Close relationships with caregivers as protective factor for the mental health and functioning of war-affected Congolese youth.

Background: Supportive social connections are a crucial determinant of the mental health and adjustment of youth in conflict-torn regions. Conflict-affected youth face particular risks to their well-being due to high levels of trauma exposure and perpetration of violent acts as members of armed groups and post-conflict discrimination. However, little is known about the possible protective role of close relationships with caregivers in the aftermath of trauma.

Child maltreatment in a high adversity context: Associations of age, type and timing of exposure with psychopathology in middle childhood.

Background: While cumulative childhood maltreatment (CM) has been linked to psychopathological outcomes, recent studies point to the relevance of the type and timing of exposure. The aim of the current study was to better understand their importance beyond the cumulative burden of CM for psychopathological symptoms in middle childhood.

Methods: A total of N = 341 children (M = 9.

School-based prevention of teacher and parental violence against children: Study protocol of a cluster-randomized controlled trial in Tanzania.

Background: Violence against children at home and at school is particularly prevalent in Africa and is associated with adverse and persistent health effects on children. The violence prevention intervention Interaction Competencies with Children - for Teachers (ICC-T) is an effective tool to reduce violence against children by fostering teachers' non-violent communication and interaction skills. To enhance these effects, in the present study, ICC-T will be extended to parents (ICC-P) aiming to increase children's experience of consistent behavior and application of non-violent discipline strategies between teachers and parents.

Barriers to accessing mental health care for refugees and asylum seekers in high-income countries: A scoping review of reviews mapping demand and supply-side factors onto a conceptual framework.

This study undertakes a scoping review of reviews on barriers to accessing mental health care for refugees and asylum seekers in high-income countries. By assessing mental health care access using the Levesque's conceptual framework, we identify barriers along the patient care pathway and highlight research gaps. Following PRISMA-ScR guidelines, 10 relevant systematic and scoping reviews were identified and analyzed.

Traumatic loss: a systematic review of potential risk factors differentiating between posttraumatic stress disorder and prolonged grief disorder.

When traumatic events and losses intersect in the form of traumatic loss, these events can trigger both posttraumatic stress disorder and pathological grief. This systematic review investigates which characteristics differentiate between the development of the respective disorders or are associated with comorbidity. A systematic literature search using Medline, PubMed, APA PsycInfo and Web of Science yielded 46 studies which met the inclusion criteria.

Mobile applications in adolescent psychotherapy during the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic review.

Background: To bridge the gap in adolescent psychotherapy created by the increasing need for mental health interventions and the limited possibilities of in-person treatment during the pandemic, many health care providers opted to offer online mental health care programs. As a result, the number of mental health apps available in app stores experienced a sharp increase during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Objective: The aim of the current review is to provide an overview of feasibility and effectiveness studies testing mobile applications in adolescent psychotherapy during the peak phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Posttraumatic stress moderates return intentions: a factorial survey experiment with internally displaced persons in Nigeria.

Persons displaced by conflict often consider returning to their area of origin. Lack of reliable information about conditions in the area of origin makes this decision more difficult. Displaced persons address this by seeking information from other sources, but must then assess the credibility of these sources.

Efficacy and moderators of efficacy of cognitive behavioural therapies with a trauma focus in children and adolescents: an individual participant data meta-analysis of randomised trials.

Background: Existing clinical trials of cognitive behavioural therapies with a trauma focus (CBTs-TF) are underpowered to examine key variables that might moderate treatment effects. We aimed to determine the efficacy of CBTs-TF for young people, relative to passive and active control conditions, and elucidate putative individual-level and treatment-level moderators.

Methods: This was an individual participant data meta-analysis of published and unpublished randomised studies in young people aged 6-18 years exposed to trauma.

Sexual violence affects adolescents' health and prosocial behaviour beyond other violence exposure.

