Demographic and mental health profile of youth in a gender service: An African case series.

Background: Despite a massive global increase in research on gender-diverse youth, there have been no studies in Africa on gender-diverse children and adolescents presenting to health services.

Aim: This study aimed to present the first African findings of the demographic and mental health profile of youth who have presented at a gender service in South Africa.

Setting: A specialist mental health outpatient service, consisting of psychiatry, psychology and nursing input, for gender-diverse child and adolescent patients in the Western Cape.

Health-related quality of life among people living with HIV in the era of universal test and treat: results from a cross-sectional study in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

Background: The World Health Organisation's (WHO) key population-based strategy for ending the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) epidemic is universal HIV test and treat (UTT) along with pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), and post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP). Despite the successful scale-up of the UTT strategy in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), the quality of life (QoL) of people living with HIV (PLHIV) remains sub-optimal. Poor QoL in PLHIV may threaten the UNAIDS 95-95-95 programme targets.

"A turn in the road, but still a rough journey" - Parent and child perspectives of outcomes after pre-adolescent inpatient psychiatric admission.

Background: Research regarding the outcomes of child and adolescent psychiatric inpatients appears insufficient and neglected. Where data are available, the majority of studies focus on adolescents. This study aimed (a) to describe child and parental perspectives of short-, medium- and long-term outcomes of children who have had a pre-adolescent inpatient psychiatric admission, and (b) to analyse these dyadic experiential data to identify outcome variables of importance to families and service users that could be used in future outcomes-based research.

Effects of policies or interventions that influence the school food environment on children's health and nonhealth outcomes: a systematic review.

Context: Globally, 1 in 3 children under 5 years is undernourished or overweight, and 1 in 2 suffers from hidden hunger due to nutrient deficiencies. As children spend a considerable time at school, school-based policies that aim to improve children's dietary intake may help address this double burden of malnutrition.

Objective: This systematic review aimed to assess the effects of implementing policies or interventions that influence the school food environment on children's health and nonhealth outcomes.

Bringing Parent-Child Interaction Therapy to South Africa: Barriers and Facilitators and Overall Feasibility-First Steps to Implementation.

There is a large assessment and treatment gap in child and adolescent mental health services, prominently so in low- and middle-income countries, where 90% of the world's children live. There is an urgent need to find evidence-based interventions that can be implemented successfully in these low-resource contexts. This pre-pilot study aimed to explore the barriers and facilitators to implementation as well as overall feasibility of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) in South Africa.

Internalizing problems, externalizing problems, and prosocial behavior - three dimensions of the strengths and difficulties questionnaire (SDQ): A study among South African adolescents.

This study aimed to examine the factor structure of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire Self-Report version (SDQ-S), its psychometric properties and measurement invariance by gender and language spoken at home, among secondary school students in Western Cape, South Africa. A sample of 3,542 adolescents in Grade 8 (Mean age = 13.7 years) completed the SDQ-S in a three-language questionnaire (Afrikaans, English and isiXhosa).

Unbiased K-L estimator for the linear regression model.

In the linear regression model, the ordinary least square (OLS) estimator performance drops when multicollinearity is present. According to the Gauss-Markov theorem, the estimator remains unbiased when there is multicollinearity, but the variance of its regression estimates become inflated. Estimators such as the ridge regression estimator and the K-L estimators were adopted as substitutes to the OLS estimator to overcome the problem of multicollinearity in the linear regression model.

Exploring condom use decision-making among adolescents: the synergistic role of affective and rational processes.

Background: Condom use remains the most effective behavioural method for the prevention of HIV and unplanned pregnancies. However, condom use remains inconsistent among young people. Exploring the condom use decision-making processes that adolescents engage in might provide information that would assist in the prevention of many challenges related to poor sexual and reproductive health outcomes.

Quarantine alone or in combination with other public health measures to control COVID-19: A rapid Cochrane review.

In March 2020, the South African government implemented various non-pharmacological prevention and control measures (e.g. isolation, social distancing and quarantine) in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Adolescent girls and young women: Policy-to-implementation gaps for addressing sexual and reproductive health needs in South Africa.

Sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services for adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) remain inadequate - both globally and in South Africa (SA). We systematically scoped the available policies and guidelines for SRH-related policy for AGYW in SA. We found many available policies and guidelines to address issues of family planning, HIV prevention and care and antenatal and maternal care.

First social impact bond for the SAMRC: A novel financing strategy to address the health and social challenges facing adolescent girls and young women in South Africa.

A social impact bond (SIB) is an innovative financing mechanism to attract investors to social programmes traditionally funded by governments. In this article, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC), the authors describe the SAMRC's first foray into this new world of financing through a SIB to improve the health and quality of life of adolescent girls and young women (AGYW). The AGYW SIB is in its preparatory phase and is scheduled for implementation in 2020.

The burden of depression and anxiety among medical students in South Africa: A cross-sectional survey at the University of Cape Town.

Background: Depressive and anxiety disorders occur at very high rates among medical students. For instance, an international review and meta-analysis estimated the overall pooled crude prevalence of depression or depressive symptoms at 27.2%.

Interventions for preventing unintended pregnancies among adolescents.

