Search Results (3,020)

Background: Moral development (MD) arises from the interaction of attachment, temperament, emotion regulation, and decision-making. Children and adolescents with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) frequently show impairments across these domains, suggesting increased vulnerability to disruptions in MD. However, the mechanisms linking ADHD to MD remain poorly understood. Methods: A systematic review was conducted according to PRISMA 2020 guidelines. PubMed was searched for studies published between January 2014 and November 2024 examining MD-related constructs, including moral reasoning, fairness, aggression, bullying, callous–unemotional (CU) traits, decision-making, and reward sensitivity, in individuals aged 0–18 years with diagnosed or subclinical ADHD. Due to substantial heterogeneity in study design, measures, and outcomes, a qualitative synthesis was performed. Results: Of the 2104 records identified, 23 studies met inclusion criteria. Insecure or disorganized attachment, difficult temperament, and emotional dysregulation consistently emerged as developmental risk factors for impaired MD. Hyperactivity–impulsivity and deficient inhibitory control were strongly associated with aggressive and antisocial behaviors. Children with ADHD demonstrated a pronounced preference for immediate over delayed rewards, altered decision-making in social contexts, and reduced sensitivity to positive feedback. CU traits and aggression were frequently identified as behavioral correlates of MD impairments, particularly in interaction with family adversity and comorbid externalizing conditions. Social dysfunction, including bullying involvement, peer rejection, and interpersonal difficulties, was common and contributed to elevated long-term psychosocial risk. Conclusions: ADHD is associated with multidimensional vulnerabilities in MD through intertwined cognitive, emotional, and relational pathways. Interventions targeting attachment security, emotion regulation, reward processing, and social skills may foster MD and reduce later social difficulties. Longitudinal and cross-cultural research is needed to clarify causal mechanisms and inform developmentally sensitive prevention and treatment strategies. Full article

This study critically examines how Artificial Intelligence for Social Responsibility (AI for SR) is enacted within Thai education, using this Global South context to expose the universal dynamics of educational marketization. Drawing on Freire’s critical pedagogy and Habermas’s theory of lifeworld, the research employs a qualitative design grounded in critical phenomenology. Analysis of interviews, observations, and policy documents reveals that AI for SR is driven less by ethical participation than by policy compliance, funding agendas, and portfolio-driven competition. This dynamic transform responsibility from a moral practice into symbolic capital. Students become producers of symbolic output, and educators act as image managers for institutional displays. The study concludes by proposing a critical pedagogical framework that reclaims AI for SR as a public good, emphasizing dialog and social justice to resist this commodification. Full article

Background: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a leading cause of disability but one of the least recognized health problems in the world, affecting up to 69 million people annually. The associated lifelong disability in survivors, the loss of economic productivity, and being a risk factor for dementia consume 0.5% of global economic activity. Yet TBI is still largely invisible in national surveillance systems and not well represented in chronic disease frameworks. Consequently, governments are not equipped to provide proportional financing of acute care and long-term care of survivors, nor to build health care systems and resources for improving outcomes of TBI through policy frameworks targeting prevention, treatment, and equitable access. Objective: This commentary aims to provide a comprehensive picture of the global effort to formally recognize TBI as a notifiable and chronic condition, including the justifications for recognition, the formation of an international coalition of stakeholders, and the strategic plan for resolution at WHA79 of the World Health Assembly, one of the first concerted multinational efforts that occurred as a side event during the 78th World Health Assembly (WHA78) in May 2025. Methods: This commentary integrates information from epidemiological studies, global registries, and testimonies from people with lived experience of TBI. We analyze these data to develop policy needs and corresponding initiatives to address key needs. These include coordinated efforts to advocate change, such as technical briefings, consultations with stakeholders, and storytelling led by survivors, all of which informed and formed a part of the WHA78 side event. Our efforts have garnered wide, multi-sector support. Results: The WHA78 side event showed that ministries of health, neurosurgical, neurological, and rehabilitation societies, academic researchers, WHO representatives, and survivors all unprecedentedly support the recognition of the importance of TBI, facilitating national policies for its prevention and treatment via standardized surveillance. More than 30 non-governmental groups officially supported the campaign. A sponsoring member state made a public commitment to co-sponsor a WHA resolution, which set the stage for ongoing diplomatic progress and engagement across regions. Conclusion: To improve global brain health equity, access to long-term care, and the resilience of health systems, it is important to recognize TBI as a notifiable and chronic condition. A dedicated WHA resolution would make TBI a part of global health governance, making sure that it is counted, tracked, and dealt with as quickly and comprehensively as possible. It is both a technical necessity and a moral duty to help survivors and families and fight for justice in global health systems. Full article

