How does urbanization affect the cognitive function among older adults: A geospatial analysis in China.

There has been a plethora of studies on urbanization and older adults, and more recent ones on how older adults adapt to this process with their cognitive competence. Yet it has been unclear about the relationship between them, like how the level and rate of urbanization affect the cognitive function among older adults. This study sourced, formed, and analyzed a set of geospatial big datasets from different sources, such as the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (CLHLS) data, and the NPP/VIIRS nighttime light (NTL) data.

Aging and Caring: Exploring Older Adults' Motivation for Informal Caregiving to Other Aging Individuals in Nigeria.

Background And Objectives: Because of the global population aging, more informal carers become older adults. In Nigeria, the African country with the largest population of adults aged 60 years and older, self-construal rooted in the African collectivist philosophy generally shapes informal caregiving for older adults. However, there is a general paucity of studies on older adults' informal caregiving roles, particularly about their motivations for caregiving.

What makes Chinese adolescents "trapped" in severe mental illness? An interactionist perspective on self and identity.

The aim of this study was to explore the self and identity perspectives among Chinese adolescents with severe mental illness (SMI), with a focus on their illness experience and subjective meaning of a formal diagnosis. Thirty-one Chinese adolescents were interviewed and the interview data were analysed strictly according to principles suggested by the constructivist grounded theory approach. Five theoretical codes emerged in this study, including changes of personal values and beliefs, accumulated persistent developmental challenges and personal stresses, ineffective coping strategies and development, symptoms and development of mental illness, and changed perceptions and understandings of self.

Flourishing, psychological distress and internalized stigma among parents of an adult son or daughter with schizophrenia.

Background: Parents of adults diagnosed with schizophrenia, have been reported to have higher levels of psychological distress than the general population, and parents whose offspring have other mental or physical illnesses.

Aim: This study examines the comparatively new construct of flourishing, and its relationship to internalized stigma and psychological distress.

Method: A cross-sectional survey was conducted between July 2021 and March 2022, with an international sample of 200 parents of adult sons or daughters diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Development and validation of the caregiver needs and resources assessment.

Introduction: Existing caregiver assessment tools were long criticized for focusing on the needs and burden while neglecting the importance of the resources. The current study aimed to develop a multidimensional and time-effective assessment tool that measures both needs and resources of non-paid family caregivers of older adults for screening and service-matching purposes.

Methods: Items of the Caregiver Needs and Resources Assessment (CNRA) were developed from extensive literature reviews and focus group interviews of family caregivers and social workers in the field.

Constructing the in the lives of children living with parental mental illness.

Children living with parental mental illness are referred to as an invisible population because mental health services rarely target them, as the focus is often on the parent who is ill mentally. The same situation occurs even in school where they are unnoticed. This study conducted in Ghana creates awareness about what these children think about their interactions at school in the context of parental mental illness.

Filicide as a cultural practice in Ghana: The qualitative understanding of a family tragedy and its implications for child protection practice.

Background: Contrary to evidence from the Western literature, cases of filicide in Ghana are mostly unreported because they are rooted in cultural practices and hidden from the general public.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to explore the cultural context of filicide in a rural community. Particularly, to provide an understanding of the spirit child (SC) phenomenon, how the killing of a SC is performed and to provide a general understanding of filicide within a particular context.

Family caregiving during the COVID-19 pandemic: factors associated with anxiety and depression of carers for community-dwelling older adults in Hong Kong.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic disrupts the daily routine and increases the caregiving load of the family carers of older adults. This study examined how the pandemic may impact mental health and investigated the prevalence of anxiety and depressive symptoms in family carers of older people.

Methods: Two hundred and thirty-six family carers of older adults participated in this cross-sectional survey study.

COVID-19: Where are the Nigerian social workers?

