Quality of Life of Schoolchildren Living with a Long-Term Sick Parent: The Role of Tasks at Home, Life Circumstances and Social Support.

This study investigates whether there are differences in quality of life-i.e., psychosomatic complaints and life satisfaction-between schoolchildren with and without a chronically ill or disabled parent at home.

The relationship of personal budgets with independence, participation and quality of life; a secondary analysis of survey data using propensity score matching.

Objectives: Personal budgets for social and health care have been introduced in many European countries over recent decades. The assumption is that people with a personal budget are able to purchase care that matches their needs more closely and therefore experience greater independence and improved well-being. The question is whether this assumption is true.

Influence of municipal policy and individual characteristics on the use of informal and formal domestic help in the Netherlands.

Background: The responsibility for care and social support in the Netherlands has been decentralized to the municipalities, on the assumption that they are able to organise care and social support more effectively and efficiently. Municipalities are responsible for offering citizens the social support they need. They have policy discretion to decide how and to what extent they encourage and support the use of informal help.

Growing Up With the Right to Marry: Sexual Attraction, Substance Use, and Well-Being of Dutch Adolescents.

Purpose: To assess the well-being and substance use of sexual minority adolescents growing up in a tolerant society, we examined differences among same-sex attracted (SSA), those who do not know their attraction yet (not yet attracted [NYA]), and heterosexual Dutch adolescents.

Methods: Unadjusted and adjusted logistic and linear multilevel analyses were performed using representative data of the 2013 Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children study (N = 5,995; 11-16 years old). The adjusted analyses controlled for sociodemographics (gender, age, education type, ethnicity, urbanicity, and religion).

Positive and negative evaluation of caregiving among three different types of informal care relationships.

Based on the caregiver stress model, we examined how care demands, caregiver motivation, coping style and external support are associated with positive evaluation and caregiver burden among spousal, adult child and other types of care relations. Data from a sample of Dutch informal caregivers of 1,685 older persons (55 and older) were analyzed employing multivariate linear regression analyses for each of the care relationship types. Spouses ( = 206) report high positive evaluation and high burden, adult children ( = 1,093) report low positive evaluation, and other caregivers ( = 386) report high positive evaluation and a low burden.

Are informal caregivers less happy than noncaregivers? Happiness and the intensity of caregiving in combination with paid and voluntary work.

Informal caregivers are one of the pillars of home health care. In the Netherlands, the free help they provide to sick or disabled family members, acquaintances or friends exceeds the number of hours of home care provided by professionals. While the government welcomes their contribution, there is concern about the potential burden their work imposes on them.

Multiple dimensions of attitudes about homosexuality: development of a multifaceted scale measuring attitudes toward homosexuality.

Attitudes toward homosexuality are complex. To get a comprehensive view on the attitudes of people, different dimensions need to be included in research. Based on a review of the literature, we distinguish five dimensions: acceptance of homosexuality in a general sense; attitude toward equal rights; reactions to homosexuality "at close quarters"; reactions to homosexuality in public; and so-called modern homonegativity.

The structure of the extended psychosis phenotype in early adolescence--a cross-sample replication.

The extended psychosis phenotype, or the expression of nonclinical positive psychotic experiences, is already prevalent in adolescence and has a dose-response risk relationship with later psychotic disorder. In 2 large adolescent general population samples (n = 5422 and n = 2230), prevalence and structure of the extended psychosis phenotype was investigated. Positive psychotic experiences, broadly defined, were reported by the majority of adolescents.

Are persons with physical disabilities who participate in society healthier and happier? Structural equation modelling of objective participation and subjective well-being.

In many countries, governments pursue a policy of offering persons with disabilities greater opportunities for participation in society, based on the assumption that this will also improve their subjective well-being. Currently, however, it is not known whether this assumption is valid. In this study we relate the objective participation and the subjective well-being aspects of both disabled and non-disabled persons to an array of social and health-related determinants.

Explaining service use for mental health problems in the Dutch general population: the role of resources, emotional disorder and functional impairment.

Objective: To analyse explanations of service use in terms of resources, emotional (mood or anxiety) disorder and functional impairment.

Method: Data was derived from a prospective cohort study in a sample representative (n = 4848) of the Dutch adult general population.

Results: The occurrence of an emotional (mood or anxiety) disorder led to a greater use of services as a partial consequence of the functional impairments that accompanied the disorder, but this applied only to primary care services and not to specialised mental health services.

Separation-individuation revisited: on the interplay of parent-adolescent relations, identity and emotional adjustment in adolescence.

The objective of this study was to test our alternative interpretation of the separation-individuation hypothesis. This interpretation states that separation from the parents is not a precondition for individuation, but rather separation and individuation are two parallel processes of development during adolescence. We investigated our interpretation in two ways.