Background/Objectives: Nurses working in closed psychiatric wards experience substantial psychosocial and spiritual burdens, emotional strain, and ethical tension due to continuous exposure to patients in crisis. As formal caregivers, nurses’ health and multidimensional well-being are essential for sustaining compassionate, dignity-preserving practice. However, the lived meaning of self-care within highly restrictive psychiatric environments remains insufficiently understood. This study explores how psychiatric nurses in South Korea experience and interpret self-care. Methods: A qualitative phenomenological design was used. Eight psychiatric nurses with more than three years of experience in closed psychiatric wards participated in in-depth, face-to-face interviews conducted between August 2018 and January 2019. Data were analysed using Colaizzi’s method to identify and synthesise essential themes. Results: Five categories captured the essence of nurses’ self-care experiences: (1) struggling to establish therapeutic roles as a psychiatric nurse; (2) conflating professional identity with ideals of good nursing; (3) recognising a gradual loss of motivation and hope to continue psychiatric nursing; (4) acknowledging the need to care for oneself and refocus on inner vitality; and (5) engaging in self-care through interactions with patients. Self-care was understood as a reflective, relational, and transformative process rather than as a set of stress-relief activities. Conclusions: Psychiatric nurses perceived self-care as an existential journey involving vulnerability, self-reflection, and renewal, which fostered both personal and professional growth. By framing self-care as an ethically grounded, relational practice that sustains therapeutic presence and safeguards moral and professional integrity, this study extends existing self-care literature beyond behavioural strategies. Full article

This paper examines “film as a medium of religious experience and moral imagination” in contemporary Russia through the legal–moral politics of “insulting religious feelings.” Using the controversy over Aleksei Uchitel’s Matilda (2017) as a case study, it analyzes how the portrayal of Nicholas II’s premarital romance was construed as sacrilegious and mobilized by the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) and State actors to police the boundaries of the sacred and public morality. Read alongside the Pussy Riot (2012) and Tannhäuser (2015) scandals, the case illuminates how claims of offense structure ROC-Kremlin bargaining over “traditional values”, showing how these values are articulated through references to Romanov memory and the sacralized figure of Nicholas II. Drawing on ROC statements, appeals to historical memory, and State responses to protests, the article reassesses what the film, and its reception, reveal about Church-State equilibrium in post-Soviet Russia. Full article

Background/Objectives: Missed Nursing Care is a global concern that affects nurses’ well-being and patients’ safety. Despite global recognition of Missed Nursing Care, there is limited synthesized evidence that determines its characteristics in a Middle Eastern context. The purpose of the study is to synthesize the existing evidence about the prevalence of Missed Nursing Care among nurses in hospitals, the types of care missed, and reasons for Missed Nursing Care in the Middle East. Methods: A systematic literature review is conducted by using a comprehensive search in CINAHL, Scopus, and ScienceDirect databases for studies published between 2020 and 2025 and utilizing the MISSCARE Survey. Results: 25 studies met the inclusion criteria. The reported prevalence of Missed Nursing Care ranged between 1.06 and 2.9 out of five, indicating a low to moderate level. Frequent missed care activities included ambulation, hygiene, mouth care, and patient teaching. Contributing factors were staffing shortages, heavy workload, resource limitations, and communication issues. Missed Nursing Care critically affected patients’ outcomes, reduced job satisfaction, and caused moral distress and a higher intent to leave the profession. Conclusions: Missed Nursing Care remains a significant, complex challenge in the Middle East. Therefore, understanding this phenomenon in the region is needed. Collaborative efforts among policymakers, administrators, and nursing leaders are essential to implement targeted interventions, supportive policies, and ongoing research to minimize Missed Nursing Care across the Middle East. Full article

