A picture of a tender encounter between Pope Francis and Vinicio Riva, an Italian has become popular in 2013. Pope hugged Vinicio who was suffering from neurofibromatosis, a genetic disorder with growths and itchy sores from head to toe. Later Vinicio explained his experience to the media in the following words “When he came close…
Every year WHO celebrates ‘International Self-Care Day’ on July 24th. The choice of this date was intentional. July 24th can be abbreviated as 24/7, which also means 24 hours and seven days. Therefore, the message is loud and clear, self-care is an effort without breaks. It’s a continuous process where every individual tries to care…
Social media helped us to recognize the fact that the social acceptance is a significant factor in human life. People do certain risky things for their social media contents. Some others do silly and funny things to amuse others. Yet another group of people attract the viewers by opening up their private life in the…
IPSOS, one of the largest research companies in the world, has conducted a ‘trustworthiness-index study’ globally in the last five consecutive years from 2018 to 2023. Each year they interviewed around twenty thousand adults from around 30 different countries, including India. Presenting 18 various professions they asked the participants to express their perception of trust…
There were many traumatic events in connection with the recent landslides in Wayanad. One of such events captured the attention of the social media in the last week. It was the personal sharing of a mother named Sujatha and her granddaughter Mrudula. In a voice filled with sadness, she narrates an episode of her rainy…
Along with the personal reasons, there can have some situational stressors and social factors behind child sexual abuse offences by clerics. These situational stressors do not cause abuse but serve as ‘triggers’. Shifting from one place to another–initially from family to seminary, seminary to parish and one parish to another–is a general fact in the…
A healthy self-esteem among students had become a focal point of education policy by the 1980s in the United States and obligatory by the 1990s. They used methods suggested by popular psychology, such as games involving a group of students and teachers talking about how much they like themselves, and a similar ‘self-esteem programme’. It…
There are various theories which explains the etiology of child sexual abusive behaviour of a perpetrator. Among them ‘attachment theories’ and ‘developmental theories’ find the dysfunctional parenting and childhood traumas as the root of such abusive behaviours. Attachment theories find an interrelation between attachment defects and child sexual abuse behaviour behaviour. Attachment styles in adulthood…
Insights from the therapeutic practises for child sexual abuse offenders explain the correlation between sexual offenders’ self-esteem and their sexual violence towards children. Earlier the treatment for sex offenders addressed the sexual deviance directly, focusing on the behavioural interventions and cognitive interventions. Later more comprehensive treatment programmes were developed to include interventions that targeted self-esteem…
First of all, child sexual abuse is an abusive act which may involve aggression or violence. Self-esteem has shown some correlation with aggressive behaviour in general. Conventional wisdom has regarded low self-esteem as an important cause of violence (Baumeister et al., 1996, p. 5). Different publications regarding physical abuse towards children has indicated that parental…