Browsing by Author "Van Ommen C"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Adolescent Dilemmas About Viewing Pornography and Their Efforts to Resolve Them
    (SAGE Publications, 2022-11-01) Vertongen R; Van Ommen C; Chamberlain K
    Concerns have been raised about how viewing Sexually Explicit Internet Material (SEIM) shapes adolescents’ understanding of sexual relationships and has potentially negative impacts. However, research frequently takes a narrow view of adolescent SEIM use and excludes their understandings. The present study explored how 13 participants, aged 14 to 15 years, made sense of their experiences with SEIM. In-depth individual interviews were conducted, and five dominant dilemmas faced by participants were abstracted using interpretive analysis. We discuss how these dilemmas were negotiated by adolescents using various strategies. The analysis provides new understandings on how adolescents interpret their SEIM experiences and highlight the limitations of understanding SEIM use solely through risk models. On a practical level, these findings can inform youth, parents and caregivers, and professionals as to how they might understand and help young people navigate the complex area of SEIM.
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    Critical Health Psychology: Foundations, Approaches and Applications
    (Massey University, 2025-07-18) Riley S; McGuigan K; Brittain E; Terry G; Kora A; Healy-Cullen S; Van Ommen C; Baken D
    This accessible open-access textbook employs a critical health psychology perspective to health psychology to promote critical reflexive thinking and learning about health and wellbeing, within a social justice framework. The book navigates the reader through a comprehensive examination of contemporary research and theoretical developments in the field of critical health psychology. Organised into three distinct parts, the book radically orients readers to new ways to think about health through: - incorporating a conscious reflection on and examination of how health is theorised, understood, treated, and promoted for individuals, communities, and societies; - using a critical psychology lens that centres issues of power and meaning making, including gendered, Indigenous, and intersectional frameworks; - an openness to, and engagement with, theoretical and methodological pluralism, including quantitative, qualitative and Indigenous approaches to explore people’s experiences and understandings of health and illness; - explicit attention to socio-political contexts; - and considering the application of knowledge beyond behaviour change, to social change including community-level (community-led interventions, activism and advocacy) and societal level (e.g., policy, wider discourses).
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    ‘Is it okay to have a child?’: figuring subjectivities and reproductive decisions in response to climate change
    (Springer Nature, 2023-10-27) Meynell L; Morgan M; Van Ommen C
    In this article, we engage feminist theorisations of figurations as “performative images that can be inhabited” (Haraway 1997/2018) to trace some of the figures which are animating stories about climate change and reproduction in Global North contexts. We focus our reading on a handful of texts which circulate around the question of ‘Is it okay to have a child, given our climate conditions and futures?’ Throughout, we consider the relationship between figurations and our subjective becomings in response to environmental devastations. We critique and resist the hegemonic figuring of ‘the human subject’ as rational and unitary (Braidotti 2014), as this figure naturalises the Western social power relations of advanced capitalism, population control and human exceptionalism. Seeking multiplicity, we look for figures and subjective openings which enable us to become response-able to the pain of ecological worlds dying around us (Haraway 2016), including from our disciplinary location of psychology.
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    Young adolescent men’s perspectives on risks and harmful impacts of pornography use
    (SAGE Publications, 2025-05-01) Vertongen R; Van Ommen C; Chamberlain K
    Pornography use is often considered harmful, but what constitutes such harm is frequently vague and driven by adult perspectives about risk. This study aimed to explore how adolescents themselves understood harm and risk from pornography use. Thirteen male adolescents, 14 to 15 years old, were interviewed using in-depth interviews to understand their perspectives of risk and harm. Reflexive thematic analysis was used to identify three pertinent themes: pornography is risky and harmful, especially to naïve consumers; pornography is not harmful to me, because strategies of control can be used; and generational disparity, where differences between adult claims of harm and personal experiences were questioned. We propose adolescents’ concern for others’ wellbeing over their personal risks be considered as showing compassion. We conclude that adolescent perceptions of risk and harm are nuanced and insightful, and that adolescents can engage critically with pornography content to manage potential risks and harm.