Prehospital emergency medical services (EMS) are a very stressful and unpredictable environment in which emergency medical technicians (EMT) provide care to patients outside of the hospital. These can lead to high levels of work stress, that can impact on mental health, work function and patient care. Constant exposure can result in emotional exhaustion, anxiety and burn-out. The objective of this study was to find out the prevalence of occupational stress, cause of occupational stress, and occupational stress and perceived stress among EMTs in the prehospital care setting in Sindh. A cross-sectional descriptive study was carried out on 252 participants (EMTs) from Sindh Integrated Emergency Health Services (SIERHS) Rescue1122 from July to September 2025. The samples of respondents were drawn with convenience sampling, and the participants filled out the Workplace Stress Scale (WPSS) and Perceived Stress Scale (PSS). Descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, independent samples t tests, ANOVA and multiple linear regression were used to analyse the data. The average WPSS score was 21.4 ± 3.67. The average PSS score was 22.8 ± 4.1. There was a high positive correlation between the WPSS and PSS scores (r = 0.62, p < 0.001). Female EMTs had higher scores on the WPSS than did male EMTs (t = 2.34, p = 0.02). Female EMTs also reported higher levels of stress in the workplace than male EMTs (t = 2.34, p = 0.02), with younger, and less experienced EMTs, reporting higher levels of stress. The regression analysis revealed that number of work hours per week, number of calls handled per shift and female sex significantly influenced occupational stress and age and marital status were not significant. Occupational stress is common among EMTs in Sindh and the factors that are associated with occupational stress among them are workload, call volume and gender. The results highlight the importance of organizational interventions, stress management practices, and supportive policies in improving the well-being of EMTs and quality of emergency care provision.
Artificial intelligence (AI) technology adoption alters organizational workplaces, automating tasks and processes, augmenting decision-making capabilities, and changing employees’ perceptions of work. While past research has demonstrated positive effects of AI on productivity and efficiency in organizations, the impact of AI adoption on employees’ psychological well-being is unclear. This study aimed to investigate the impact of AI adoption on employees’ psychological well-being and identify how technostress and trust in AI mediate this relationship. Based on the Job Demands–Resources model, UTAUT2, and Social Exchange Theory, the study developed and tested a hypothesized conceptual model. A cross-sectional survey sampled 499 information technology employees from AI-enabled organizations located in Hyderabad City, India. All proposed relationships were tested using exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and covariance-based structural equation modeling using IBM SPSS 29 and AMOS 28. Results show that AI adoption has a positive impact on employees’ psychological well-being and trust in AI and increases technostress. Technostress negatively impacts employees’ psychological well-being, while trust in AI positively impacts employees’ psychological well-being. Technostress was hypothesized to mediate the relationship between AI adoption and employee well-being negatively. We suggested that technostress as a mediator transmits negative effects of AI adoption through increased technology-related stress. Trust in AI was hypothesized to positively mediate the relationship between AI adoption and employees' well-being by fostering employees' trust toward AI systems positively associated with psychological well-being. Bootstrapping indicated that technostress and trust in AI fully mediate the relationship between AI adoption and employee well-being. The study also examined both negative and positive psychological pathways of how AI adoption can impact employee well-being within one study to provide further insight towards human-centered AI practices and responsible AI governance in organizations.
Psychological inquiry on volunteerism has widely implemented self-part studies on volunteers’ motivations via the Volunteer Function Inventory (VFI). The literature in psychology also has widely acknowledged the limitations of the self-report assessment and the need for clarification on volunteerism motivations. Collecting data other than respondents’ self-reports (e.g., non-volunteers) may potentially help. This study complements the existing self-part approach by providing a validation of the adapted version of the VFI for assessing volunteers’ motivation from the perspective of non-volunteers. The adapted version was included in a cross-sectional study involving N = 819 non-volunteers. Using two random subsamples, we conducted an exploratory structural equation model to select items and a confirmatory factor analysis to confirm the resulting 18-item structure. We then tested configural, metric, and scalar invariance across gender, two volunteering-experience groups, and two age groups, and discuss theoretical and research implications.
Cognitive disorganization in help-seeking youth can involve difficulties with attention, task sequencing, language access, or discourse organization alongside unusual experiences and functional decline. This Perspective proposes a transdiagnostic developmental approach to clinical formulation using four complementary questions: what is the young person’s developmental baseline; which functions vary within the person across load, context, and time; what is happening in the environment and how is threat interpreted; and do established clinical-risk indicators require formal assessment or referral? The questions address different assessment tasks, may be considered together, and constitute a proposed clinical heuristic. Assessment of genuine environmental harm, safeguarding needs, and urgent medical or psychiatric risk takes precedence over explanatory interpretation. The synthesis distinguishes direct evidence from adjacent findings and clinical hypotheses. Acute-stress research supports effects on specified executive outcomes under studied conditions; extrapolation to discourse organization, threat meanings, or reality testing in help-seeking youth remains insufficiently supported. Stress sensitivity is therefore a domain-specific formulation hypothesis to test, not an established property of the presentation. The proposed contribution is to organize established assessment domains around observable difficulties and documented uncertainty. Prospective studies should measure domains separately and assess reliability, incremental clinical value, and safety against explicit alternative explanations and falsification criteria.
Numerous studies have explored disordered eating (DE) in athletes, yet their findings frequently conflict. This research focused on examining the proportion at risk for DE among HK Chinese athletes. A sample of 100 athletes participated in the study, which employed a cross-sectional design using the EAT-26 questionnaire. The results revealed that the proportion at risk for DE was 4.0
