Search results

Few studies assess how child abuse and neglect (CAN) affects adolescents’ mental health. Further, the majority of studies conducted to date discount the individual CAN items and report overall prevalence rates for different types of abuse and neglect. The purpose of this study was to examine the levels of and gender differences in CAN subtypes, lifetime prevalence of individual CAN items and the contribution of different CAN subtypes for explaining depression, anxiety and irritability.

The sample included Jamaican (n = 7,182, 60.8% female) and Ugandan (n = 11,518, 52.4% female) youths. The authors used a population-based cross-sectional study design. Youths completed an anonymous survey in school settings.

The authors found gender differences in the levels of CAN subtypes. Maltreatment behaviors of lesser severity were more commonly endorsed by the youths than those of greater severity. Neglect and emotional abuse were the strongest correlates of depression (e.g. neglect: ß = 0.23, among Jamaican youths; emotional abuse outside-the-home: ß = 0.23, among Ugandan girls), anxiety (e.g. neglect: ß = 0.17, among Ugandan girls; emotional abuse outside-the-home: ß = 0.27, among Ugandan girls) and irritability (e.g. emotional abuse in-the-home: ß = 0.17, among Jamaican boys; emotional abuse outside-the-home: ß = 0.17, among Ugandan girls) in most samples.

These findings will inform policymakers and professionals working with youths in Jamaica and Uganda, providing comprehensive contemporary insights beyond existing research in these regions.

This study investigates associations between Facebook (FB) conversations and self-reports of substance use among youth experiencing homelessness (YEH). YEH engage in high rates of substance use and are often difficult to reach, for both research and interventions. Social media sites provide rich digital trace data for observing the social context of YEH's health behaviors. The authors aim to investigate the feasibility of using these big data and text mining techniques as a supplement to self-report surveys in detecting and understanding YEH attitudes and engagement in substance use.

Participants took a self-report survey in addition to providing consent for researchers to download their Facebook feed data retrospectively. The authors collected survey responses from 92 participants and retrieved 33,204 textual Facebook conversations. The authors performed text mining analysis and statistical analysis including ANOVA and logistic regression to examine the relationship between YEH's Facebook conversations and their substance use.

Facebook posts of YEH have a moderately positive sentiment. YEH substance users and non-users differed in their Facebook posts regarding: (1) overall sentiment and (2) topics discussed. Logistic regressions show that more positive sentiment in a respondent's FB conversation suggests a lower likelihood of marijuana usage. On the other hand, discussing money-related topics in the conversation increases YEH's likelihood of marijuana use.

Digital trace data on social media sites represent a vast source of ecological data. This study demonstrates the feasibility of using such data from a hard-to-reach population to gain unique insights into YEH's health behaviors. The authors provide a text-mining-based toolkit for analyzing social media data for interpretation by experts from a variety of domains.

A consensus in the literature is that anti-gay prejudice has a negative impact on HIV programming for men who have sex with men (MSM). This paper aims to analyse the prevalence and predictors of anti-gay prejudice in Barbados, an island in the Caribbean, and possible impacts on the full recognition of the right to health care.

The study used nationally representative data obtained from the Caribbean Development Research Services capturing anti-gay prejudice in Barbados in 2004, 2013 and 2019. The data were analysed using logit models and ordinary least squares regression.

The share of persons who expressed feelings of hatred towards gays and lesbians did not change significantly over the period. Social distance attitudes improved between 2004 and 2013 but have not changed since. Men generally expressed more prejudice than women and male sexual prejudice could be localised to three groups – men without tertiary education, men under 51 and members of non-Christian religions. Meanwhile, there was little consistency in the predictors of women’s attitudes over the period.

This study provides insights into the trends in attitudes towards sexual minorities in a developing country. The main conclusion is that although health care is provided as a universal right to all Barbadians, a strictly medical approach to HIV prevention among MSM in countries with high levels of anti-gay prejudice is insufficient.

The United States of America is in the midst of an opioid crisis. However, little has been written within the domain of LIS (Library and Information Science) about the health information needs and behaviors of people who inject drugs. The purpose of this project is to conduct a scoping review of the current knowledge disseminated by LIS scholars and professionals regarding what information people who inject drugs have access to, need, how they interact with information and what dissemination methods may be most beneficial.

A scoping review of the literature was conducted with the additional inclusion criteria that the information needs be expressed from the insider perspective of this population instead of from the researcher.

In searching over a dozen databases, only seven articles were found that reflected the information behaviors of people who use drugs from the perspective of themselves. Only one article was from information science, two were from health informatics and one was from health communication, a closely linked field. These findings describe the information behaviors and needs of this population and speak to the need for more comprehensive research in this area in order to create targeted health information resources for this sensitive population.

There is little research in the domain of information science that has been conducted into the health information-seeking behaviors of people who inject drugs. Most of the work in this area is from the perspective of the researcher, not the person who injects drugs. This exploration into the literature on the information behavior of people that inject drugs from the perspective of themselves is unique.

