Publications by authors named "Melissa Mercado"

Article Synopsis
  • The COVID-19 pandemic significantly affected mental health, causing grief, isolation, and economic distress, alongside physical health impacts.
  • The HRN campaign aimed to provide emotional support specifically targeting populations disproportionately impacted by COVID-19, using surveys and social media data to evaluate its effectiveness.
  • Results indicated the campaign successfully helped individuals cope with stress and foster resilience, showcasing how culturally tailored mental health communication can support vulnerable communities.
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Article Synopsis
  • Sexting among youth is linked to negative outcomes, and understanding caregivers' perceptions can aid in prevention efforts.
  • A 2018-2019 survey of over 1,000 U.S. caregivers found that many believe youth sext for reasons like wanting to be popular or thinking it's harmless.
  • Caregivers' concerns about their children sexting were influenced by perceptions of low self-esteem and sexual exploration, with varying levels of concern observed among different racial/ethnic groups.
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Article Synopsis
  • The study investigated U.S. parents’ and caregivers’ understanding of children's bullying, focusing on what bullying is and how to effectively address it using data from online surveys conducted in 2017-2019 with 1,516 participants aged 10-17.
  • Results showed that while most parents recognized bullying as harmful (77%) and repetitive (63%), only 51% acknowledged the involvement of power imbalances; half of the parents demonstrated a strong understanding of bullying prevention practices.
  • The study highlighted that certain sociodemographic factors, such as being male, non-Hispanic Black or Hispanic, lower education levels, and small household sizes, were linked to poorer understanding of bullying, indicating the need for tailored bullying prevention messages
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Participation in communities is essential to individual mental and physical health and can yield further benefits for members. With a growing amount of time spent participating in virtual communities, it's increasingly important that we understand how the community experience manifests in and varies across these online spaces. In this paper, we investigate Sense of Virtual Community (SOVC) in the context of live-streaming communities.

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Background: Research shows associations between bullying victimization and substance use for teens. However, more research about this relationship for younger adolescents and across race/ethnicity is needed.

Methods: Prevalence and pooled logistic regression analyses of 2019 Middle School Youth Risk Behavior Survey data from 13 states (N = 74,059 students) examined associations between self-reported bulling victimization (at school, electronically, and both) and having ever tried cigarette smoking, alcohol, or marijuana; used an electronic vapor product; or misused prescription pain medicine.

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Background And Objective: A national, longitudinal survey of US adolescents assessed adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) twice during the COVID-19 pandemic. Adolescents with more Wave 1 ACEs were expected to be more likely to experience additional ACEs at Wave 2.

Methods: Adolescents aged 13 to 18 (n = 727, Fall 2020; n = 569, Spring 2021) recruited via a national, probability-based panel (survey completion rate Wave 1, 62.

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Parents have an important role in the promotion of healthy adolescent behaviors that can influence positive developmental trajectories and health outcomes. Parental monitoring is a central component of the parent-child relationship with the potential to reduce adolescent risk behaviors. Data from CDC's 2021 nationally representative Youth Risk Behavior Survey were used to describe the prevalence of parental monitoring reported by U.

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Background: Sexting is common among adolescents and is associated with numerous health risk behaviors and negative psychosocial constructs. This study examined the relationships between high school students' experiences with sexual violence victimization, dating violence victimization, and engagement in risky sexual behaviors with experiences of receiving sexts.

Methods: Cross-sectional data from the 2014 to 2016 data from Pennsylvania Youth Risk Behavior.

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Objectives: How Right Now (HRN) is an evidence-based, culturally responsive communication campaign developed to facilitate coping and resilience among US groups disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. To inform the development of this campaign, we examined patterns in emotional health, stress, and coping strategies among HRN's audiences, focusing on differences among racial and ethnic groups.

Methods: We used a national probability panel, AmeriSpeak, to collect survey data from HRN's priority audience members in English and Spanish at 2 time points (May 2020 and May 2021).

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Video game content has evolved over the last six decades, from a basic focus on challenge and competition to include more serious and introspective narratives capable of encouraging critical contemplation within gamers. The "No Russian" mission from casts players as terrorists responsible for the murder of innocent bystanders, sparking debate around how players engage and react to wanton violence in modern video games. Through thematic analysis of 649 Reddit posts discussing the mission, 10 themes emerged representing complexity in player experiences.

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Bullying is a type of youth violence and an adverse childhood experience that can result in trauma and have immediate and long-term consequences for all involved. It can happen at school or elsewhere - including online entertainment and social and learning environments. Some children are at increased risk for bullying victimization, such as those targeted because of their racial/ethnic background or cultural identity.

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Although research advocates for comprehensive cross sector youth violence prevention efforts, mobilizing across sectors to translate scientific recommendations into practice has proven challenging. A unifying framework may provide a foundational step towards building a shared understanding of the risk and protective factors that impact youth violence. We conducted two empirical tests of the nurturing environment framework on youth violence across ethnic and geographically diverse rural and urban adolescent samples.

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The How Right Now communication initiative (HRN) was developed to facilitate resilience amid the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. HRN was designed as a conduit for promoting mental health and addressing feelings of grief, worry, and stress experienced during this time. This article provides an overview of the rapid, mixed-method, culturally responsive formative research process undertaken to inform the development of HRN.

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Perihematomal edema (PHE) surrounding intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) may contribute to disease-associated morbidity. Before quantifying PHE's effects on morbidity, a fast, accurate, and reproducible method for measuring PHE volume is needed. The aim of this study is to demonstrate the use of a semiautomated dual clustering segmentation algorithm to generate PHE volumetrics on noncontrast computed tomography (CT) of the head and compare this technique to physicians' manual calculations.

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Unlabelled: infection is known to cause a variety of neurologic complications, most involving the CNS, however, rarely have cases of affecting the peripheral nervous system been reported in literature. We report a case of toxin-mediated motor polyneuropathy in a patient presenting with acute flaccid quadriplegia.

Case Summary: A 64-year-old female with mantle cell lymphoma on oral chemotherapy with ibrutinib presents with malaise and progressive ascending bilateral lower extremity weakness.

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Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine multiple ways youth may access firearms among a sample of urban, mountain west youth, and explore whether youth reporting various types of violence involvement and other behavioral or mental health factors have differential access to firearms compared with youth who do not report these issues.

Methods: A cross-sectional community-based survey was conducted among adolescents aged 10-17 years and one of their parents. The main outcomes were youth firearm access and possession and associated violence and behavioral and mental health factors.

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Bullying is often ongoing during middle- and high-school. However, limited research has examined how cumulative experiences of victimization, perpetration, and bystander behavior impact adolescent behavioral and mental health and academic achievement outcomes at the end of high school. The current study used a sample of over 8000 middle- and high-school students (51% female; mean age 12.

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Firearm homicide is the leading cause of violence-related youth mortality. To inform prevention efforts, we analyzed event-level data to identify unique precursors to firearm conflicts. Youth (ages:14-24) seeking Emergency Department (ED) treatment for assault or for other reasons and reporting past 6-month drug use were enrolled in a 2-year longitudinal study.

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Objective: This study identified sociodemographic, substance use, and multiple opioid prescriber and dispenser risk factors among drug overdose decedents in Rhode Island, in response to an increase in overdose deaths (ODs) involving fentanyl.

Methods: This cross-sectional investigation comprised all ODs reviewed by Rhode Island's Office of the State Medical Examiners (OSME) during January 2012 to March 2014. Data for 536 decedents were abstracted from OSME's charts, death certificates, toxicology reports, and Prescription Monitoring Program (PMP) databases.

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