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Development and Psychopathology Dec 2017Maternal trauma is a complex risk factor that has been linked to adverse child outcomes, yet the mechanisms underlying this association are not well understood. This...
Using an adoption-biological family design to examine associations between maternal trauma, maternal depressive symptoms, and child internalizing and externalizing behaviors.
Maternal trauma is a complex risk factor that has been linked to adverse child outcomes, yet the mechanisms underlying this association are not well understood. This study, which included adoptive and biological families, examined the heritable and environmental mechanisms by which maternal trauma and associated depressive symptoms are linked to child internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Path analyses were used to analyze data from 541 adoptive mother-adopted child (AM-AC) dyads and 126 biological mother-biological child (BM-BC) dyads; the two family types were linked through the same biological mother. Rearing mother's trauma was associated with child internalizing and externalizing behaviors in AM-AC and BM-BC dyads, and this association was mediated by rearing mothers' depressive symptoms, with the exception of biological child externalizing behavior, for which biological mother trauma had a direct influence only. Significant associations between maternal trauma and child behavior in dyads that share only environment (i.e., AM-AC dyads) suggest an environmental mechanism of influence for maternal trauma. Significant associations were also observed between maternal depressive symptoms and child internalizing and externalizing behavior in dyads that were only genetically related, with no shared environment (i.e., BM-AC dyads), suggesting a heritable pathway of influence via maternal depressive symptoms.
Topics: Adoption; Adult; Child; Child Behavior Disorders; Child of Impaired Parents; Child, Preschool; Depression; Female; Humans; Infant; Male; Mother-Child Relations; Mothers; Risk Factors; Young Adult
PubMed: 29162177
DOI: 10.1017/S0954579417001341 -
Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and... Aug 2021Even though child psychopathology assessment guidelines emphasize comprehensive multi-method, multimodal, and multi-informant methodologies, maternal-report...
BACKGROUND
Even though child psychopathology assessment guidelines emphasize comprehensive multi-method, multimodal, and multi-informant methodologies, maternal-report symptom-rating scales often serve as the predominant source of information. Research has shown that parental mood symptomatology affects their reports of their offspring's psychopathology. For example, the depression-distortion hypothesis suggests that maternal depression promotes a negative bias in mothers' perceptions of their children's behavioral and emotional problems. We investigated this difference of perception between adoptive mothers and internationally adopted children. Most previous studies suffer from the potential bias caused by the fact that parents and children share genetic risks.
METHODS
Data were derived from the Finnish Adoption (FinAdo) survey study (a subsample of adopted children aged between 9 and 12 years, n = 222). The Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) was used to assess emotional and behavioral problems and competences of the adopted children. The CBCL was filled in by the adopted children and the adoptive mothers, respectively. Maternal depressive symptoms were measured using the short version of the General Health Questionnaire.
RESULTS
On average, mothers reported less total CBCL symptoms in their children than the children themselves (0.25 vs 0.38, p-value < 0.01 for difference). Mothers' depressive symptoms moderated the discrepancy in reporting internalizing symptoms (β = - 0.14 and p-value 0.01 for interaction) and the total symptoms scores (β = - 0.22 and p-value < 0.001 for interaction) and externalizing symptoms in girls in the CBCL.
LIMITATIONS
The major limitation of our study is its cross-sectional design and the fact that we only collected data in the form of questionnaires.
CONCLUSIONS
The results of our research support the depression-distortion hypothesis concerning the association of maternal depressive symptoms and child internalizing symptoms and externalizing symptoms in girls in a sample without genetic bias.
PubMed: 34425862
DOI: 10.1186/s13034-021-00396-0 -
The British Journal of Nutrition Sep 2012Commercial interventions seeking to promote fruit and vegetable consumption by encouraging preschool- and school-aged children to engage with foods with 'all their... (Review)
Review
Commercial interventions seeking to promote fruit and vegetable consumption by encouraging preschool- and school-aged children to engage with foods with 'all their senses' are increasing in number. We review the efficacy of such sensory interaction programmes and consider the components of these that are likely to encourage food acceptance. Repeated exposure to a food's flavour has robust empirical support in terms of its potential to increase food intake. However, children are naturally reluctant to taste new or disliked foods, and parents often struggle to provide sufficient taste opportunities for these foods to be adopted into the child's diet. We therefore explore whether prior exposure to a new food's non-taste sensory properties, such as its smell, sound, appearance or texture, might facilitate the food's introduction into the child's diet, by providing the child with an opportunity to become partially familiar with the food without invoking the distress associated with tasting it. We review the literature pertaining to the benefits associated with exposure to foods through each of the five sensory modalities in turn. We conclude by calling for further research into the potential for familiarisation with the visual, olfactory, somaesthetic and auditory properties of foods to enhance children's willingness to consume a variety of fruits and vegetables.
Topics: Child; Child, Preschool; Eating; Food; Food Preferences; Health Promotion; Humans; Smell; Taste; Touch
PubMed: 22264626
DOI: 10.1017/S0007114511007343 -
Child: Care, Health and Development Jul 2022With government's proposal of the Healthy China Strategy, universal health has become the focus of increasing attention in China. As a special group, children's health...
