Early identification of Autism Spectrum Disorder is very important, especially in low and middle-income countries, where access to resources is often limited. The Child Behavior Checklist 1.5-5 is a tool that has been used to help identify children with autism spectrum disorder through specific behavior patterns.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Poor mental health occurs more frequently among people living with HIV. Understanding what mental health problems occur and at what point during the continuum of HIV care is critical to ensure these problems are identified and appropriately addressed. We explored how mental health is experienced along the HIV care continuum in Rakai, Uganda.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTrust is an essential human trait. Although research suggests that the interplay between oxytocinergic and dopaminergic systems affects trust formation, little research has focused on epistatic (i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNepalese migrant workers are at heightened risk of adverse mental health problems. However, the social mechanisms by which experiences of labor migration create such vulnerabilities are not well understood. Moreover, limited attention has been paid to the experiences of left-behind spouses.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFStudies evaluating school readiness profiles and quality of early education are scarce and have produced inconsistent results. This study aimed to identify school readiness profiles, correlating them with the quality of education, in an epidemiological sample of 722 children (4 and 5 years old; 48.9% female).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntimate partner violence (IPV) during the perinatal period can negatively affect both a woman's health and the bonding with her infant. Research on IPV among pregnant women experiencing psychological distress in South Asia is limited. We examined associations between perinatal exposure to IPV and postnatal maternal-infant bonding in Pakistani women with symptoms of anxiety and assessed if breastfeeding practices moderated these associations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Limited information exists linking food habits, diet quality, and lifestyle scores with anthropometric indices and happiness levels. Our aim was to examine the association between food habits, diet quality, and lifestyle scores with anthropometric indices and happiness levels in the Iranian population.
Methods: This cross-sectional study included 200 students randomly selected from a university in Iran.
Background: Globally, internalizing problems disproportionately affect females in adolescence and adulthood, with limited research at earlier ages due to a focus on disruptive behaviors. Our study addresses this gap by exploring the structure of internalizing problems and gender differences in Brazilian preschoolers.
Methods: We analyzed data from the Child Behavioral Checklist 1.
Objective: Given that infant development is influenced by caregiver mental health, we tested whether an intervention to reduce antenatal anxiety could affect infant development. A secondary aim was to test depressive symptoms, maternal responsiveness, and maternal infant bonding as mediators of this relationship.
Methods: Between 2020 and 2022, pregnant women participated in a randomized controlled trial of the Happy Mother-Healthy Baby (HMHB) program based on cognitive behavioral therapy.
Background: The study examined the effects of Happy Mother-Healthy Baby (HMHB), a cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) intervention on breastfeeding outcomes for Pakistani women with prenatal anxiety.
Methods: Breastfeeding practices were evaluated in a randomized controlled trial between 2019 and 2022 in a public hospital in Pakistan. The intervention group was randomized to receive six HMHB sessions targeted towards prenatal anxiety (with breastfeeding discussed in the final session), while both groups also received enhanced usual care.
There is a research gap in understanding the relationship between nutrient deficiency and food insecurity among adolescent girls in Afghanistan. The objective of this study was to investigate the associations between nutrient deficiencies and food insecurity among middle and high school-aged girls in Kabul. We conducted a cross-sectional study of 380 randomly selected 11-18-year-old girls attending public schools in grades 6-12.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Health and illness experiences are positioned within social and cultural contexts. Understanding the mental health and psychological distress of people living with HIV in highly affected communities is critical to addressing their needs and to ensure programming and interventions are targeted and appropriate.
Methods: Grounded in the ethnomedical theoretical perspective, we conducted qualitative interviews to understand the experience and expression of psychological distress by people living with HIV in Rakai, Uganda.
Background: Pregnancy loss that includes both miscarriage and stillbirth cause significant psychological distress for women including anxiety, depression, and grief that persist long after physical recovery. This study focuses on the experiences of women in Pakistan, where pregnancy loss rates are high.
