Missed post-hospitalisation clinic appointment in a psychiatric hospital in Southeast Nigeria

ABSTRACT

Patients who have been attended to at psychiatric institutions sometimes fail to keep their scheduled appointments. This study was designed to assess the extent and determinants of missed first clinic appointments among recently discharged patients with schizophrenia. A total of 311 inpatients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia were participated in the study. The diagnosis of schizophrenia was confirmed using Munich version of the Composite International Diagnostic Interview. Socio-demographic and clinical data were collected using the socio-demographic questionnaire while analysis was done using SPSS (version 16). The rate of missed first outpatient appointment was found to be 25.7%. Missed appointment was associated with male gender, state of origin outside the study site, long distance from hospital to place of abode, longer appointment duration and illness severity at discharge. The findings in this study support the need for the introduction of community psychiatric services to improve patient access to services in Nigeria.     

The impact of engineering identification and stereotypes on undergraduate women’s achievement and persistence in engineering

Women almost always comprise a minority in engineering programs and a smaller percentage of women pursue engineering than other science and technology majors. The culture of engineering departments and negative stereotypes of women’s engineering and mathematical ability have been identified as factors that inhibit women’s entry into engineering and cause them to leave the major. Even for women who stay, stereotype threat or the anxiety of confirming a negative stereotype can decrease academic performance. To more fully understand this dynamic, we examined four factors associated with stereotype threat (engineering identification, gender identification, gender stereotype endorsement, and engineering ability perceptions) to determine how they impacted women’s achievement and persistence in engineering at the end of their first year of an engineering program. Participants included 363 first-year general engineering students from a large public university. Students completed a questionnaire near the end of their first year. Results indicated that there were differences between men and women for gender stereotype endorsement and engineering ability perceptions, with men more likely to hold negative stereotypes of women’s engineering abilities and women more likely to report higher perceptions of their engineering abilities. Engineering identification was a significant predictor of persistence in engineering, and engineering ability perceptions were significant predictors of achievement; the relationships were stronger for women than men. The fact that neither gender identification nor gender stereotype endorsement were related to achievement or persistence in engineering indicated that they were less important factors for first-year women engineering students than engineering identification and engineering ability perceptions.     

Psychosocial issues among children and adolescents in an integrated paediatric HIV psychology service in Botswana

This study explored the psychosocial issues faced by children and adolescents with HIV in Botswana. Data on psychosocial issues were collected from 27 young children aged 5–9 years and 128 adolescents aged 10–19 years (n = 155). Data were analysed using Microsoft Excel 2007 and MiniTab16. The most frequently identified psychosocial issues were behaviour problems (70%), family issues (58%), and HIV medication adherence (57%). Compared to young children, adolescents were more likely to have HIV medication adherence issues. Missed appointments were most commonly attributed to patient forgetfulness (21%) and conflicting appointments (18%).     

Antismoking norm and smokers' antismoking attitudes: The interplay between personal and group‐based self‐esteem

Scientific discoveries about the dangers of smoking and antismoking actions carried out in Western countries over recent decades have progressively helped create an antismoking social norm. Nevertheless, many smokers still refuse to quit. We conducted two studies to investigate smokers' resistance to this norm as a function of their personal self‐esteem (PSE) and group‐based self‐esteem (GBSE). An initial correlational study assessed smokers' perception of the antismoking social norm, their PSE, and their antismoking attitudes. Smokers with low PSE had lower antismoking attitudes than those with high PSE when the antismoking norm was strong. The second study assessed GBSE (i.e., smokers' satisfaction as smokers) and manipulated both the strength of the antismoking norm and PSE (i.e., focus on personal weaknesses or strengths). Smokers with low PSE displayed the lowest antismoking attitudes when the antismoking norm was strong and their GBSE was high. These results show that the antismoking norm can produce paradoxical effects and suggest that the way individuals cope with stigmatization is affected by the interplay between PSE and GBSE. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Event memory and moving in a well-known environment