The emergence of COVID-19 pandemic has brought untold hardship across the globe. Developed nations have taken relatively commendable actions to quell its impact on livelihood and most have also included social workers in the frontline due to their expertise in working with vulnerable populations. Same cannot be said of developing nations particularly Nigeria who hurriedly copied the measures adopted by the developed nations without carefully considering her peculiarities.

Regulating the traditional kinship care practice in Ghana: Reflections from young people with kinship care experience.

Background: Kinship care has become a favourable alternative care option for orphans and vulnerable children without adequate parental care in Ghana. However, kinship care practices in Ghana are considered informal cultural practices without formal regulations. The absence of formal regulations could have consequences on the health and development of children due to the lack of proper supervision and empirical assessment of children's needs.

Distress Due to Urinary Problems and Psychosocial Correlates among Retired Men in Hong Kong.

Urinary problems are common among aging men, but there is a paucity of research efforts to understand the psychosocial aspects of the illness. This study aims to understand how common and distressing urinary problems are for newly retired men in Hong Kong and to test the associations between mental health, self-stigma of seeking help, fatigue, self-efficacy, self-esteem, and distress due to urinary problems. To assess this, 139 out of 200 members of a retired men's social club (mean age 63.

Relationship of Anxiety and Depression with Respiratory Symptoms: Comparison between Depressed and Non-Depressed Smokers in Singapore.

The rising prevalence of smokers in the community, specifically psychiatric patients, necessitates smoking cessation as an important strategy for reducing the harmful effects of tobacco. This study aims to compare the profiles of depressed and non-depressed smokers and evaluate how psychiatric symptoms influence respiratory symptoms. A cross-sectional survey was administered to 276 non-depressed adult smokers in the community and 69 adult smokers who had been formally diagnosed with depression in the outpatient clinic of a University Hospital in Singapore.

Geographical Accessibility of Community Health Assist System General Practitioners for the Elderly Population in Singapore: A Case Study on the Elderly Living in Housing Development Board Flats.

Accessible primary healthcare is important to national healthcare in general and for older persons in particular, in societies where the population is ageing rapidly, as in Singapore. However, although much policy and research efforts have been put into this area, we hardly find any spatial perspective to assess the accessibility of these primary healthcare services. This paper analyzes the geographical accessibility of one major healthcare service in Singapore, namely, General Practitioners (GPs) services under the Community Health Assist Scheme (CHAS) for older persons.

Development and Validation of the Marital Metaphor Questionnaire (MMQ-10) for Urban Chinese Women.

Metaphors have long been applied to marital counseling and couple therapy. This pioneering study measures marital conceptualization through metaphors. It reports the validation of the Marital Metaphor Questionnaire (MMQ-10), designed to measure the marriage conceptualization of Chinese women through marital metaphors.

The social and community opportunities profile social inclusion measure: Structural equivalence and differential item functioning in community mental health residents in Hong Kong and the United Kingdom.

Introduction: China's future major health problem will be the management of chronic diseases - of which mental health is a major one. An instrument is needed to measure mental health inclusion outcomes for mental health services in Hong Kong and mainland China as they strive to promote a more inclusive society for their citizens and particular disadvantaged groups.

Aim: To report on the analysis of structural equivalence and item differentiation in two mentally unhealthy and one healthy sample in the United Kingdom and Hong Kong.

Application of SCOPE-C to Measure Social Inclusion Among Mental Health Services Users in Hong Kong.

This study describes the construction of the Chinese version of the Social and Communities Opportunities Profile (SCOPE), henceforth, the SCOPE-C, to measure social inclusion among mental health services users in Hong Kong. The SCOPE-C was developed based on concept-mapping and benchmarking of census questions. The questionnaire consisted of 56 items, went through a standardized linguistic validation process and was pilot tested with qualitative feedback from five users of mental health services.

Spatial illustration of health-care workforce accessibility index in China: How far has our 2009 health-care reform brought us?

Objective: The objective of the study was to evaluate the effectiveness of China's health-care reform from 2009 to 2011 by examining China's annual health-care workforce statistics of 2008 and 2011.

