Publications by authors named "Harriet MacMillan"

Article Synopsis
  • - Intimate partner violence (IPV) is linked to serious mental and physical health issues, but many physicians lack the necessary skills and knowledge to effectively support patients experiencing IPV in their care.
  • - Researchers conducted unstructured interviews with 18 experts in Ontario to understand the desired knowledge, skills, and behaviors physicians should have regarding IPV, focusing on the concept of "attending to power" in medical practice.
  • - Stakeholders emphasized the importance of recognizing and addressing power dynamics in various relationships related to IPV, and suggested that enhancing physicians' understanding of these dynamics can improve care for affected individuals and facilitate better collaboration with other support services.
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Based on a nationally representative survey of the Canadian population conducted in 2019/2020, this study examined the prevalence and determinants of non-physical Intimate partner violence (NP-IPV). NP-IPV was defined as experiences of emotional abuse, controlling behaviours, or economic abuse during the past five years. Women (17.

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Article Synopsis
  • The CHAMPP4KIDS study looked at how early childhood providers in Canada feel about a universal parenting resource called the Parenting for Lifelong Health tip sheets.
  • Providers thought the tip sheets were helpful and relevant to parents, but they weren't sure about just giving them out without extra support.
  • They suggested making improvements to the tip sheets to be easier to read and more culturally relevant so that more families could benefit from them.
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Background: Although limited, there is some evidence that certain physical punishments may vary by household religion.

Objective: This study aimed to determine whether parent disciplinary behavior varies by religious affiliation in two countries which have large, diverse religious groups.

Participants And Setting: Data from Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys for Suriname (2018) and Guyana (2019-20), which contain nationally representative household samples, were used.

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Children's exposure to intimate partner violence (CEIPV) between parents and other caregivers accounts for nearly half of all cases investigated and substantiated by child welfare authorities in Canada. The emotional, physical, and behavioural impairments associated with CEIPV are similar to effects of other forms of child maltreatment. The identification of children and youth who have been exposed to intimate partner violence (IPV) can be challenging due to the non-specific behaviours sometimes associated with such exposure, and the stigma and secrecy that often characterize IPV.

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L'exposition des enfants à la violence entre partenaires intimes (EEVPI), qu'il s'agisse des parents ou d'autres proches, représente près de la moitié de tous les cas qui font l'objet d'une enquête et sont corroborés par les services de protection de l'enfance du Canada. Les atteintes affectives, physiques et comportementales associées à l'EEVPI sont semblables aux effets d'autres formes de maltraitance envers les enfants. Il peut être difficile d'établir quels enfants et adolescents sont exposés à la violence entre partenaires intimes (VPI) en raison des comportements non spécifiques parfois associés à une telle exposition, de même que de la stigmatisation et du secret entourant souvent ce type de violence.

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Background: Childhood exposure to intimate partner violence (IPV) is associated with emotional-behavioural problems. However, little is known about children's emotional-behavioural outcomes following exposure to different long-term patterns of IPV.

Objective: The current study aimed to investigate the emotional-behavioural functioning of children at 10 years of age following exposure to different patterns of IPV across the first 10 years of life.

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Article Synopsis
  • Parents and caregivers are super important for kids to grow up healthy, and some programs help them be better parents, but many people had trouble accessing these programs, especially during COVID-19.
  • The CHAMPP4KIDS study in Ontario, Canada, will check if new media and communication materials can help parents and service providers support kids aged 2-6.
  • Researchers will collect information through surveys and discussions to see how helpful these parenting tips are and how they make caregivers feel, especially about their stress and worries.
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Article Synopsis
  • When people notice a serious health or social problem, they often want to start screening everyone to find out who might be affected, like with Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs).
  • However, there isn’t enough proof that these screening programs actually help people more than they might hurt them.
  • The authors believe it’s better to spend money on high-quality studies to find the best ways to prevent ACEs, and to focus on helping individuals who already have health or social issues, instead of just screening for risks.
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Case conceptualization, formally known as case formulation, is one tool that assists in determining the best course of action for children and families experiencing family violence that has been under-utilized in child welfare. In this article we present a step-by-step case conceptualization process that considers the child welfare context. We then present a hypothetical case example of a 10-year-old child referred by a child welfare worker to evidence-based treatment for mental health and behavioural concerns.

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Objective: Co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders (concurrent disorders) lead to significant morbidity in children and youth. Programs for integrated treatment of concurrent disorders have been developed; however, there exists little guidance outlining their structure and activities. Our objective was to synthesize available information on outpatient child and youth concurrent disorders programs and produce a comprehensive framework detailing the components of such programs.

