court. In particular: overcoming fear, decision making skills, development of
interpersonal communication skills, raising self-esteem, control over the emotions etc.
In addition, students-volunteers passed tests on the methods which evaluate their
level of stress-resilience, self-esteem, communication skills, and empathy.
To conduct psychological training for students the cognitive-behavioral approach
was implemented. Nowadays the cognitive-behavioral approach is one of the most
efficient methods in working with phobias, anxiety and self-esteem. BY analyzing
students’ negative cognitive beliefs regarding themselves and switching tem to positive
thoughts about themselves, students were able to raise their self-esteem (Scott J.,
Williams, Beck, 1989).
At next stage of training the students-volunteers it is planned to provide training
directed on developing the skills to calm down witnesses if it is necessary and their
relatives using methods of clarification, focused on reducing stress level, anxiety, and
significantly worsening the situation. (Clark D. A., Beck A. T., 1999).
With the help of visualization techniques and mindfulness volunteers can help
witnesses imagine a stressful situation, and find the resources to lower the level of
anxiety. The volunteers also must be familiarized with the posttraumatic behavior since
the witnesses in the criminal case might have observed horrible scenes and other things.
An important role in volunteering activity has to be directed on training ethical
principles which were put in place by judicial and psychology practice (Jifkins, 2010).
The most crucial ethical principle while volunteers interacting with the witnesses and
their relatives, on our opinion, is not to inflict harm (Allan, 2010).
Statistical Analysis. The students were said to assume that they are already
working in the court and they have to approach a first person to introduce themselves.
At the beginning of the visualization exercise each student had to describe and
determine their current anxiety level while imagining approaching a person. In the
beginning the anxiety level was high in 50 % research subjects, in 36,7 % - medium
level, and 13,3 % had low level of anxiety. It’s worth mentioning that the students who
indicated that they did not feel any anxiety have to be studied more precisely, since a
part of them admitted later that they did not want to show their emotions in front of
others, and strived to show themselves in a better light or badly evaluated their
emotions etc. (Table 1).
After the first couple of minutes of visualization, the research participants were
asked to be in this state for a while and remember other times they were experiencing
those kinds of emotions. In addition, the students had to contemplate a bit and evaluate
themselves in those situations. The students were feeling a strong anxiety remembering
different situations: exams in university; given a speech in front of others; situations
where they were not able to help others and felt helpless, irresponsible; situations when
they were turned down and judged negatively, etc.
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