The concept of neuroception of psychological safety, rooted in Polyvagal Theory, offers a framework for understanding how individuals perceive safety at a physiological and psychological level. Illness may disrupt this perception and affect bodily regulation, emotional resilience, social connection, and self-compassion. This study aims to explore how experiences of being unwell, across both acute and chronic contexts, affect individuals’ neuroception of psychological safety. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eleven adult participants aged 20–79, including individuals with both acute and chronic illness experiences. Interview questions were informed by the Neuroception of Psychological Safety and Polyvagal Theory. Data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis, following Braun and Clarke’s six-step process. Four key themes were identified: dysregulation and the narrowing window of tolerance (reduced emotional resilience and heightened bodily sensitivity); distrust and disappointment (a rupture in bodily and self-trust); responsibility and internalised guilt (moral and emotional burdens around illness and recovery); and illness demands attention and disrupts social connection (withdrawal, emotional depletion, and compromised compassion). Across these themes, participants described a diminished sense of psychological safety when unwell, shaped by both internal physiological changes and altered social dynamics. Illness can profoundly undermine psychological safety by disrupting neurobiological regulation, altering relational engagement, and eroding trust in one’s body and self. These findings highlight the importance of integrating psychological safety principles into models of care, particularly in how individuals experience and recover from illness. Full article

Most primitive religions originated from the devout worship of celestial deities, earthly spirits, and ghosts. In oracle bone inscriptions, rituals related to praying for rain, temple worship, river deity worship, and the worship of great deities were referred to as “fang” 方 or “yi fang” 以方. The Supreme God was the paramount deity of the Yin Shang Dynasty people; by the early Zhou Dynasty, the Supreme God and ancestral spirits began to merge. The hexagram of Contemplation 觀卦 (guan gua) establishes instruction through the concept of “contemplation” fully presenting the entire process of shamans, sorcerers, or ritual hosts participating in temple sacrifices, and completing the hand-washing ritual 盥 (guan) and the sacrifice-offering ritual 薦 (jian). It emphasizes the sincere communication between humans and Heaven. When a monarch performs the guan ritual, he embodies inner “sincerity and clarity” 誠明 (chengming); in response, the celestial deities will “show trust” 有孚 (youfu). Thus, it can be verified that deities exist in Heaven, and an interactive, responsive relationship is formed between Heaven and humans. The nine in the fifth place (the dominant line) possesses great inspiring power. The two fundamental dimensions for interpreting the hexagram structure are “the great view is above” 大觀在上 (da guan zai shang) and “[t]hose below look toward him and are transformed” 下觀而化 (xia guan er hua). These dimensions not only highlight the infinite transcendence, charisma, and appeal of the worshipped deities but also underscore humans’ profound reverence and faith in deities and the absolute existence. Sages 聖人 (sheng ren), as intermediaries between humans and deities, established religion for the sake of human life but did not regard themselves as religious leaders. However, from the Shang and Zhou dynasties to the Spring and Autumn period, a transition occurred in the spiritual life of the Chinese people: from shamanism to ritual propriety 禮 (li), and from theistic culture to humanistic culture. This transition laid the fundamental direction for the development and evolution of Chinese culture over the following 2500 years. Confucius attempted to replace or eliminate the shamanistic elements in early Confucians with personalized moral experience and ethical consciousness. Full article