BACKGROUND
With government's proposal of the Healthy China Strategy, universal health has become the focus of increasing attention in China. As a special group, children's health is the basis and start of the national health. The construction of children's healthcare system should be given the priority. This study applied the concept of health equal benefits and conducted a systematic and in-depth theoretical and empirical research on the children's healthcare system in Beijing, aiming at proposing relevant countermeasures and suggestions such as constructing the path of children's health care system in China.
METHODS
This study adopted the way of questionnaire on children's basic information, health status, health service demand, insured situation and system satisfaction and then analysed the children's health, healthcare, satisfaction influence factors and their healthcare needs based on a survey in Beijing China. Methods such as descriptive statistics, analysis of variance and logistic regression are adopted to analyse the correlation between factors affecting children's health.
RESULTS
The findings show that overall health of the children in Beijing was better. However, there are still problems such as insufficient resource coverage and incorrect cognition in some groups. Their mental health and support need to be put emphasis on. The popularization of medical insurance policies for urban and rural residents in Beijing needs to be further improved. The burden of seeing a doctor is slightly lower than before, and the contribution to protecting children's health is not strong enough.
CONCLUSIONS
Through the survey of children in Beijing, it can be seen that there are still some problems existing in the healthcare system of children in China from the perspective of equal benefit. This study draws policy attention to the issues of financing, service contents, targets, service level and the degree of social recognition.
Topics: Beijing; Child; Child Health; China; Delivery of Health Care; Humans; Rural Population
PubMed: 34978083
DOI: 10.1111/cch.12953 -
Frontiers in Psychology 2018The present study primarily aimed to examine whether self-esteem serves as a mediator in the associations between parent-child relationships, including parental support...
The present study primarily aimed to examine whether self-esteem serves as a mediator in the associations between parent-child relationships, including parental support and parent-child conflict, and resilience among adolescents. Three hundred and four Chinese adolescents were surveyed with questionnaires and structural equation modeling was adopted to test the mediational hypothesis. The results indicated that the associations between parent-child relationships and adolescent resilience were primarily mediated by self-esteem and that parental support was more robustly linked with adolescent resilience than parent-adolescent conflict. The current study also tested a competitive mediational model in which resilience was the mediator and self-esteem was the outcome variable, and observed that this model was also well-established but inferior to the hypothesized mediational model. These findings extend our insight into the mechanisms underlying the associations among parent-child relationships, self-esteem, and resilience among adolescents and suggest that adolescent resilience promotion programs should focus on improving parental support in a family context and developing individual self-esteem.
PubMed: 29977220
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01030 -
PloS One 2023Husbands have been the primary support of student mothers in furthering their education. This study aimed to explore the lived experiences of husbands of student mothers...
Husbands have been the primary support of student mothers in furthering their education. This study aimed to explore the lived experiences of husbands of student mothers (HSM) in a distance education programme of a university in Ghana. Eighteen participants were selected and interviewed. The transcendental phenomenology design was adopted. The sample consisted of all HSM with babies up to 5 years. Coding and content analysis were employed to analyze the data. The study's findings indicated that husbands experience challenges such as stress, guilt, resentment, and work-family conflict in child care. Coping strategies such as using loan facilities, suspending family projects and using older siblings were adopted by the participants. The study recommends that, Counsellors should orient husbands to understand the need to support their wives and the implications of such support. Husbands should also be educated on basic skills of child care to lessen their frustrations and to avoid stress.
Topics: Female; Humans; Spouses; Education, Distance; Mothers; Adaptation, Psychological; Students
PubMed: 37948387
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0288779 -
International Journal of Environmental... Oct 2022Business Process Management (BPM) has been increasingly used in recent years in the healthcare domain to analyze, optimize, harmonize and compare clinical and healthcare...
Business Process Management (BPM) has been increasingly used in recent years in the healthcare domain to analyze, optimize, harmonize and compare clinical and healthcare processes. The main aim of this methodology is to model the interactions between medical and organizational activities needed to deliver health services, measure their complexity, variability and deviations to improve the quality of care and its efficiency. Among the different tools, languages and notations developed in the decades, UML (Unified Modeling Language) represents a widely adopted technique to model, analyze and compare business processes in healthcare. We adopted its diagrams in the MOCHA project to compare the different ways of organizing, coordinating and delivering child care across 30 EU/EEA countries both from an organization and control-flow perspectives. This paper provides an overview of the main components used to represent the business process using UML diagrams, also highlighting how we customized them to capture the specificity of the healthcare domain taking into account that processes are reconstructed on the basis of country experts' responses to questionnaires. The benefits of the application of this methodology are demonstrated by providing examples of comparing different aspects of child care.
Topics: Humans; Child; Unified Medical Language System; Child Health Services; Delivery of Health Care; Data Collection; Language
PubMed: 36294033
DOI: 10.3390/ijerph192013456 -
BioMed Research International 2019Having a child is important among married women in Northern Ghana. Among married women, infertility is the main factor causing childlessness. Child adoption provides an...