1. There is very little research that has been conducted into the health information-seeking behaviors of people who inject drugs.

2. Most of the work in this area is from the perspective of the researcher, not the person who injects drugs.

3. Only four such articles were found in the domain of LIS and seven, in total, between all academic domains.

There is very little research that has been conducted into the health information-seeking behaviors of people who inject drugs.

Most of the work in this area is from the perspective of the researcher, not the person who injects drugs.

Only four such articles were found in the domain of LIS and seven, in total, between all academic domains.

Women involved in the carceral system (CS) experience several conditions that increase their risk for HIV (e.g. high rates of substance use, psychiatric disorders, histories of victimization). The purpose of this study is to explore perspectives on potential strategies to connect women in the CS to pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) services.

This study conducted in-depth interviews with 27 women involved in the CS eligible for PrEP. Using vignettes, interviews explored attitudes, barriers and facilitators toward PrEP screening, referral and linkage facilitated via a CS stakeholder, an mHealth application or providing PrEP service referrals during detention via a navigator.

Most women were, on average, 41.3 years, from racial and ethnic minority groups (56% black/African American; 19% Latinx). Inductive thematic analysis revealed CS involved women expressed mostly positive attitudes toward CS-based PrEP implementation. Younger women were more accepting of and interested in mHealth interventions. Implementation facilitators included leveraging relationships with trusted allies (e.g. “peers”) and existing systems collaborations. Recommended implementation strategies included providing HIV and PrEP-specific education and training for system stakeholders and addressing issues related to privacy, system mistrust and stigma.

Results provide a critical foundation for the implementation of interventions to improve PrEP access for women involved in the CS and have important implications for implementation strategies for all adults involved in the CS. Improving access to PrEP among this population may also support progress toward addressing national disparities in PrEP uptake, where women, black and Latinx populations have substantial unmet need.

This study aims to differentiate maladaptive personality domains through crime-related characteristics among convicts incarcerated in central jails of Punjab (CJP). In total, 552 respondents were taken from nine CJP.

Data were collected through the Personality Inventory for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)-5 Short Form (PID-5 SF) (Maples et al., 2015), and forced-choice questions were designed to measure crime-related characteristics.

Confirmatory factor analysis showed that PID-5 SF exhibited a good to excellent construct validity based on the DSM-5 criteria of using three facets to measure a domain (APA, 2013). Multivariate analysis showed that convicts who have committed different crime types and have criminal records exhibit different personality domains.

In addition to the literature, the data from all CJP, Pakistan, was collected and tested so that need for personality-oriented intervention could be identified for the prison setting. This also highlights that the usefulness of PID-5 SF is not only in identifying maladaptive personality among incarcerated convicts but also in differentiating between different crime-related characteristics.

This study seeks to explore digital natives' mobile usage behaviors and, in turn, develop an analytic framework that helps articulate the underlying components of mobile addiction syndrome (MAS), its severity levels and mobile usage purposes.

The investigation adopts a survey method and a case study. The results of the former are based on 411 random classroom observations and 205 questionnaire responses, and the insights of the latter are derived from 24 interviews and daily observations.

The findings validate five distinctive signs that constitute MAS and their significant correlations with each of the Big Five personality traits. Classroom observations confirm the prevalence of addiction tendency among digital natives in the research context. Seven levels of MAS and six different mobile usage purposes further manifest themselves from case analysis. There appears to be a sharp contrast between the addicted and non-addicted groups in their mobile purposes and behavioral patterns. Additionally, family relationships seem influential in shaping non-addictive mobile usage behaviors.

Psychological perspectives on MAS may be important but insufficient. Empirical investigation on a global scale, especially with distinctive cross-cultural comparisons, will be highly encouraged. How MAS evolves over time should also serve as future research interests.

Teaching pedagogy of college education might need certain adjustments to intrigue digital natives' learning interests. Future managers might also need to adopt better performance measurements for digital natives who barely separate work from personal matters in their mobile devices.

Parents and healthcare institutions may need to develop response mechanism to tackle this global issue at home and in society. The long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on MAS might also deserve global attention.

The analytic framework developed provides an original mechanism that can be valuable in identifying MAS severity and associated behavioral patterns.

This study investigates the observed resurgence in religious beliefs seen across many societies during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using the economic theory of religious clubs, the author models religious participation during the pandemic as a mechanism for alleviating the financial distress associated with the health distress from the pandemic.

Using data from the COVID-19 National Longitudinal Phone Survey (NLPS) in Nigeria, the author investigates the economic motivation for religious intensity during the COVID-19 pandemic. To address endogeneity concerns, the author exploits geographic variables of temperature and longitudes as sources of COVID-19 risk.

Overall, health distress stimulates religious intensity. Consistent with the economic theory of religious clubs, adverse health shocks stimulate financial distress, and the effect is stronger among religious participants. Similarly, people see God and not the government as a source of protection against COVID-19.

The study’s model sees religious organizations as public goods providers, especially when governments and markets are inefficient.

