Background: The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic led to social isolation and widespread lockdown, resulting in loneliness and lack of emotional support, which have been associated with adverse mental health outcomes. This study aims to explore the relationship of loneliness and emotional support with depression and substance use among young adults and their parents during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Methods: A cohort of 1227 participants was recruited from three ongoing cohort studies in the metropolitan area of New York City, USA.
Introduction: To assess the association of race and ethnicity with self-reported personal protective equipment shortages during the COVID-19 pandemic among healthcare workers in New York.
Methods: The COVID-19 Healthcare Personnel Study of New York was a prospective cohort study of HCWs with baseline data collected in April 2020 and follow-up data collected in February 2021. Multivariable logistic regression modeling was used to estimate the adjusted OR and 95% CIs of personal protective equipment shortages associated with race and ethnic minority status.
Extensive research has explored the enduring effects of childhood trauma on health, revealing its potential to produce chronic health problems. Despite findings that adults exposed to 9/11 suffer from enduring concurrent psychiatric and physical illnesses, investigations into the long-term physical-psychiatric comorbidities experienced by children and adolescents affected by the 9/11 trauma remain limited. In our study, we examined individuals directly exposed to 9/11 as children (N = 844 high exposure and N = 104 low exposed) and compared them to a matched unexposed, control group (N = 491).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Racial Ethn Health Disparities
July 2024
Background: Racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic health disparities became evident during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study explores whether these disparities extend to the content of worries.
Methods: We surveyed 1,222 participants from three metropolitan New York City (NYC) based cohorts through telephone interviews conducted from March to September 2020.
Family history (FH+) of substance use disorder (SUD) is an established risk factor for offspring SUD. The extent to which offspring psychological traits or the family environment, each of which may be relevant to familial transmission of SUD risk, vary by FH+ in socioeconomically disadvantaged populations is less clear. We compared the family/social environmental and psychological characteristics of 73 FH+ and 69 FH- youth ages 12-16, from a study of parental criminal justice system involvement in a primarily low-income, minority urban population.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), a highly contagious respiratory illnesses, has globally impacted mental health. This study aims to investigate the association between intolerance of uncertainty and depressive symptoms during the pandemic in New York, USA, considering COVID-19-related worries as modifiers and mediators.
Method: 1227 participants from three ongoing cohort studies, originally centered on trauma-exposed children and adolescents, provided data via questionnaires and telephone interviews across three waves.
Lancet Reg Health Southeast Asia
April 2024
Progress in promoting mental health, preventing mental illness, and improving care for people affected by mental illness is unlikely to occur if efforts remain separated from existing public health programs and the principles of public health action. Experts met recently to discuss integrating public health and mental health strategies in the south and east of Asia, especially in low- and middle-income countries. Areas of research identified as high priority were: 1) integrating mental health into perinatal care; 2) providing culturally-adjusted support for carers of people with mental and physical disorders; 3) using digital health technologies for mental health care in areas with limited resources and 4) building local research capacity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSoc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol
April 2024
Purpose: To examine within-individual time trends in mental well-being and factors influencing heterogeneity of these trends.
Methods: Longitudinal telephone survey of adults over 3 waves from the New York City (NYC) Metropolitan area during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Participants reported depression using the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ)-8, anxiety using the Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)-7, and past 30-day increases in tobacco or alcohol use at each wave.
Adolescence is a period of dramatic physiological changes preparing individuals to face future challenges. Prolonged exposure to stressors during childhood can result in dysregulated stress systems which alter normative physiological progression, leading to exacerbated risk for developing psychiatric disorders. Parental substance use disorder (SUD) is considered a significant childhood stressor which increases risk for the offspring to develop SUD.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe purpose of this study was to investigate the association between personal religiosity, mental health, and substance use outcomes among Black and Hispanic adults during the first six months of the COVID-19 outbreak in New York City (NYC). Phone interviews were conducted with 441 adults to obtain information on all variables. Participants self-reported race/ethnicity as Black/African American ( = 108) or Hispanic ( = 333).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: The COVID-19 Healthcare Personnel Study is a longitudinal survey to assess the changing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the New York State health care workforce. We analyzed results from a follow-up survey of physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants on the availability of equipment and personnel, work conditions, physical and mental health of participants, and impact of the pandemic on commitment to their profession.
Methods: We conducted an online survey of all licensed New York State physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants in April 2020 (N = 2105) and a follow-up survey in February 2021 (N = 978).
Objective: To examine racial and ethnic disparities and associated factors of insufficient sleep among children from infancy to preschool-aged.
Methods: We analyzed parent-reported data on US children ages 4 months-5 years (n = 13,975) from the 2018 and 2019 National Survey of Children's Health. Children who slept less than the age-specific minimum hours recommended by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine were classified as having insufficient sleep.
Background: Real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging neurofeedback (rtfMRI-nf) has proven to be a powerful technique to help subjects to gauge and enhance emotional control. Traditionally, rtfMRI-nf has focused on emotional regulation through self-regulation of amygdala. Recently, rtfMRI studies have observed that regulation of a target brain region is accompanied by connectivity changes beyond the target region.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Major depression is a common and potentially lethal condition. Early data suggest that the population-level burden of depression has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Prepandemic estimates of depression prevalence are required to quantify and comprehensively address the pandemic's impact on mental health in the U.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: The aim of this study was to assess occupational circumstances associated with adverse mental health among health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Methods: A cross-sectional study examined responses to an on-line survey conducted among 2076 licensed health care workers during the first pandemic peak. Mental health (depression, anxiety, stress, and anger) was examined as a multivariate outcome for association with COVID-related occupational experiences.
Early detection and intervention can counteract mental disorders and risk behaviours among adolescents. However, help-seeking rates are low. School-based screenings are a promising tool to detect adolescents at risk for mental problems and to improve help-seeking behaviour.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIt has been suggested that intergenerational transmission of risk for substance use disorder (SUD) manifests in the brain anatomy of substance naïve adolescents. While volume and shapes of subcortical structures (SSS) have been shown to be heritable, these structures, especially the pallidum, putamen, nucleus accumbens, and hippocampus, have also been associated with substance use disorders. However, it is not clear if those anatomical differences precede substance use or are the result of that use.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To examine associations between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and age-specific insufficient sleep duration (ISD) in American youth.
Methods: Data from the 2016-2017 National Survey of Children's Health, a sample of 46,209 youth ages 6 to 17 were analyzed. The main outcome was sleep duration that did not meet the recent recommendations of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.
Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol
September 2022
Background: In the United States, New York State's health care system experienced unprecedented stress as an early epicenter of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. This study aims to assess the level of hopelessness in New York State physicians working on the frontlines during the first wave of the COVID-19 outbreak.
Methods: A confidential online survey sent to New York State health care workers by the state health commissioner's office was used to gather demographic and hopelessness data as captured by a brief Hopelessness Scale.
J Neurosurg Anesthesiol
January 2022
Introduction: The COVID-19 Healthcare Personnel Study (CHPS) was designed to assess adverse short-term and long-term physical and mental health impacts of the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on New York's physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants.
Methods: Online population-based survey. Survey-weighted descriptive results, frequencies, proportions, and means, with 95% confidence intervals (95% CI).