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Objectives: Depression is associated with problems in functioning in many aspects of life, including parenting. COVID-19 has increased risk factors for depression. We investigated the prevalence of depression among parents during the pandemic and the association with dysfunctional parenting.

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Background: We investigated the effectiveness of Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP), a prenatal-to-age-two-years home-visiting programme, in British Columbia (BC), Canada.

Methods: For this randomised controlled trial, we recruited participants from 26 public health settings who were: <25 years, nulliparous, <28 weeks gestation and experiencing socioeconomic disadvantage. We randomly allocated participants (one-to-one; computer-generated) to intervention (NFP plus existing services) or comparison (existing services) groups.

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Background: Religious affiliation may account for some variance in parenting behaviors used for disciplinary intent. However, most reported studies of this relationship are limited to high-income countries focused on Christianity.

Objective: This study aimed to determine whether parenting behaviors vary by religion in a low- and middle-income country between Protestant, Catholic, and Muslim groups.

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Background: Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are associated with multimorbidity in adulthood. This link may be mediated by psychosocial and biological factors, but evidence is lacking. The current study evaluates this mediation model.

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Intimate partner violence (IPV) and child maltreatment (physical, emotional, sexual abuse, neglect, and children's exposure to IPV) are two of the most common types of family violence; they are associated with a broad range of health consequences. We summarize evidence addressing the need for safe and culturally-informed clinical responses to child maltreatment and IPV, focusing on mental health settings. This considers clinical features of child maltreatment and IPV; applications of rights-based and trauma- and violence-informed care; how to ask about potential experiences of violence; safe responses to disclosures; assessment and interventions that include referral networks and resources developed in partnership with multidisciplinary and community actors; and the need for policy and practice frameworks, appropriate training and continuing professional development provisions and resources for mental health providers.

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Article Synopsis
  • This review identifies and analyzes national surveys regarding child maltreatment (CM) conducted by governments across low-income, middle-income, and high-income countries from 2000 to 2021.
  • It highlights the various measures taken by these surveys to ensure respondent safety and minimize distress, such as confidentiality options and support service information.
  • The study concludes that while procedures to safeguard respondents are in place globally, further evaluation is needed to enhance these practices and improve the effectiveness of future surveys in managing respondent safety during sensitive inquiries.
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While there have been ongoing calls to reform child welfare so that it better meets children's and families' needs, to date there have been no comprehensive summaries of child welfare reform strategies. For this systematic scoping review, we summarized authors' recommendations for improving child welfare. We conducted a systematic search (2010 to 2021) and included published reviews that addressed authors' recommendations for improving child welfare for children, youth, and families coming into contact with child welfare in high-income countries.

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Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic has had major economic, social and psychological consequences for adolescents and young adults. It is unclear whether those with a history of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) were particularly vulnerable. We examined whether a history of ACEs was associated with financial difficulties, lack of emotional support, feeling stressed/anxious, feeling down/depressed, increased alcohol and/or cannabis use and increased conflict with parents, siblings and/or intimate partners among 16- to 21-year-olds during the pandemic.

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The objective of this meta-synthesis was to systematically synthesise qualitative research that explores foster children's perspectives on participation in child welfare processes. Searches were conducted in Medline (OVID), Embase, PsycINFO, and Social Science Citation Index. Children in non-kinship foster care in any setting (high-income, middle-income, low-income countries) who self-reported their experiences of care (removal from home, foster family processes, placement breakdown) were eligible for inclusion.

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Resources addressing intimate partner violence (IPV) play a role in shaping how physicians conceptualize and perform their roles in caring for affected patients. This study combines environmental scanning with critical discourse analysis (CDA) to parse how roles of physicians were represented in 28 education materials and policy documents about IPV, taking the Canadian training milieu as an example. We developed a cyclical model of three core physician roles in addressing IPV-learning about IPV, identifying patients experiencing IPV, and responding to patients' disclosures of IPV.

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Tracking parents' mental health symptoms and understanding barriers to seeking professional help are critical for determining policies and services to support families' well-being. The COVID-19 pandemic has posed enormous challenges to parents' mental health and the access to professional help, and there are important public health lessons that must be learned from the past 2 years' experiences to inform future mental health responses to social- and family-level stressful events. This study examines the trajectories of parents' depressive and anxiety symptoms over a year during the pandemic as related to their mental health help-seeking.

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Aims: To identify factors that influenced: (1) integration of an intimate partner violence intervention into the Nurse-Family Partnership programme and (2) utilization of the intervention with fidelity to the clinical pathway by nurses in their home visits.

Design: A qualitative descriptive study embedded in the intervention arm (n = 7 sites) of a 15-site cluster randomized clinical trial to evaluate the intimate partner violence intervention.

Methods: Semi-structured interviews (n = 13) were conducted with supervisors.

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