The news framing of assisted death in Portugal and the United Kingdom from 2016 to 2024 was analyzed across two dimensions. The first examined the overall frames through source positions and occupations. The second observed argumentative structures by coding argument characteristics: manifestation, origin, level, and evaluation. A total of 7464 structures were identified from 1731 published stories in Expresso, Público, The Guardian, and The Telegraph. The research utilized a methodological framework based on framing theory, creating direct connections between frame analysis and argumentative structures to improve the validity of valence and thematic framing mechanisms. The findings indicated significant differences between countries. The Portuguese news media showed a marked inclination to present concentrated opposing arguments with a higher argumentative density. In contrast, British newspapers displayed a greater diversity of arguments in favor of assisted death, along with a more cohesive representation among pro-assisted death sources. Three distinct argumentative profiles were identified, each showing different divisions between Portugal and the UK. These results reveal that argumentative structures in assisted death coverage reflect deeper systemic values and news media structures, positioning these quality newspapers as influential actors in representing arguments about moral legitimacy around bioethical issues. The study makes a valuable contribution by offering a comprehensive understanding of how these four newspapers frame arguments about assisted death while proposing an innovative analytical model applicable to comparative studies of other news media. Full article

Wang Chong established the most extensive and complex theoretical system of fate in the pre-Qin and Han dynasties, drawing upon Confucian and popular theories. The cores of Confucian and popular theories of fate lay respectively in moral cultivation and technical approaches, leaving room for human autonomy in determining fate. However, based on his own experience of unfulfilled potential and his admiration for the Daoist concept of “nature”, Wang Chong denied the causal relationship between individual behaviors and the occurrences of good or bad fortune. In this way, Wang Chong’s theory of fate deprived individuals of their initiative over destiny as found in Confucian tradition and popular beliefs, thus moving towards the extreme of fatalism. The theory of fate served as a key instrument for Wang Chong in his “opposition to falsehood and fallacy” (jixuwang 疾虚妄), occupying a significant position within the philosophical system of Lunheng. Through this theory, Wang Chong criticized the prevailing theories of the interaction between Heaven and humanity centered on moral principles, as well as the numerology and worship of ghosts and deities rooted in technical principles. In doing so, he set apart himself from traditional Confucian scholars, and laid important intellectual groundwork for the subsequent development of metaphysical discourse in China. Full article

Theologians have a moral responsibility to attend to the grave disorder in which the language of morality currently suffers. I argue that the healing of this disorder involves a morally prescribable disloyalty to the semblance of the virtue of charity. In this paper, I will review the moral blind spots and ethical inconsistencies in how the semblance of the virtue of charity is confused with the actual virtue of charity and is thus actualized inappropriately in today’s society. I will then investigate the virtue of solidarity as a prescription to help repair the potentiality of what the virtue of charity ought to be and look like. In looking to solidarity, I will turn to Ada María Isasi-Díaz’ epistemological concept of lo cotidiano as a means of practicing accountability in virtue theory and virtue practice. First, I will explore mujerista theology as an approach and why it is important to ethically attend to the voices on the margins; then, I will investigate the concept of lo cotidiano as a methodology that centers a commitment of responsibility to the other; lastly, I will turn to the virtue of solidarity and argue how attending to solidarity enhances our call to charity in an authentic and accountable way (A version of this paper was presented at the 2025 Convention of the Catholic Theological Society of America (CTSA) in Portland, Oregon). Full article

Since 2017, more than a dozen civics institutes have been founded at America’s public universities, marking a renaissance in civic education. Grounded in the liberal arts, these institutes rightly restore the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake and reconnect citizens to the nation’s past. Yet liberal education requires assistance to help students navigate today’s data-driven republic, where questions of law and justice increasingly turn on the interpretation of evidence. This article proposes a balanced model for civics education—a “renewed civic pragmatism”—that unites the historical connectedness of liberal learning with the technical skills required for public life and the rule of law. In doing so, civics education recovers its role as a bridge between moral principle, empirical judgment, and the pursuit of justice under law. Full article