Objective: To explore how pregnant women with anxiety symptoms and a history of pregnancy loss perceive their past experiences with the loss and how it affects overall well-being in their current pregnancy.
Background: COVID-19 is a pandemic caused by nCoV-2019, a new beta-coronavirus from Wuhan, China, that mainly affects the respiratory system and can be modulated by nutrition.
Methods: This review aims to summarize the current literature on the association between dietary intake and serum levels of micronutrients, malnutrition, and dietary patterns and respiratory infections, including flu, pneumonia, and acute respiratory syndrome, with a focus on COVID-19. We searched for relevant articles in various databases and selected those that met our inclusion criteria.
Antenatal anxiety is among the risk factors for adverse birth outcomes, which are common in Pakistan. Between 2019 and 2022, we conducted a randomized controlled trial to evaluate the effects of the Happy Mother-Healthy Baby program, designed to reduce anxiety during pregnancy through use of Cognitive Behavior Therapy, on birth outcomes with 796 women in Rwalpindi, Pakistan. We performed intent-to-treat analysis and per protocol analyses.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: This qualitative study explores therapists' and participants' preferences for delivery methods (face-to-face and phone sessions) of a cognitive behavioral therapy-based psychosocial intervention for prenatal anxiety delivered in a tertiary care hospital.
Setting: The research was conducted in a randomized controlled trial in Pakistan, where a shift from face-to-face to phone-based therapy occurred during the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.
Participants: Twenty in-depth interviews and a focus group discussion were conducted with participants and therapists, respectively.
Background: Dysregulation of the immune system has been associated with psychiatric disorders and pregnancy-related complications, such as perinatal depression. However, the immune characteristics specific to perinatal anxiety remain poorly understood. In this study, our goal was to examine specific immune characteristics related to prenatal anxiety within the context of a randomized controlled trial designed to alleviate anxiety symptoms-the Happy Mother - Healthy Baby (HMHB) study in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: A mother who feels dissatisfaction with herself may resort to abusive behavior such as shaking or smothering toward their offspring. Understanding this association can inform effective prevention strategies.
Objective: This study aimed to investigate the associations between maternal feelings of dissatisfaction with oneself and infant physical abuse.
Diet quality has been associated with mental health, and recently, there has been growing interest in the association between the sustainability of diets and human health. The objective of this cross-sectional study was to explore the relationship between a newly developed dietary index for health and sustainability and psychological disorders among Iranian women. Participants in this cross-sectional study included 479 women living in Tehran with no history of chronic disease.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Expanding on existing research suggesting that strategies to reduce prenatal anxiety can decrease functional disability (e.g., difficulties in performing everyday activities and social participation), we examined if this effect varied by type of anxiety-producing problem (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFChild Psychiatry Hum Dev
April 2024
Maternal responsiveness, a mother's ability to consistently identify infant cues and then act on them, is critical for healthy child development. A woman's social support and spousal relationship may affect responsiveness to an infant, especially among mothers with anxiety. We assessed how social support and spousal relationship quality is associated with responsiveness among anxious mothers, and if postpartum depression (PPD) moderated these associations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Food security and nutrition equity, 2 social determinants of health, are impacted by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and the racialization of urban communities. Few studies to date have examined how the use of social infrastructures in the United States during COVID-19 affected the ability to achieve food security and nutrition equity.
Objectives: To describe how the use of social infrastructures impacts food security and nutrition equity in a majority Black and urban community in the United States.
Background: Little is known about the association between stressors (especially positive stressors) during pregnancy and postpartum depression and anxiety.
Aims: We investigated the association between positive and negative stress events during different stages of pregnancy and postpartum mental health outcomes among low-income pregnant women with symptoms of anxiety in Pakistan and evaluated whether an intervention based on cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) had a regulatory effect.
Methods: Participants were 621 pregnant Pakistani women with mild anxiety.