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Miroslava Köverová - Margita Mesárošová (eds.)

The publication „Helping professions and self-care from the perspective of psychology and social work“ includes research studies focused on self-care, and the positive and negative effects of helping among specific groups of helping professionals – psychologists and social workers.

A number of Slovak as well as foreign authors contributed to the book of proceedings. The contributions are theoretical studies, research studies and case studies. The theoretical and research studies are focused on important issues of professional helping: self-care, compassion satisfaction, compassion fatigue, burnout, perceived stress, secondary traumatic stress, mindfulness, empathy, job satisfaction and turnover among psychologists and social workers.

Research interest in the phenomena is especially important in the context of the mental health of helping professionals and in reducing the negative consequences of helping. 

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Margita Mesárošová - Jozef Bavoľár - Miriam Slavkovská 

The current situation in the world education system, which declares the need to educate students for knowledge society, for improving the graduate employability is behind the motivation of authors to address competencies and key competencies for the knowledge society.

The authors present theoretical and empirical investigations based on the application of scientific methods of competency assessment and the use of contemporary scientific paradigms. The starting point is the concept of competencies in the context of current approaches of scientific psychology, which resonates in the official documents of the European Union and has been elaborated and enriched by the authors. The monograph focuses on a selected set of competencies, namely: competence to act as a self-regulated person, self-development, decision-making competencies, social and metacognitive competencies in the context of motivation. Knowledge about nature, the structure of competencies are presented, as well as their relations with personal and environmental variables.

The effort of the authors is also aimed at making available knowledge about the possibilities of assessing these competencies using current methods. Authors communicate the results of the creation and verification of competency assessment methods. The implementation of the research results presented in the monograph is perspective in the education and counseling of the target group of university students.

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Pavol Kačmár - Margita Mesárošová - Ladislav Lovaš (eds.)

This publication introduces a selected body of papers presented at scientific conference School psychology: History and perspectives that took place on October 17 and 18 in Košice.

The conference commemorated two important jubilees. The first was the birth anniversary of prof. Ján Hvozdík (100 years), the second jubilee was related to the opening of the study of psychology at the University of Pavol Jozef Šafárik (50 years).

The contributions have undergone peer review.

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Jana Nezkusilová - Margita Mesárošová (eds.)

Proceedings of Extended Abstracts from Interdisciplinary Scientific Conference

Conference proceedings comprise extended abstracts from contributions that were presented during the conference Negative consequences of performing helping professions II – Psychological, social and health aspects of performing helping professions, which was held on 12th of June 2019 in Košice.

The conference was organized as one of the outputs of the research project APVV 14-0921 Self-care as a factor of coping with the negative consequences of the practicizing the helping professions. Abstracts present either original research by the authors or summaries of the authors' findings in their long-term research activities focused on helping professions. One of the ambitions of the conference was to create a space for dialogue between academics and professionals working in helping professions. The interdisciplinary character of the conference has brought new ideas and perception of this issue, which has also been reflected in the rich response during the discussions. Professionals from field of psychology, social work, occupational medicine and behavioral medicine participated actively or passively in the conference.

Thus, the enriching aspect of the resulting proceedings is the interconnection of applied and theoretical studies related to wide range of helping professions.

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Margita Mesárošová - Miroslava Köverová - Soňa Lovašová

Intervention Program for Supporting Self-Care in Helping Professions: "How Do I Take Care of Myself?" The intervention program "How Do I Take Care of Myself?" was developed as part of the research project APVV14-0921, "Self-Care as a Factor in Coping with the Negative Consequences of Engaging in Helping Professions." Its uniqueness lies in being created based on specific research outputs from the program's authors and project.

In the first chapter, the authors offer insights into the preparation of the intervention program, justifying its theoretical foundations, methods, and specifics of the program participants. They also provide an overview of research on the effectiveness of various intervention programs aimed at reducing the negative consequences of helping and enhancing self-care and other positive effects of engaging in helping professions. Subsequent chapters focus on a detailed analysis and evaluation of the effectiveness of the intervention program "How Do I Take Care of Myself?" and its comparison with the effectiveness of other programs, which were differently focused, targeted at different populations of helping professionals, and had different theoretical and practical orientations and foundations. Most of these studies demonstrated positive changes only in isolated cases, due to various methodological shortcomings often related to practical application.

What differentiates the intervention program presented in this monograph is the participation of helping professionals actively practicing in the social field, unlike most intervention programs compiled and validated for students of these professions. The student population, being more accessible to researchers, allows for better methodology, including a larger number of participants, as well as experimental manipulation and group balancing. In the case of participants in the validation of the program "How Do I Take Care of Myself?", it involved practitioners who are engaged in the daily work process and completed training during their work breaks, which placed high demands on balancing their work and personal tasks. We believe that the effects we discovered during the validation of the effectiveness of the presented intervention program were not always clearly mathematically graspable but were evident from individual feedback.

We present the text of this monograph to the professional public with the aim of highlighting the benefits, limitations of the intervention program, as well as inspiring researchers and practitioners to further work in this area.

Authors

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Margita Mesárošová

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Margita Mesárošová-Miroslava Köverová-Radka Miháliková

The publication is a follow-up to the university textbook Progress in Educational Psychology. It is intended for both bachelor and master degree students. It contains questions, tasks, practical exercises, case studies and topics for discussion in the field of educational psychology. The aim of the publication is to support the active involvement of students in teaching, consolidation and deepening of their theoretical knowledge in educational psychology, as well as practicing and improving practical skills.

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Ladislav Lovaš - Margita Mesárošová (eds.)

Over the past two decades, psychologists have shown increased interest in the issues of self-regulation and self-control. The prepared publication is, in a sense, part of this process. Its foundation was the conference "Psychological Aspects of Self-Regulation and Its Contexts," held on October 14–15, 2010, in Košice. The event was organized by the Department of Psychology and the Department of Educational Psychology and Health Psychology at the Faculty of Arts, P. J. Šafárik University.

The publication of a collection of scientific papers with the same title fulfills the aim of presenting oral presentations and posters in an expanded form. The contributions are thematically divided into three sections: "Self-Control and Its Contexts," "Coping with Problematic Situations," and "Personality and Risk Behavior."

The publication and the conference that served as its basis were supported by the grant agency VEGA of the Ministry of Education and the Slovak Academy of Sciences as part of projects 1/0785/09 "Personal and Situational Factors of Self-Control" and 1/0310/10 "Social-Psychological Determinants of Healthy Psychosocial Development and Realization of Developmental Potential in Gifted and Disadvantaged Children and Adolescents."

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