BACKGROUND
Having a child is important among married women in Northern Ghana. Among married women, infertility is the main factor causing childlessness. Child adoption provides an alternative for married women to have children. The purpose of the study was to explore the perceived barriers of child adoption among women with infertility.
METHODS
The study used an exploratory qualitative approach to understand barriers of child adoption. The study was conducted among 15 women attending fertility clinic in a mission hospital in Northern Ghana. Participants were purposively recruited and data collected by individual face-to-face in-depth interviews. The interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, and analysed using content analysis. Data were collected between January and March, 2016, in an office in the hospital.
RESULTS
The results suggest that barriers of child adoption include negative reaction of husbands, psychological dissatisfaction, and family dynamics. It was realised that husbands' reaction includes preference for biological children and marrying of second wives. Child adoption was psychologically dissatisfying to participants with some suggesting that it will make no difference and is a sign of acceptance of defeat in the quest to have biological children. The study findings also suggested that family dynamics that could hinder the practice of child adoption includes high value for blood relations, blaming of the woman, unpredictable family influence, discrimination against the adopted child, and family not allowing the adopted child to inherit property.
CONCLUSION
The preference for biological children is by far an outstanding barrier and a major influence of all the emanating barriers associated with child adoption. There is the need for public education and special counselling session for husbands and other family members on child adoption as an alternative solution for infertility.
Topics: Adoption; Adult; Child; Discrimination, Psychological; Family; Female; Ghana; Humans; Infertility, Female; Marriage; Qualitative Research; Spouses
PubMed: 31281841
DOI: 10.1155/2019/6140285 -
Pediatrics Oct 2013We asked whether adoption status represented a risk of suicide attempt for adopted and nonadopted offspring living in the United States. We also examined whether factors...
OBJECTIVE
We asked whether adoption status represented a risk of suicide attempt for adopted and nonadopted offspring living in the United States. We also examined whether factors known to be associated with suicidal behavior would mediate the relationship between adoption status and suicide attempt.
METHODS
Participants were drawn from the Sibling Interaction and Behavior Study, which included 692 adopted and 540 nonadopted offspring and was conducted at the University of Minnesota from 1998 to 2008. Adoptees were systematically ascertained from records of 3 large Minnesota adoption agencies; nonadoptees were ascertained from Minnesota birth records. Outcome measures were attempted suicide, reported by parent or offspring, and factors known to be associated with suicidal behavior including psychiatric disorder symptoms, personality traits, family environment, and academic disengagement.
RESULTS
The odds of a reported suicide attempt were ~4 times greater in adoptees compared with nonadoptees (odds ratio: 4.23). After adjustment for factors associated with suicidal behavior, the odds of reporting a suicide attempt were reduced but remained significantly elevated (odds ratio: 3.70).
CONCLUSIONS
The odds for reported suicide attempt are elevated in individuals who are adopted relative to those who are not adopted. The relationship between adoption status and suicide attempt is partially mediated by factors known to be associated with suicidal behavior. Continued study of the risk of suicide attempt in adopted offspring may inform the larger investigation of suicidality in all adolescents and young adults.
Topics: Adolescent; Adoption; Child; Female; Humans; Male; Mental Disorders; Minnesota; Risk Factors; Siblings; Suicide, Attempted; Surveys and Questionnaires; Young Adult
PubMed: 24019414
DOI: 10.1542/peds.2012-3251 -
Psychological Medicine May 2016Although drug abuse (DA) is strongly familial, with important genetic influences, we need to know more about the role of rearing environment in the risk for DA. To...
BACKGROUND
Although drug abuse (DA) is strongly familial, with important genetic influences, we need to know more about the role of rearing environment in the risk for DA. To address this question, we utilized a high-risk adopted and non-adopted co-sibling control design.
METHOD
High-risk offspring had one or more biological parents registered for DA, alcohol use disorders or criminal behavior. Using Swedish registries, we identified 1161 high-risk full-sibships and 3085 high-risk half-sibships containing at least one member who was adopted-away and one member who was not. Registration for DA was via national criminal, medical and pharmacy registers. In Sweden, adoptive families are screened to provide high-quality rearing environment for adoptees.
RESULTS
Controlling for parental age at birth and gender (and, in half-siblings, high-risk status of the other parent), risk for DA was substantially lower in the full- and half-siblings who were adopted v. not adopted [hazard ratios and 95% confidence intervals: 0.55 (0.45-0·69) and 0.55 (95% CI 0.48-0.63), respectively]. The protective effect of adoption on risk for DA was significantly stronger in the full- and half-sibling pairs with very high familial liability (two high-risk parents) and significantly weaker when the adoptive family was broken by death or divorce, or contained a high-risk parent.
CONCLUSIONS
In both full- and half-sibling pairs, we found replicated evidence that rearing environment strongly impacts on risk for DA. High-quality rearing environments can substantively reduce risk for DA in those at high genetic risk.
Topics: Adolescent; Adoption; Adult; Child; Child Rearing; Environment; Female; Humans; Male; Middle Aged; Parents; Registries; Risk Factors; Siblings; Substance-Related Disorders; Sweden; Young Adult
PubMed: 26753502
DOI: 10.1017/S0033291715002858