In this paper I aim to draw attention to the continued emphasis on ‘moral tales in stories of family construction. In research projects on both conventional family practices such as marriage and non-conventional ones such as living apart together (LAT) and mixed-sex civil partnerships, morality continues to emerge as a core guiding principle for how relationships are organised and maintained. Yet beyond the importance of children in these moral tales, little consideration is given to the other dimensions and shapes that this ‘morality’ may take. Here I bring together three qualitative research projects to illustrate the strong drive of moral obligations in the face of family fluidity, relationship plurality, and individualised therapeutic discourse. With this data I argue that obligations continue to organise relationship decision-making, and we can imagine these obligations as formed of three interrelated dimensions: (1) social ‘oughts’, formed of culture, norms, and values (e.g., we ought to get married because that is the normal thing to do in our society), (2) relational ‘oughts’, including children, family, friends, life/family course, death, health (e.g., we ought to live apart to protect the children), and (3) individual ‘oughts’, which involve strongly held personal beliefs, and an ethic of self-care (e.g., we ought to get a civil partnership because it aligns with my feminist values). Understanding the shape of contemporary intimate morality is an important step in developing future theory, policy, and practice in the field. Full article

Frontline workers across health, emergency, and social care sectors are repeatedly exposed to distressing events and chronic stressors as part of their occupational roles. Unlike single-event trauma, these cumulative exposures accrue over time, generating persistent psychological and physiological strain. Traditional diagnostic frameworks, particularly post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), were not designed to capture the layered and ongoing nature of this occupational trauma. This commentary introduces the concept of Persistent Traumatic Stress Exposure (PTSE), a framework that reframes trauma among frontline workers as an exposure arising from organisational and systemic conditions rather than solely an individual disorder. It aims to reorient understanding, responsibility, and intervention from a purely clinical lens toward systems, cultures, and organisational duties of care. PTSE is presented as an integrative paradigm informed by contemporary theory and evidence on trauma, moral injury, organisational stress, and trauma-informed systems. The framework synthesises findings from health, emergency, and social care settings, illustrating how repeated exposure, ethical conflict, and institutional pressures contribute to cumulative psychological harm. PTSE highlights that psychological injury may build across shifts, careers, and lifetimes, requiring preventive, real-time, and sustained responses. The framework emphasises that effective support is dependent on both organisational readiness, the structural conditions that enable trauma-informed work, and organisational preparedness, the practical capability to enact safe, predictable, and stigma-free responses to trauma exposure. PTSE challenges prevailing stigma by framing trauma as a predictable occupational hazard rather than a personal weakness. It aligns with modern occupational health perspectives by advocating for systems that strengthen psychological safety, leadership capability and access to support. By adopting PTSE, organisations can shift from reactive treatment models toward proactive cultural and structural protection, honouring the lived realities of frontline workers and promoting long-term wellbeing and resilience. Full article

This paper will respond to James Sterba’s paper “An Ethics without God That is Compatible with Darwinian Evolution”. In his paper, Sterba argues that God cannot be the source of morality. Sterba maintains this position because he believes that his problem of extreme suffering entails that God cannot exist. Furthermore, Sterba argues that divine command theory has a number of serious problems confronting it. Alternatively, Sterba maintains that one can account for objective morality without appealing to God’s nature and/or commands. In response, this paper grants that Sterba presents a logically consistent account of objective morality without appealing to God’s nature and/or commands. However, this paper also cites a couple of reasons why one might think that God is still the better explanation for objective morality. This paper furthermore argues that Sterba’s objections do not demonstrate that divine command theory is false. The main thrust of this paper, though, focuses on Sterba’s argument about horrendous suffering. This paper argues that Sterba’s argument on horrendous suffering (while challenging) does not prove that a morally perfect God could not exist. Full article