Sexual violence is a public health issue among adolescents globally but remains understudied in Sub-Saharan Africa. The present study focused on the association of cumulative exposure to different types of sexual violence with mental and physical health problems and prosocial behaviour. We conducted a survey with a regionally representative sample of both in-school and out-of-school adolescents, aged 13-17 years, living in south-western Nigeria.

Problem-Focused Coping and Teacher Emotional Violence: A Serial Mediation Analysis.

Although school violence is a serious problem, teacher emotional violence that has short- and long-term detrimental effects on children's development is often overlooked. Considering the potential negative effects, it is important to determine teacher characteristics associated with teacher emotional violence, especially in societies where the prevalence rate of emotional violence is high. The current study investigated the role of teacher stress and burnout and favorable attitudes toward emotional violence in the association between problem-focused coping and teacher emotional violence.

Intergenerational transmission of mental health risk in refugee families: The role of maternal psychopathology and emotional availability.

To prevent an intergenerational cycle of malfunction, it is crucial to understand how mothers' exposure to traumatic war experiences contributes to their children's vulnerability to mental health problems. This study examined the role of maternal psychopathology and mother-child emotional availability (EA) in the association between mothers' trauma exposure and children's mental health problems in a sample of 222 Burundian mother-child dyads living in refugee camps in Tanzania. Maternal and child EA were assessed through recorded observations of mother-child interactions.

The network structure of posttraumatic stress symptoms in war-affected children and adolescents.

Background: It is unclear whether findings from previous network analyses of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms among children and adolescents are generalizable to youth living in war-torn settings and whether there are differences in the structure and connectivity of symptoms between children and adolescents. This study examined the network structure of PTSD symptoms in a sample of war-affected youth and compared the symptom networks of children and adolescents.

Methods: The overall sample comprised 2007 youth (6-18 years old) living in Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Palestine, Tanzania, and Uganda amid or close to war and armed conflict.

No association between war-related trauma or PTSD symptom severity and epigenome-wide DNA methylation in Burundian refugees.

War-related trauma is associated with varying posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) prevalence rates in refugees. In PTSD development, differential DNA methylation (DNAm) levels associated with trauma exposure might be involved in risk versus resilience processes. Studies investigating DNAm profiles related to trauma exposure and PTSD among refugees remain sparse.

Reducing Violent Discipline by Teachers: a Matched Cluster-Randomized Controlled Trial in Tanzanian Public Primary Schools.

Violent discipline in schools infringes on children's rights and is associated with harmful developmental consequences for students. This calls for effective intervention programs, particularly in countries with high prevalence of violent discipline in schools. This study tested the effectiveness of the preventative intervention Interaction Competencies with Children-for Teachers (ICC-T) in reducing violent discipline by teachers in a two-arm matched cluster-randomized controlled trial.

Sustainability of effects and secondary long-term outcomes: One-year follow-up of a cluster-randomized controlled trial to prevent maltreatment in institutional care.

Background: Many orphans in East Africa are living in institutional care facilities where they experience poor quality of care and ongoing maltreatment. We report on the extension of a cluster-randomized controlled trial aiming to replicate and show sustainability of previous found effects and to discover long-term effects of the intervention Interaction Competencies with Children-for Caregivers (ICC-C) 12-months after the intervention's conclusion.

Methods: Conducting a robust 2x3 analysis of variance, we investigated the changes over time in the waitlist orphanages (n = 75, 62.

Externalizing problems mediate the relation between teacher and peer violence and lower school performance.

Background: The association between children's exposure to family violence and poor academic outcomes is well-established. Less is known about how exposure to violence in the school context, i.e.

The role of violence perpetration in driving externalizing problems and offending behavior among youth from eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

Youth in conflict-affected regions are exposed to a multitude of traumatic events. These individuals often witness violence; experience it firsthand; and, in some cases, become perpetrators. The interplay of events shapes systematic trauma histories that may have unique implications for youths' mental health.

