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The Journal of Adolescent Health :... May 2023Pediatricians and youth service providers frequently interface with vulnerable populations, including gender minority youth (e.g., transgender, nonbinary, gender...
PURPOSE
Pediatricians and youth service providers frequently interface with vulnerable populations, including gender minority youth (e.g., transgender, nonbinary, gender questioning, and other gender diverse individuals) and youth experiencing homelessness. The purposes of this study are to estimate the prevalence of homelessness and types of homelessness experienced among gender minority youth and their corresponding health outcomes.
METHODS
Data for this study came from gender minority (n = 3,194) and cisgender (n = 93,337) high school students who answered questions on transgender status and homelessness status in the 2017 and 2019 Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS). We compared the prevalence of homelessness between gender minority and cisgender youth and assessed where youth experiencing homelessness had slept in the prior month: shelters, nonparental homes, streets, hotel, or other locations. Finally, logistic regression models and marginal effects (ME) were used to examine health outcomes at the intersection of gender minority status and homelessness.
RESULTS
22% of gender minority youth reported homelessness during the prior month. Cisgender youth were significantly less likely to report being homeless (3%). Transgender youth experiencing homelessness were significantly more likely to live on the streets than cisgender youth experiencing homelessness (ME = 0.20; 95% CI = 0.10-0.30; p < .001). Gender minority youth experiencing homelessness reported elevated health-risk behaviors in excess of nonhomeless gender minority youth and cisgender youth experiencing homelessness.
DISCUSSION
Public health campaigns, housing interventions, and youth service providers should consider and create tailored programs to secure housing and to promote the health of gender minority youth experiencing homelessness.
Topics: Humans; Adolescent; Sexual and Gender Minorities; Ill-Housed Persons; Transgender Persons; Gender Identity; Transsexualism
PubMed: 36646565
DOI: 10.1016/j.jadohealth.2022.11.229 -
Frontiers in Psychology 2020Defense mechanisms are mental functions which facilitate coping when real or imagined events challenge personal wishes, needs, and feelings. Whether defense mechanisms...
Defense mechanisms are mental functions which facilitate coping when real or imagined events challenge personal wishes, needs, and feelings. Whether defense mechanisms have a specific neural basis is unknown. The present research tested the hypothesis that interhemispheric integration plays a critical role in defense mechanism development, by studying a unique sample of patients born without the corpus callosum (agenesis of the corpus callosum; AgCC). Adults with AgCC ( = 27) and matched healthy volunteers ( = 30) were compared on defense mechanism use across increasing levels of developmental maturity (denial, least; projection, intermediate; identification, most). Narratives generated in response to Thematic Apperception Test images were scored according to the Defense Mechanism Manual. Greater use of denial and less identification was found in persons with AgCC, compared to healthy comparisons. This difference emerged after age 18 when full maturation of defenses among healthy individuals was expected. The findings provide clinically important characterization of social and emotional processing in persons with AgCC. More broadly, the results support the hypothesis that functional integration across the hemispheres is important for the development of defense mechanisms.
PubMed: 32733338
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01534 -
Journal of Homosexuality Oct 2022The most commonly used curricula for teaching gender and sexual difference come from white, middle-class, public school contexts. Little is available for community-based...
The most commonly used curricula for teaching gender and sexual difference come from white, middle-class, public school contexts. Little is available for community-based efforts with LGBTQ+ youth and adults who are people of color, immigrants, Indigenous, and working-class. This article explores the development, practices, and impacts of a queer-decolonial pedagogy, focusing on a unique after school program created by queer and trans educator-researchers. This program focused on preventing intimate partner and sexual violence, social justice, solidarity across difference, and peer mentorship. Through queer and trans adult leadership, this program demonstrated the benefits that come to all students when queerness and decoloniality are made central. Grounded in dialectical practices integrating teaching and research, this work illustrates six tenets of queer-decolonial pedagogy: naming place, time-play, body and lifeway self-determination, experience as personal and intergenerational, learning for healing and responsibility, and living the host-guest role. In such a practice, pedagogy lives in generative tension across distinct cultural and epistemological legacies of queer and decolonial politics and pedagogies. Taking LGBTQ+ educational research beyond inquiries into school climate, policy debates, and standardized curricula, the author takes us through a journey of collaborative innovation, exploring the possibilities of learning for diverse queer and trans students within a context of intergenerational care. Such teaching and research demonstrate how principled practices of queer-decolonial creativity transform potentials not just for education, but for undoing the binary foundations of colonial knowledge transmission itself.
