O b j e c t i v e s: Pill-takers seem to have some deficiencies in developing problem-solving styles, in which it plays an important role in their mental health. The present study has aimed to examine the role of problem-solving styles in individuals who have suicidal behavior by taking pills.
M e t h o d s: This research is a case-control study in which 100 people who had attempted to commit suicide by taking pills and had gone to the toxicity emergency room of the Razi Educational and Therapeutic center in Rasht city, were compared with 100 normal people who were selected as the control group. These two groups of people were compared with each other in terms of their problem-solving styles (which is measured using Cassidy and Long problem solving styles questionnaire).
R e s u l t s: After adjusting the effects of the confounding variables, i.e. level of education, marital status, residential status, history of psychiatry and alcohol addiction, it became clear that pill-takers group in comparison with the control group scores significantly higher in the non-adaptive problem-solving styles i.e. helplessness, problem-solving control, and avoidance styles (P < 0.0001) and also lower scores in adaptive styles, i.e. creative, confidence and approach styles (P < 0.0001). The interactive effects of group membership and gender were not significant in any of the problem-solving styles (P < 0.05).
C o n c l u s i o n s: Problem-solving styles are regarded as important risk factors when it comes to attempting to commit suicide by taking pills. Thus, it is essential to teach problem-solving styles to at-risk patients in order to preventing suicidal behavior.
On 24th March, 2017 Professor Józef Kozielecki passed away. He was a world renowned psychologist, a researcher into cognitive processes: thinking, problem solving, decision making. Professor Kozielecki was an author of the psychological theory of decision making, the theory of self-knowledge, and a founding father of the new direction in psychology, psychotransgressionism. An outstanding scholar, intellectual, theacher and a formative mentor for several generations of psychologists. He authored multiple important psychological monographs, for which he received national and international awards, for example, The Japanese Science Foundation award (1980) for his work on decision theory and The Jurzykowski Cultural Foundation award (1990) for his transgressive model of human beings. Professor Józef Kozielecki was a member of several prominent scientific societies such as the European Association of Experimental Social Psychology, the Society for Judgment and Decision making and the European Society for Cognitive Psychology. He was also an Ordinary Member of the Polish Academy of Sciences and in 2007 he received the honoris causa doctorate from the Catholic University of Lublin.
Science means here mathematics and those empirical disciplines which avail themselves of mathematical models. The pragmatic approach is conceived in Karl R. Popper’s The Logic of Scientific Discovery (p. 276) sense: a logical appraisal of the success of a theory amounts to the appraisal of its corroboration. This kind of appraisal is exemplified in section 6 by a case study—on how Isaac Newton justified his theory of gravitation. The computational approach in problem-solving processes consists in considering them in terms of computability: either as being performed according to a model of computation in a narrower sense, e.g., the Turing machine, or in a wider perspective—of machines associated with a non-mechanical device called “oracle” by Alan Turing (1939). Oracle can be interpreted as computer theoretic representation of intuition or invention. Computational approach in another sense means considering problem-solving processes in terms of logical gates, supposed to be a physical basis for solving problems with a reasoning.
Pragmatic rationalism about science, seen at the background of classical rationalism (Descartes, Gottfried Leibniz etc.), claims that any scientific idea, either in empirical theories or in mathematics, should be checked through applications to problem-solving processes. Both the versions claim the existence of abstract objects, available to intellectual intuition. The difference concerns the dynamics of science: (i) the classical rationalism regards science as a stationary system that does not need improvements after having reached an optimal state, while (ii) the pragmatical version conceives science as evolving dynamically due to fertile interactions between creative intuitions, or inventions, with mechanical procedures.
The dynamics of science is featured with various models, like Derek J. de Solla Price’s exponential and Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm model (the most familiar instances). This essay suggests considering Turing’s idea of oracle as a complementary model to explain most adequately, in terms of exceptional inventiveness, the dynamics of mathematics and mathematizable empirical sciences.