The study’s recommendations support an expanded role for religious networks in healthcare delivery and more public funding to attenuate the post-pandemic resurgence of social violence in economically distressed regions.

Despite the research interest in the COVID-19 pandemic, the long-term implications, many of which relate to social behavior adjustments that cause individuals to identify more closely with their social group, need greater understanding. Suppose religious intensity is linked to economic distress. In that case, this is a major source of worry for countries whose economies are subject to higher fluctuations and where the governments and markets are inefficiently organized. These regions may be more susceptible to a resurgence in religious fundamentalism associated with the economic shocks from the pandemic. Consequently, these regions would require more public funding to attenuate the potential for costly activities like organized violence, suicide attacks and terrorist activities in the aftermath of the pandemic.

Prompted by the observation of the increase in religious identity through religious intensity during the pandemic, the author contributes by developing theoretically-based hypotheses that are incentive-compatible to provide a rational justification for the observation. The author empirically validates the hypothesis by taking advantage of the COVID-19 National Survey in Nigeria by specifically using survey rounds 4 and 7 which have more comprehensive religious items included.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-11-2022-0719

Domestic violence is a universal social concern, and its implication on children’s mental health is a global health predicament. Although the aftereffect of domestic violence on the mental health of women is well researched, mental health disorders of children in terms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), conduct disorder (CD), oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), general anxiety disorder (GAD), separation anxiety disorder (AD) and mood disorder (MD) on account of domestic violence is rarely investigated. Hence, the purpose of the study is to investigate the impact of exposure to domestic violence on children’s mental health.

To examine the correlation between domestic violence and mental health among children, in a survey of public primary schools in Ekiti State, Nigeria, the authors employed 664 pupils with simple random techniques. The Multidimensional Domestic Violence Scale assessed the participants’ exposure to domestic violence. The Child & Youth Mental Health General Screening Questionnaire was used to examine respondents’ mental health.

The results revealed a high incidence of domestic violence among children. It also showed a substantial correlation between domestic violence and the mental health of primary school pupils. Children living with domestic violence experience significantly increased rates of ADHD, ODD, AD, GAD and MD as forms of mental health disorders.

Given the unpleasantness of this social issue affecting the well-being of children globally, it is imperative to engage in intervention and prevention packages that will assist the victims, perpetrators, parents, teachers, schools and other stakeholders. Introducing counselling services into the primary school curriculum will assist victims and those at risk develop self-confidence that will enable them to report their violators. Although counselors do not diagnose, early detection of victims would assist in early intervention where counselors can use different techniques and approaches to help such victims to resolve all forms of cognitive distortions that can lead to mental health disorders. Counselling services can help in providing referral opportunities to victims or “at risk children,” rehabilitation and follow-up services for victims of domestic violence.

Government organizations should also reintroduce health-care services where clinical psychologists will be available in primary schools to provide psychological services to meet the needs of the victims.

Conclusively, the study presents evidence that children who witness domestic violence face a significant risk of developing mental health disorders. The findings highlight the potential harm that domestic violence can inflict on children’s mental well-being. Mental health conditions such as ADHD, CD, ODD, GAD, AD and MD are commonly observed in these children. It recommends establishing early intervention programs for children witnessing domestic violence in schools and communities and programs to detect and address mental health issues promptly.

Globally millions of children have a parent who is imprisoned. Research suggests that this has an adverse impact on the child and imprisonment of a parent is considered to be an adverse childhood experience (ACE). Parental incarceration will not only affect the child but the entire household and may result in further ACEs such as household dysfunction and parental separation making this group of children particularly vulnerable. This scoping review aims to adopt an international perspective to comprehensively examine the extent range and nature of literature both published and grey relating to parental incarceration and the potential impact on children’s emotional and mental health.

In this scoping review, the five stages identified by Arksey and O’Malley (2005) were used including identifying the research question, identifying relevant studies, study selection, charting data, collating, summarising and reporting results. In addition, the included studies were appraised for quality using methodology-specific tools. A critical narrative synthesis was adopted to present findings and discussion.

Nine studies met the inclusion criteria. Of the included studies, eight were retrieved from peer-reviewed journals and one from grey literature searching. Five categories with subcategories were identified affecting children’s mental health: 1) Relationships: parent and incarcerated child relationship; facilitators and barriers to maintaining contact; 2) Family structure; maternal or paternal incarceration; living arrangements during parental incarceration; 3) Children’s emotions: emotional recognition and regulation; resilience; 4) Prison stigma: social stigma; shame and secrecy; 5) Structural disadvantages: poverty; race/ethnicity.

This scoping review has highlighted how the imprisonment of a parent negatively affects their children’s emotional and mental health. Factors negatively impacting children’s emotional and mental health are interrelated and complex. Further research is required, including differences between paternal and maternal incarceration; impact of gender and age of child; poverty as an ACE and prison exacerbating this; and effects of ethnicity and race. An important policy direction is in developing an effective way of capturing the parental status of a prisoner to ensure that the child and family receive needed support.