Master of Arts (Counselling & Guidance)

The Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) follows a mandatory conscript system made up of both military regulars and enlisted soldiers to ensure that it remains a formidable fighting force for the national defence of the Nation.

Under the Enlistment Act, all male Singapore citizens and Permanent Residents (PRs) must complete two years of military service. The transition from a civilian life to a military one can be challenging and individuals might encounter adjustment difficulties. PRs who return back to Singapore to serve their NS liability face additional adjustment difficulties as they need to adapt to a new cultural environment.

The current study used a total of 206 participants who are currently serving their NS, of which 104 are Singaporean male citizens and 102 are Singaporean male PRs. This study explored the differences in the reported military adjustment between the two groups and the relationship between their coping styles to military adjustment. Lastly the study also explored the homesickness, perceived cultural distance and duration of stay in Singapore prior to enlistment as factors affecting PRs’ military adjustment.

The results of the study showed that PRs reported better military adjustment as compared to Singapore citizens. PRs also reported lesser use of maladaptive coping strategies. It was found that while duration of stay in Singapore prior to enlistment had no relationship with military adjustment; homesickness and perceived cultural distance was related to military adjustment; with homesickness being a significant predictor of military adjustment. The importance and implications of this study was also discussed.

The current study examined the relationship between perceived work stress, coping strategies, anxiety, depression and somatic symptoms among primary school teachers. In addition, it also studied if demographic variables such as gender, teaching experience and the roles in the school were correlated with perceived work stress, coping strategies, anxiety, depression and somatic symptoms. Similarly, the same demographic variables were used to see if there were any differences in the type of teacher stressors identified by the teacher participants across the three demographic groups.

This study found that perceived work stress was positively correlated to both adaptive and maladaptive coping as well as anxiety, depression and somatic symptoms. The beginning teachers, with less than 5 years of teaching experience reported significantly higher use of maladaptive coping as compared to their experienced counterparts, with 5 to 10 years of teaching experience. Teacher participants with leadership roles reported significantly higher level of stress due to the teaching stressor “Insufficient support from colleagues” and higher severity in depression symptoms as compared to those without leadership roles in the school.

Such findings will have implications on the customisation of the mental wellbeing programmes for school teachers. Limitations will be discussed and future research will be recommended.

Post-traumatic growth (PTG) and post-divorce adjustments (PDA) following divorce are terms used to describe how a person who has experienced divorce recovers from his/her experience. However, there are significant gaps in clinical and theoretical understandings of the phenomenon of this experience as there are similar domains of growth/recovery in both PTG and PDA in divorcees. This study attempts to understand if there are any differences in themes between individuals who have experienced a high conflict divorce (HCD) and individuals who have experienced a low-conflict divorce (LCD). The nature of high-conflict divorce is determined by the presence of interpersonal conflict (IC) or legal conflict (LC) between spouses before, during, and after divorce. To investigate if there were any differences in themes, an interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) approach was used. Six female participants were recruited from HELP Family Service Centre (HELPFSC), an organisation that provides services to clients from divorce families in Singapore. Three HCD participants and three LCD participants were selected for a semi-structured interview questionnaire (SSIQ), and their responses were transcribed for IPA analysis. Key themes that emerged from the participants were paired to constructs of PTG and PDA from the two different groups interviewed. Three key themes were identified: impacting the decision of divorce, personal meaning and sense-making after divorce, and adjustment after divorce. Limitations are discussed and future research is recommended.

The current study aims to provide insight into the factors that influence the perceived stress of Singapore secondary school students. The variables of the study were secondary appraisal of situation, perceived autonomy support (from father, mother, teacher), and perceived coping efficacy. The study examined for the relationships of these variables with the perceived stress of Singapore adolescents.

A total of 400 students from the secondary one to four levels in a secondary school participated in the study. They filled out a self-report questionnaire on the perception of coping with stress using Likert scales. The questionnaire was administered in their school during the post-examination period in March 2012.

The findings suggested that higher levels of secondary appraisal, perceived autonomy support, and perceived coping efficacy contributed to lower levels of perceived stress experienced by the students. It was also found that secondary appraisal and perceived coping efficacy did not significantly mediate the relationship between perceived autonomy support and perceived stress.

Some reasons that contributed to the insignificant results could be that this study used only secondary appraisal as one of the variables of interest in this study, leaving out primary appraisal as a potential factor that could also influence the perceived stress of adolescents. Participants in this study were taken from a single school, and based on convenience sampling. Results obtained cannot represent and be generalized to the Singapore adolescent population.

Even though the results obtained in the current study showed no statistical significance, it is worth noting that the theoretical models used in this study may be utilized as a as a guide for a clinical interview. Recognizing pre-existing and current factors that influence the student‟s level of perceived stress can aid clinicians in the selection of therapeutic goals, so that clinicians can better target intervention and treatment programs aimed at modifying individual‟s responses to stress factors (for e.g., help to develop support network).