Topics: Adolescent; Gender Identity; Humans; Learning; Sexual and Gender Minorities; Students; Transsexualism
PubMed: 34647860
DOI: 10.1080/00918369.2021.1987750 -
Archives of Women's Mental Health Jun 2021In light of the impact of gender roles on health, the aims of the present study are (1) to assess the associations between femininity/masculinity and gender typologies,...
In light of the impact of gender roles on health, the aims of the present study are (1) to assess the associations between femininity/masculinity and gender typologies, and health indicators (mental health, wellbeing, and self-perceived health) and (2) to identify patterns of gender roles and health indicators, thus exploring new tendencies in gender and health in Spanish university students in the framework of the androgyny model. The sample was made up of 795 university students from Madrid and Toledo. Data collection was completed during 2019. Measures of self-rated health, mental health (GHQ12), and wellbeing (MHC-SF) were considered as health indicators, while the Bem Sex Roles Inventory (BSRI) was used to measure gender roles. Multilevel analysis was employed to value associations between masculinity and femininity and gender typologies with self-rated health, mental health, and wellbeing. Furthermore, cluster analysis was used to explore general tendencies in gender roles and health, while also considering biological sex composition. The best predictor of mental health was found to be masculinity, rather than femininity. Cluster analysis showed a dominance of androgyny and undifferentiated typologies with proportionally similar biological sex composition. Results confirmed the androgyny model, highlighting the role of androgyny and masculinity as protective factors of mental health. Cluster analysis suggested less gender-typed individuals and more flexible ways of adapting to gender roles in university students. Health systems, governments, and public institutions must take these results into account when designing health prevention and intervention policies. Social agents, educators, and the media must also collaborate in the achievement of equalitarian gender roles, which could result in a minimization of gender-related health differences.
Topics: Female; Femininity; Humans; Male; Masculinity; Personality Inventory; Students; Universities
PubMed: 33184725
DOI: 10.1007/s00737-020-01087-z -
Journal of Agricultural and Food... Mar 2022Pepper mild mottle virus (PMMoV), an RNA virus, is one of the most devastating pathogens in pepper crops and has a significant influence on global crop yields. PMMoV...
Pepper mild mottle virus (PMMoV), an RNA virus, is one of the most devastating pathogens in pepper crops and has a significant influence on global crop yields. PMMoV poses a major threat to the global shortage of pepper plants and other Solanaceae crops due to the lack of an effective antiviral agent. In this study, we have developed a plant immune inducer (vanisulfane), as a "plant vaccine" that boosts plant immunity against PMMoV, and studied its resistance mechanism. The protective activity of vanisulfane against PMMoV was 59.4%. Vanisulfane can enhance the activity of defense enzymes and improve the content of chlorophyll, flavonoids, and total phenols for removing harmful free radicals from plants. Furthermore, vanisulfane was found to enhance defense genes. Label-free quantitative proteomics would tackle disease resistance pathways of vanisulfane. According to Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway analysis, differentially abundant proteins (DAPs) are mainly involved in starch and sucrose metabolism, photosynthesis, MAPK signaling pathway, and oxidative phosphorylation pathway. These results are crucial for the discovery of new pesticides, understanding the improvement of plant immunity and the antiviral activity of plant immune inducers.
Topics: Capsicum; Defense Mechanisms; Plant Diseases; Tobamovirus
PubMed: 35297641
DOI: 10.1021/acs.jafc.2c00659 -
The Behavioral and Brain Sciences Apr 2020Cushman argues that "rationalization is rational." We show that there is reasonable empirical clinical and forensic psychological evidence to support viewing...
Cushman argues that "rationalization is rational." We show that there is reasonable empirical clinical and forensic psychological evidence to support viewing rationalization as a quite suboptimal defense mechanism. Rationalization has been found to be associated not only with poorer emotional development, but also with a broad range of antisocial behavior, including not only shoplifting, but also pedophilia and murder.
Topics: Defense Mechanisms; Rationalization
PubMed: 32292143
DOI: 10.1017/S0140525X19002073 -
The Journal of Nervous and Mental... Sep 2022The objective of this study was to assess changes in maternal defensive functioning from the third trimester of pregnancy to 2 years postpregnancy. A community sample of...