Resilience of Health Systems: Understanding Uncertainty Uses, Intersecting Crises and Cross-level Interactions Comment on "Government Actions and Their Relation to Resilience in Healthcare During the COVID-19 Pandemic in New South Wales, Australia and Ontario, Canada".

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has created opportunities to study resilience in multiple, interrelated societal systems while considering the institutional, community and individual level. We aim to discuss critical, yet underrepresented, issues in resilience discourses which are fundamental to advance theories, concepts and measurement of health system resilience. These relate to a better understanding of () how government's handle and to facilitate or impede change, including the role of negotiation and conflicts, () the intersections of health with multiple, co-occurring crises (), and () , ie, the interrelation between individual-level resilience, the collective resilience of groups and communities, and the resilience of a system as a whole (and ).

A Systematic Review of the Prevalence and Correlates of Emotional Violence by Teachers.

There is increasing evidence for the deleterious impact of emotional violence on children`s well-being and development. This systematic review focused on a) the prevalence and (b) correlates of emotional violence by teachers. A literature search of quantitative and peer-reviewed studies published in English between 1980 and April 2021 was conducted.

Preventing Violence by Teachers in Primary Schools: Study Protocol for a Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial in Haiti.

Context: Although teacher violence at schools is a serious problem in Haiti, there is a lack of systematic evidence on the effectiveness of school-based interventions in reducing teacher violence in this low-income country.

Objective: To test the effectiveness of the preventative intervention aiming to reduce teachers' use of violent disciplinary strategies and to improve their interaction competences with children in the Haitian context.

Design Setting Participants: The study is designed as a two-arm matched cluster randomized controlled trial.

Preventing maltreatment in institutional care: A cluster-randomized controlled trial in East Africa.

An increasing number of orphans in low- and middle-income countries are living in institutional care facilities where they experience poor quality of care and ongoing maltreatment. To prevent maltreatment, we tested the effectiveness and feasibility of the intervention . In a two-arm cluster-randomized controlled trial, 203 caregivers (65.

Reducing physical and emotional violence by teachers using the intervention Interaction Competencies with Children - for Teachers (ICC-T): study protocol of a multi-country cluster randomized controlled trial in Ghana, Tanzania, and Uganda.

Background: Violence has severe and long-lasting negative consequences for children's and adolescents' well-being and psychosocial functioning, thereby also hampering communities' and societies' economic growth. Positive attitudes towards violence and the lack of access to alternative non-violent strategies are likely to contribute to the high levels of teachers' ongoing use of violence against children in sub-Saharan African countries. Notwithstanding, there are currently very few school-level interventions to reduce violence by teachers that a) have been scientifically evaluated and b) that focus both on changing attitudes towards violence and on equipping teachers with non-violent discipline strategies.

Psychopathology mediates between maltreatment and memory functioning in Burundian refugee youth.

Background: The detrimental impact of child maltreatment on children and adolescents' academic achievement and later socioeconomic wellbeing is well known. However, it is still unclear (1) whether maltreatment is actually linked to youth's long- and short-term memory deficits and (2) whether potential impairments are due to maltreatment per se or related psychopathology.

Objective: Based on the Attentional Control Theory, we investigated a mediational model in which maltreatment would be related to psychopathology (internalizing symptoms, posttraumatic stress symptoms, posttraumatic cognitions), which would in turn be related to impaired memory functioning.

Factors Contributing to Violent Discipline in the Classroom: Findings From a Representative Sample of Primary School Teachers in Tanzania.

The need for intervention strategies aiming to reduce teachers' use of violent discipline methods has been expressed repeatedly, especially for countries where this practice is socially and legally accepted. Nevertheless, initial targets for interventions are not clearly identified, as factors contributing to teachers' use of violence are still understudied. In the present study, we examined the interplay between teachers' own experiences of violence, their attitudes, current stress, and their use of violent discipline in a representative sample of 173 Tanzanian primary school teachers (53.