Perceptions of emerging adults who accessed residential treatment and entered a parental role

Youth who accessed residential mental health treatment (RT) continue to experience challenges related to their emotional and behavioral disorders, and continue to struggle in several life domains. Some of these youth also become parents. The purpose for this report was to explore the perceptions of emerging adults who accessed RT as a child or youth, and who became parents, about their life domains. These participants (n = 12) reported continued challenges in several domains of living, and some reported that impending parenthood helped motivate them to improve their behaviors. Many reported continued reliance on previous social workers. Implications for practice are discussed.     

An investigation into social media syndromic monitoring

Tweets offer us early information on initial stages of diseases, since people often tweet the early symptoms of feeling unwell prior to presenting to an emergency department if their symptoms become more severe. Even when people do present at an emergency department, it generally takes over 24 hours for their information to be collected, diagnosed and transferred for analysis at a centralized location. The advantage of utilizing tweets is that they offer information on syndromes in real-time. This paper investigates the value of carrying out multivariate syndromic surveillance using daily counts of keywords. The dynamic bi-plot is used to detect unexpected changes in the daily counts. These methods can be easily generalized to hourly tweet syndromic counts. By following Twitter users that suffer certain symptoms over time we can better understand the burden of these health issues and better understand emerging health issues. Monitoring people who present with symptoms but are just not sick enough to go to emergency departments provides us with additional information not gathered by emergency departments.     

Alcohol Use Among Concerned Partners of Heavy Drinking Service Members and Veterans

Heavy drinking in relationships is complex and we focus on an understudied sample of concerned partners (CPs) worried about their U.S. service member/veteran partner's drinking. We evaluated the link between CP drinking and their own mental health, and how CP drinking moderated the efficacy of a web‐based intervention designed to address CPs' mental health and communication. CPs (N = 234) were randomly assigned to intervention or control and completed assessments at baseline and 5 months later. CP drinking was associated with greater CP depression, anxiety, and anger independent of partner drinking. Moreover, the intervention was more efficacious in reducing depression for heavy drinking CPs. CPs are often an overlooked population and resources to help support them are needed.     

Perceptions of Long-Term Community Adaptation of Delinquent Young Adults Who Graduated from Children’s Residential Mental Health Treatment

Purpose

This article presents results from one part of a longitudinal study into the post-discharge community adaptation of youth involved in residential mental health treatment. The focus is on young adults interviewed in Phase 3 of the research who have been identified as experiencing delinquent behaviour in their communities which brings them into contact with the law. This research is unique as young adult graduates of residential treatment were interviewed and they describe in detail how they are currently functioning in their lives.

Method

Qualitative interviews were completed with a convenience sample of 59 young adults between 18 and 25 years of age who had accessed children’s residential mental health treatment up to 10 years prior to data collection.

Results

The results demonstrate that delinquent behaviour post-discharge from residential treatment is a real concern and, for a sub-set of young adults, relates to negative outcomes in multiple domains of living, such as substance abuse, personal well-being, education and employment, and social networks and relationships.

Conclusions

The results indicate there is a need to improve long term community adaptation for this group, and that improving community living outcomes is much more a function of ongoing support and caring than short-term treatment and cure.

     

The Strengthening Families Programme (SFP) 10‐14 and substance misuse in Barnsley: the perspectives of facilitators and families

The aim of this study was to evaluate the Strengthening Families Programme for young people aged ten to 14 and their parents (SFP 10‐14) in Barnsley, a northern English city, based on the experience of facilitators and families who had participated in the programme. A mixed methods design blending both quantitative and qualitative data was used in the study carried out in two phases over a nine‐month period in 2005. Quantitative data were collected through: the SFP 10‐14 Parent/Caregiver Survey Questionnaire, the SFP 10‐14 Young Persons' Survey Questionnaire and the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Questionnaire data were compared at the beginning of the SFP 10‐14 programmes (weeks 1–2) and at the end of the programmes (week 7). In addition, two focus group meetings were held with families who had undertaken the SFP 10‐14 programme; and three focus group meetings were conducted with facilitators of SFP 10‐14 programmes. Once quantitative and qualitative data had been analysed separately, a synthesis of the main findings from both approaches was then completed. Following the programmes, parents reported significant changes in communication limit setting, emotional management, prosocial behaviour and drugs/alcohol use. Total difficulties scores were also significantly different pre‐ and post SFP 10‐14 programmes. For the young people, communication, and emotional management were improved and their drugs/alcohol use was less. Their total difficulties scores were also significantly different. Qualitative evidence indicated that families who participated in the study found the SFP 10‐14 useful in preventing young people's alcohol and drug use in terms of: learning more about alcohol and drugs, using knowledge and skills to reduce behaviours that might lead to alcohol and drug use and, for young people, dealing with peer pressure that might lead to drug and alcohol use. Parents/caregivers and young people reported that the SFP 10‐14 had played a part in improving family functioning through strengthening the family unit. The findings from this exploratory study suggest that the SFP 10‐14 may be a useful primary prevention intervention in helping to prevent drug and alcohol misuse in young people. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Analysing Financial Returns by Using Regression Models Based on Non-Symmetric Stable Distributions

The daily evolution of the price of Abbey National shares over a 10-week period is analysed by using regression models based on possibly non-symmetric stable distributions. These distributions, which are only known through their characteristic function, can be used in practice for interactive modelling of heavy-tailed processes. A regression model for the location parameter is proposed and shown to induce a similar model for the mode. Finally, regression models for the other three parameters of the stable distribution are introduced. The model found to fit best allows the skewness of the distribution, rather than the location or scale parameters, to vary over time. The most likely share return is thus changing over time although the region where most returns are observed is stationary.     

Assessment of motion media on believability and credibility: An exploratory study

The radical shift by news audiences away from newspaper to motion media (video stories on TV, web, cell phones, handhelds) prompted the assessment of media modality (text, text + picture, video) and source (public relations, news, user-generated content [UGC]) effects on credibility and more importantly perceived veridicality, a perception of an object as being accurate and believable regardless of the source, as well as impact of messages. The findings revealed that motion media modality significantly enhances believability judgments and perceived veridicality, which is independent of source cue, in which news source garnered no greater credibility than PR or UGC source.