Research in narrative comprehension has repeatedly shown that when people read about characters moving in well-known environments, the accessibility of object information follows a spatial gradient. That is, the accessibility of objects is best when they are in the same room as the protagonist, and it becomes worse the farther away they are see, e.g., Morrow, Greenspan, & Bower, (Journal of Memory and Language, 26, 165–187, 1987). In the present study, we assessed this finding using an interactive environment in which we had people memorize a map and navigate a virtual simulation of the area. During navigation, people were probed with pairs of object names and indicated whether both objects were in the same room. In contrast to the narrative studies described above, several experiments showed no evidence of a clear spatial gradient. Instead, memory for objects in currently occupied locations (e.g., the location room) was more accessible, especially after a small delay, but no clear decline was evident in the accessibility of information in memory with increased distance. Also, memory for objects along the pathway of movement (i.e., rooms that a person only passed through) showed a transitory suppression effect that was present immediately after movement, but attenuated over time. These results were interpreted in light of the event horizon model of event cognition.     

Using Community Surveys to Inform the Planning and Implementation of Environmental Change Strategies: Participatory Research in 12 Washington Communities

A number of studies have demonstrated the efficacy of environmental change strategies (ECS) in effecting community-level change on attitudes and behaviors related to underage drinking (Treno and Lee in Alcohol Res Health 26:35–40, 2002; Birckmayer et al. in J Drug Educ 34(2):121–153, 2004). Primary data collection to inform the design of these strategies, however, can be resource intensive and exceed the capacity of community stakeholders. This study describes the participatory planning and implementation of community-level surveys in 12 diverse communities in the state of Washington. These surveys were conducted through collaborations among community volunteers and evaluation experts assigned to each community. The surveys were driven by communities’ prevention planning needs and interests; constructed from collections of existing, field-tested items and scales; implemented by community members; analyzed by evaluation staff; and used in the design of ECS by community-level leaders and prevention practitioners. The communities varied in the content of their surveys, in their sampling approaches and in their data collection methods. Although these surveys were not conducted using traditional rigorous population survey methodology, they were done within limited resources, and the participatory nature of these activities strengthened the communities’ commitment to using their results in the planning of their environmental change strategies.     

New Faces in a New Place: Long-Time Residents’ Perceptions of New Residents in an Oil Boomtown in the Bakken Oil Shale Region

ABSTRACT

In 2008, increased oil production in the Bakken oil shale region in western North Dakota sparked a rapid increase in population for the communities in that area. This study examines long-time residents’ perceptions of new residents moving into their community using quantitative methods. The findings reveal that long-time residents who reported an increase in fear of crime because of the oil boom in western North Dakota were less likely to have positive perceptions of new residents. In addition, long-time residents who viewed their community as a friendly place and its residents as trustworthy, and who attempted to interact with new residents, were more likely to report positive perceptions of new residents.     

Long Lives and Old Age Poverty: Social Stratification and Life-Course Institutionalization in Switzerland

This article combines an inter- and an intra-cohort perspective to study economic vulnerability in old age. The theoretical background is given through the combination of a social stratification framework and an institutional perspective emphasizing life course policies. At the macro level, the increase in overall education levels and the implementation of a pension system were the driving forces of the strong decrease in old age poverty over the last three decades. At an individual level, the pathway from low education early in life to economic hardship after retirement is most prominent, corresponding to a social stratification and cumulative disadvantage view.     

An Integrated Resilience and Ecological Model of Child Abuse (REC-Model)

Much of the theories of child abuse are developed and referenced from the West, while their applications to Chinese society are unclear. It is necessary to examine the cases in Hong Kong to acknowledge the uniqueness in perception and conceptualization of child abuse and the impact of resilience, across different cultural settings. The current study aims to advance an ecological model of child abuse for Hong Kong families by integrating resilience perspective with the ecological systems, namely An Integrated Resilience and Ecological Model of Child Abuse (REC-Model), and to examine the interactions between resilience and risk factors among chronosystemic, microsystemic, marcosystemic, and ontogenic systems on child abuse. Using a cross sectional survey research method and path analysis, 565 families with children studying at ages between 9 and 13 participated and returned self-administered questionnaires in the study. The results showed that Chinese cultural parenting values moderated the influences of risk factors on child abuse, while forgiveness buffered the negative impact of microsystemic factors on child abuse. To prevent child abuse, it is important to decrease the detrimental effects of childhood abuse experiences, reduce marital conflicts, and avoid developing insecure parent-child attachment. Promoting forgiveness, while reducing parents’ rigidity of certain Chinese cultural parenting values, may also help decrease child abuse.