Book-Sharing for Parenting and Child Development in South Africa: A Randomized Controlled Trial.

This study evaluated the impact of a parenting intervention on children's cognitive and socioemotional development in a group of caregivers and their 21-to-28-month-old children in a low-income South African township. A randomized controlled trial compared an experimental group (n = 70) receiving training in dialogic book-sharing (8 weekly group sessions) with a wait-list control group (n = 70). They were assessed before the intervention, immediately following it, and at a six month follow-up.

Adolescent Mental Health Program Components and Behavior Risk Reduction: A Meta-analysis.

Context: Although adolescent mental health interventions are widely implemented, little consensus exists about elements comprising successful models.

Objective: We aimed to identify effective program components of interventions to promote mental health and prevent mental disorders and risk behaviors during adolescence and to match these components across these key health outcomes to inform future multicomponent intervention development.

Data Sources: A total of 14 600 records were identified, and 158 studies were included.

Shared Picture Book Reading Interventions for Child Language Development: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

Interventions that train parents to share picture books with children are seen as a strategy for supporting child language development. We conducted meta-analyses using robust variance estimation modeling on results from 19 RCTs (N  = 2,594; M  = 1-6 years). Overall, book-sharing interventions had a small sized effect on both expressive language (d = 0.

The association between neighbourhood-level deprivation and depression: evidence from the south african national income dynamics study.

Background: Depression contributes substantially to the burden of disease in South Africa. Little is known about how neighbourhoods affect the mental health of the people living in them.

Methods: Using nationally representative data (N=11,955) from the South African National Income Dynamics Study and the South African Indices of Multiple Deprivation (SAIMD) modelled at small-area level, this study tested associations between neighbourhood-level deprivation and depression, after controlling for individual-level covariates.