires, and sexuality.
Gynaecological cancers and their treatment can alter sexual functioning, intimacy, and relationship dynamics, yet these concerns are frequently difficult to raise in clinical encounters and everyday support networks. This study examines how sexuality is articulated and collectively interpreted in online peer communities by analysing sex-related discussions in three Reddit forums focused on cervical, endometrial, and ovarian cancer. After web-scraping posts in RStudio, a reflexive thematic analysis was conducted to identify recurring patterns in how participants describe sexual concerns, seek guidance, and construct shared understandings of 'normal' sexual change in the context of illness. Four themes were developed: (1) sexual pain and distress; (2) body image and sexual selfhood; (3) seeking peer advice and lateral expertise; and (4) relational strain. Together, the findings identify Reddit as a venue for collective meaning-making about sexuality under illness conditions, highlighting how lay communities generate practical and interpretive resources that complement, and at times extend beyond, clinical framings of sexual recovery.