Design: The design of the study was a secondary data analysis.

Main Outcome Measure: The main outcome measure used was the Primary Health Care Worker Accessibility Index (PHCWA).

Caregiving Experience for Children with Intellectual Disabilities among Parents in a Developing Area in China.

Background: By utilizing grounded theory methodology, this study attempted to fill a gap whereby little research explored family caregiving perspectives in China where public support is insufficient and familial responsibility is highly valued.

Methods: Data were collected through the qualitative methods of interviews and observations among a purposive sample of 15 parents of children with intellectual disabilities in central China.

Results: The central idea emerging from the data encompassed five broad categories of caregiving experiences: (i) unavoidable caregiving responsibility and (ii) uncertain future as the greatest worries which are the perception towards the recipient; (iii) compromising quality of life and (iv) positive roles of caregiving tasks which focus on the self; and (v) community support which is the perceived support from the external system.

The mediating effect of affective stigma between face concern and general mental health - The case of Chinese caregivers of children with intellectual disability.

An earlier study revealed that the mental health of caregivers of children with intellectual disability is related to the affective dimension of affiliated stigma, loss of face and anxiety level. However, how cultural values such as face concern interplay with stigma remains largely unknown. This extended study goes further to test the mediating role of affective stigma on two slightly different pathway models between the face concern and the mental health outcome of 211 caregivers in two Chinese cities, against the required standards and procedure of being a mediator.

The influence of weather on health-related help-seeking behavior of senior citizens in Hong Kong.

It is believed that extreme hot and cold weather has a negative impact on general health conditions. Much research focuses on mortality, but there is relatively little community health research. This study is aimed at identifying high-risk groups who are sensitive to extreme weather conditions, in particular, very hot and cold days, through an analysis of the health-related help-seeking patterns of over 60,000 Personal Emergency Link (PE-link) users in Hong Kong relative to weather conditions.

Rasch analysis of the SAMHSA recovery inventory for Chinese (SAMHSA-RIC).

Aims: To generate a short version of a newly developed inventory that adopted the conceptual framework of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) consensus statement on recovery.

Methods: Through Rasch analysis, this paper presents how this recovery inventory (SAMHSA-RIC), with its original 111 items, can be reduced to a much shorter version with only 41 items.

Results: Although internal consistency is slightly lowered because of item reduction, the short version maintains satisfactory and significant correlations with quality of life measures.

Modeling self-agency among people with schizophrenia: empirical evidence for consumer-based recovery.

Background: Self-agency--the awareness of one's own capacity to make decisions and to engage in deliberate action - is often interfered with or lost during the course of severe mental illness. Most existing literature on self-agency is either of experimental or qualitative nature, and empirical evidence is scanty.

Sampling And Methods: This paper draws on a subset of empirical data from a larger recovery study that involved 204 people with schizophrenia in the community.

Predictors of dating violence among Chinese adolescents: the role of gender-role beliefs and justification of violence.

In Chinese societies, violence among adolescent dating partners remains a largely ignored and invisible phenomenon. The goal of this study is to examine the relationships among gender-role beliefs, attitudes justifying dating violence, and the experiences of dating-violence perpetration and victimization among Chinese adolescents. This study has used self-reporting measures to collect data from a probability sample of 976 adolescents (mean age = 15.

Empowering caregivers: impact analysis of FamilyLink Education Programme (FLEP) in Hong Kong, Taipei and Bangkok.

Background: Education and support for caregivers is lacking in Asia and the peer-led FamilyLink Education Programme (FLEP) is one of the few provisions to address this service gap. This study aims to evaluate quantitatively its efficacy in reducing subjective burdens and empowering the participants.

Method: One hundred and nine caregiver participants in three Asian cities were successfully surveyed at pre-intervention, post-intervention and six-month intervals with a number of standard inventories.