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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

Personal tragedy or system failure: a qualitative analysis of narratives of caregivers of people with severe mental illness in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Background: Most studies agree that mental illness brings a heavy objective and subjective burden of care on the family and especially the caregivers. However, very little attention has been paid to the wider context in which this burden is shaped and sustained.

Material: In-depth interviews were conducted with 11 caregivers in Hong Kong and Taiwan and subsequent analysis identified four major themes: mystical knowledge beyond understanding, persistent self-blame and lay explanation, inertia of caregivers and non-responsive service system, and unsatisfying encounters with medical staff.