South Africa (SA) has an increasingly high rate of unintended pregnancies among adolescents, which are coupled with poor contraception knowledge. We highlight a systematic review that evaluated the effects of prevention interventions for unintended adolescent pregnancies, and provide implications for practice that are relevant to the SA context. The findings suggest the need for multifaceted interventions that are aligned with adolescent sexual and reproductive health best practices to address the unmet contraception knowledge gap, as well as unintended pregnancies among adolescents.

Child and adolescent mental health in Africa: A qualitative analysis of the perspectives of emerging mental health clinicians and researchers using an online platform.

Using a social ecological framework, this study aimed to establish emerging mental health clinicians and researchers' perspectives about child and adolescent mental health (CAMH) in Africa. Perspectives of 17 participants from Ethiopia, Kenya, South Africa, Tunisia, Uganda and Zambia, whose professional backgrounds ranged from psychiatry to speech-language therapy, were collected at an African CAMH conference. Data were gathered using open-ended questions, using an online survey.

Parent Education and Training for autism spectrum disorders: Scoping the evidence.

Empowering families of children with autism spectrum disorder through education and training is best practice. A wide range of Parent Education and Training programmes are delivered around the globe, but there is limited knowledge about the characteristics of these programmes, or about the research methods and outcomes used to evaluate them, particularly in countries outside the United States. We, therefore, performed a scoping review of all peer-reviewed Parent Education and Training publications outside the United States.

Approximate eigensolutions of the attractive potential via parametric Nikiforov-Uvarov method.

The approximate analytical solutions of the non-relativistic Schrӧdinger equation for the Attractive potential model with the centrifugal term are investigated using the elegant methodology of the parametric Nikiforov-Uvarov. The energy equation and the corresponding un-normalized radial wave functions are obtained in a close and compact form after a proper Greene-Aldrich approximation scheme is applied. By changing the numerical values of some potential strengths, special cases of the Attractive potential are investigated in detail.

Scoping the evidence for EarlyBird and EarlyBird Plus, two United Kingdom-developed parent education training programmes for autism spectrum disorder.

EarlyBird and EarlyBird Plus are parent education and training programmes designed by the UK National Autistic Society in 1997 and 2003, having been delivered to more than 27,000 families in 14 countries. These group-based programmes aim to (1) support parents immediately after diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder, (2) empower parents, encouraging a positive perception of their child's autism spectrum disorder and (3) help parents establish good practice. In the absence of any previous comprehensive review, we performed a scoping review of all peer-reviewed publications on EarlyBird/EarlyBird Plus.

Correction to: The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) in Africa: a scoping review of its application and validation.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1186/s13034-017-0212-1.].

The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) in Africa: a scoping review of its application and validation.

Background: Child and adolescent mental health in Africa remains largely neglected. Quick and cost-effective ways for early detection may aid early intervention. The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) is globally used to screen for mental health problems, but little is known about its use in Africa.

Measuring adolescent mental health around the globe: psychometric properties of the self-report Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire in South Africa, and comparison with UK, Australian and Chinese data.

Aims: This study evaluated the psychometric properties of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire Self-Report (SDQ-S) in South African adolescents, and compared findings with data from the UK, Australia and China.

Methods: A sample of 3451 South African adolescents in grade 8, the first year of secondary school (Mage = 13.7 years), completed the SDQ-S in Afrikaans, English or isiXhosa.

Exosome complex orchestrates developmental signaling to balance proliferation and differentiation during erythropoiesis.

Since the highly conserved exosome complex mediates the degradation and processing of multiple classes of RNAs, it almost certainly controls diverse biological processes. How this post-transcriptional RNA-regulatory machine impacts cell fate decisions and differentiation is poorly understood. Previously, we demonstrated that exosome complex subunits confer an erythroid maturation barricade, and the erythroid transcription factor GATA-1 dismantles the barricade by transcriptionally repressing the cognate genes.

Changes in the treatment of acute psychosis in a German public hospital from 1998 to 2004.

Introduction: The aim of our study was to investigate antipsychotic treatment strategies in acute schizophrenic episodes in a German university hospital.

Methods: Documented pharmacological procedures in the first six weeks of acute episodes of schizophrenia in the years 1998 (n = 108), 2001 (n = 92), and 2004 (n = 94) were analyzed. Inclusion criteria were: admission voluntary and involuntary as inpatient to our acute ward with a diagnosis of F20x according to ICD 10.

Neuropsychological assessment of adult patients with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

Adults with persistent attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may show cognitive deficits as compared to healthy control subjects. The aim of this study was to compare a sample of adult outpatients with ADHD on medication to healthy controls on a comprehensive neuropsychological assessment battery. Thirty adults with ADHD under stable psychopharmacological treatment and 27 healthy controls matched for age, gender, and IQ were assessed with ten tests measuring performance with regard to attention, memory, executive function, and fine motor control.

Psychotropic drug prescription in a psychiatric university hospital in Germany.

A retrospective survey on drug prescription over a 5-year period (1998 to 2003) in 1,540 inpatients in a psychiatric university hospital in Germany was carried out. The aim was to establish a basis for a monitoring of prescription habits and for pharmacoeconomic considerations. It was established that there was only a slight increase in polyvalent drug use between 1998 and 2003.