The objective of this study was to assess changes in maternal defensive functioning from the third trimester of pregnancy to 2 years postpregnancy. A community sample of at-risk mothers ( N = 84; non-White [61%], unmarried [67%], high school or less education [72%], and income less than $20,000 [50%]) were recruited for this longitudinal study. Mothers responded to a semistructured interview during pregnancy and at 2 years postpregnancy about the parent-infant relationship; interview transcripts were coded using the Defense Mechanism Rating Scale (DMRS). Results indicated a significant increase in both total defense mechanisms used and the relative percentage of immature defense mechanisms used over time. A significant decrease in the relative percentage of healthy/adaptive defenses was noted. When all seven levels of defenses of the DMRS were assessed, it was an increase in minor image-distorting defenses, mechanisms that supported vulnerable self-esteem, that accounted for most of the change in immature defenses. Stability coefficients of defense mechanisms were reported, with large effect sizes, for overall defensive functioning, and mature and immature defenses over a 2-year period. These findings lend support to the importance of assessing defense mechanisms to better understand stressful life transitions in mothers.
Topics: Defense Mechanisms; Female; Humans; Infant; Longitudinal Studies; Mothers; Pregnancy; Self Concept
PubMed: 35344978
DOI: 10.1097/NMD.0000000000001519 -
Scientific Reports Aug 2023Animal and human feces typically include intestinal sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB). Hydrogen sulfide and acetate are the end products of their dissimilatory sulfate...
Animal and human feces typically include intestinal sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB). Hydrogen sulfide and acetate are the end products of their dissimilatory sulfate reduction and may create a synergistic effect. Here, we report NADH and NADPH peroxidase activities from intestinal SRB Desulfomicrobium orale and Desulfovibrio piger. We sought to compare enzymatic activities under the influence of various temperature and pH regimes, as well as to carry out kinetic analyses of enzymatic reaction rates, maximum amounts of the reaction product, reaction times, maximum rates of the enzyme reactions, and Michaelis constants in cell-free extracts of intestinal SRB, D. piger Vib-7, and D. orale Rod-9, collected from exponential and stationary growth phases. The optimal temperature (35 °C) and pH (7.0) for both enzyme's activity were determined. The difference in trends of Michaelis constants (K) during exponential and stationary phases are noticeable between D. piger Vib-7 and D. orale Rod-9; D. orale Rod-9 showed much higher K (the exception is NADH peroxidase of D. piger Vib-7: 1.42 ± 0.11 mM) during the both monitored phases. Studies of the NADH and NADPH peroxidases-as putative antioxidant defense systems of intestinal SRB and detailed data on the kinetic properties of this enzyme, as expressed by the decomposition of hydrogen peroxide-could be important for clarifying evolutionary mechanisms of antioxidant defense systems, their etiological role in the process of dissimilatory sulfate reduction, and their possible role in the development of bowel diseases.
Topics: Animals; Humans; Antioxidants; NAD; NADP; Cell Extracts; Desulfovibrio; Peroxidases; Defense Mechanisms; Sulfates
PubMed: 37626119
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-41185-3 -
Pediatric Annals Dec 2023
Topics: Humans; Adolescent; Transgender Persons; Gender Identity; Transsexualism; Pediatricians
PubMed: 38049187
DOI: 10.3928/19382359-20231016-01 -
Innate host defense mechanisms SAC bacteria by regulating phosphoinositide kinases and phosphatases.Autophagy Feb 2022Human genetics and loss-of-function studies revealed a critical role for macroautophagy/autophagy in host defense. The autophagic delivery of intracellular pathogens to...
Human genetics and loss-of-function studies revealed a critical role for macroautophagy/autophagy in host defense. The autophagic delivery of intracellular pathogens to lysosomes is a central mechanism of innate immunity; thus, augmentation of host xenophagy represents a promising and powerful approach to combat infections. The precise mechanisms required for autophagosome biogenesis and maturation, however, remain unclear. Using a targeted genetic screen against phosphoinositide kinases and phosphatases, our recent work identified an essential role for the phosphoinositide phosphatase SACM1L/SAC1 in xenophagy. Re-expression of wild-type or catalytically-dead SACM1L in CRISPR knockout cells confirmed that SACM1L enzymatic activity is required to suppress replication of intracellular . Time-dependent, quantitative and live confocal imaging demonstrated that SACM1L-deficient cells accumulate phosphatidylinositol-4-phosphate (PtdIns4P) on bacteria-containing autophagosomes, resulting in delayed fusion with degradative lysosomes and reduced bacterial killing. We further discovered that the secreted effector protein SteA, which specifically binds PtdIns4P, exacerbates the SACM1L-dependent delay in autophagosomal maturation. These findings reveal a relationship in which the balance between host defense and bacterial survival depends upon autophagosomal membrane composition.
Topics: 1-Phosphatidylinositol 4-Kinase; Autophagosomes; Autophagy; Bacteria; Defense Mechanisms; Humans; Lysosomes; Phosphoric Monoester Hydrolases; Salmonella
PubMed: 34812102
DOI: 10.1080/15548627.2021.2002102