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IntroductionA rising trend has occurred in the physical and mental health challenges faced by recovering UK service personnel. To support these individuals, bespoke inclusive multiactivity and adventurous training courses (MAC) have been developed. This study investigated the MAC’s influence on participants’ ability to sustain day-to-day changes that facilitate positive mental health and psychological need satisfaction.MethodsThe 146 UK service personnel who participated in this study attended a five-day MAC 12 months ago. To investigate how the supportive experience influenced participants’ lives, quantitative and qualitative data were collected via an online survey. Open-ended questioning and abductive analysis were conducted to understand mechanisms, influential aspects of the course and positive behaviour change.ResultsPositive behaviour changes were reported by 74% of the respondents. These changes align with positive psychological well-being (98%). Impactful elements of the course experienced by participants mostly aligned with the three basic psychological needs of autonomy (34%), competence (36%) and relatedness (61%).ConclusionsRecovery support programmes that encompass health coaching adventurous activities, such as the MAC, can initiate long-term positive behaviour change for recovering military personnel. In this specific context, the concurrence of the self-determination theory concepts that underpin the course delivery and participant outcomes is a powerful endorsement of implementation fidelity.

We examined the independent and interactive effects of the Big-Five personality traits on dispositional coping and coping effectiveness among athletes. Participants were 400 athletes (mean age 22.97, s = 7.00) from the UK. The athletes completed measures of personality, dispositional coping, and coping effectiveness. The Big-Five personality traits independently predicted the use of higher order coping dimensions. Extraversion, agreeableness, and openness positively predicted task-oriented coping. Neuroticism positively predicted distraction-oriented coping, whereas agreeableness, extraversion, and conscientiousness were negative predictors. Both extraversion and neuroticism positively predicted disengagement-oriented coping, whereas agreeableness and conscientiousness were negative predictors. Only neuroticism predicted coping effectiveness, which emerged as a negative predictor. Findings also showed a two-way interaction effect for predicting task-oriented coping between neuroticism and openness, and between extraversion and neuroticism. A further two-way interaction effect for predicting distraction-oriented coping was found between agreeableness and conscientiousness. These findings reinforce the need to investigate not only independent, but also interactive effects of personality dimensions upon sport-related dispositional coping.

Occupational stress has been widely recognized as a global challenge and has received increased attention by the academic community. Ambulatory Assessment methodologies, combining psychophysiological measures of stress, offer a promising avenue for future prevention and/or rehabilitation stress research. Considering that policing is well known for being a particularly stressful occupation, Emergency Responders Officers (EROs) stress levels were investigated. Particularly, this study analyzed: (i) physiological stress data obtained during shifts and compared these data with baseline levels (days off), as well as (ii) with normative values for healthy populations; (iii) stress symptoms differences from beginning to end of shift; (iv) stress events and events intensity and (v) the acceptability and feasibility of this proof-of-concept study in a highly stressful occupation. A Geo-location event system was used to help retrospective accounts of psychological stress, combined with electrocardiogram (ECG) data and mobile self-reports, that include stress symptoms, event types and event intensity. Results suggest that EROs experience high levels of stress (both on-duty and off duty) when compared to healthy populations. Stress symptoms increase from the beginning to end of the shift. However, the mean events intensity was very low. It can be concluded that stress may not always be diagnosed when using merely self-reports. These findings highlight the importance of combining both self-report and physiological stress measures in occupational health contexts. Finally, results confirm the acceptability and feasibility of the multi-method used. Key implications for policy makers and applied practitioners in the area of occupational health and future research directions are discussed.