Hospital-to-community transitions. A bridge program for adolescent mental health patients

Making the transition from the hospital to a community setting can be extremely challenging for patients with acute mental health conditions. Transitional services have been created to help patients overcome difficulties associated with this transition. Nurses frequently play an integral role in the success of these services. By providing patients with individualized support during such transitions, nurses act as clinical liaisons and directly contribute to an increase in positive patient and system-level outcomes. This article describes a transitional service called the Bridge Program, designed to help adolescents make a successful transition from the hospital to the community. An overview of the Bridge Program is provided, and the results of an evaluation of this program are presented. Results suggest that the Bridge Program contributes to a decrease in the length of hospital stays and improves continuity of care for patients and their families.     

Effectiveness of a Web-based alcohol-misuse and harm-prevention course among high- and low-risk students

OBJECTIVE: In the current study, the authors assessed whether a new online alcohol-misuse prevention course (College Alc) is more effective at reducing alcohol use and related consequences among drinkers and nondrinkers. PARTICIPANTS: The authors compared incoming college freshmen who reported any past 30-day alcohol use before the beginning of the semester with those who did not. METHOD SUMMARY: The authors randomly assigned students who completed a precollege baseline survey to either complete a 3-hour noncredit version of College Alc or serve as members of a control group. The authors conducted a follow-up survey 3 months later. RESULTS: Findings indicated that among freshmen who were regular drinkers before college, College Alc appeared to reduce the frequency of heavy drinking, drunkenness, and negative alcohol-related consequences. Among freshmen who did not report any past-30-day alcohol use before college, College Alc did not appear to have any beneficial effects. CONCLUSIONS: Results suggest that College Alc may be an effective program for students with a history of alcohol use.     

Risky Business: Is There an Association between Casual Sex and Mental Health among Emerging Adults?

A multiethnic sample of single, heterosexual, emerging-adult college students (N = 3,907) ages 18 to 25, from 30 institutions across the United States, participated in a study about identity, culture, psychological well-being, and risky behaviors. Given ongoing debates about the connection between casual sex and psychological adjustment, in the current study we assessed the cross-sectional association of participation in casual sex with psychological well-being and distress. A greater proportion of men (18.6%) compared to women (7.4%) reported having had casual sex in the month prior to assessment. Structural equation modeling indicated that casual sex was negatively associated with well-being (ß = .20, p < .001) and positively associated with psychological distress (ß = .16, p < .001). Gender did not moderate these associations. For emerging-adult college students, engaging in casual sex may elevate risk for negative psychological outcomes.     

LEANING AGAINST WINDY BANK LENDING

Using an estimated dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with banking, this paper first provides evidence that monetary policy reacted to bank loan growth in the United States during the Great Moderation. It then shows that the optimized simple interest‐rate rule features no response to the growth of bank credit. However, the welfare loss associated to the empirical responsiveness is small. The sources of business cycle fluctuations are crucial in determining whether a “leaning‐against‐the‐wind” policy is optimal or not. In fact, the predominant role of supply shocks in the model gives rise to a trade‐off between inflation and financial stabilization. (JEL E32, E44, E52)     

A Preliminary Understanding of Search Words used by Children,Teenagers and Young Adults in Seeking Information about Depression and Anxiety Online

Abstract

There is a dearth of research related to mental health search word literacy for under 25's. The knowledge of a young person's mental health information search practices is piecemeal, derived from general search literacy studies. A young person’s access to mental health information online is highly due to the level of stigma and poor mental health literacy surrounding depression and anxiety. This study explored what search words young people aged 5–26 (N?=?630) used to identify information and/or help for depression and anxiety. The research hypothesis was supported that those under age 13 would have a more limited use of “disorder” phrases (compared to “thoughts/feeling” phrases) in their search for mental health information related to their symptoms. All age and gender groups were as likely to use thoughts/feelings terms, however, those over 13?years were almost three times more likely to combine their thoughts/feelings terms with disorder terms, compared to those less than 13?years. Results give indication that search engine optimization by expert mental health sources should take into account feeling-based vocabulary used by specific age and gender groups, in order to guide these young people to authoritative mental health information.     

Correlates of Oral Sex and Vaginal Intercourse in Early and Middle Adolescence

This study examined whether a comprehensive set of psychosocial factors was equally predictive of both adolescent vaginal intercourse and oral sex among 1,105 adolescents aged 12–16. Logistic regressions were used to examine the relationships between parental communication, religiosity, bonding to school, heavy drinking, sex expectancies, normative beliefs, and both oral sex and vaginal intercourse. Age, gender, bonding to school, heavy drinking, and negative health expectancies predicted both oral sex and vaginal intercourse. Parental communication was associated with vaginal intercourse but not oral sex. Behavior‐specific normative beliefs were differentially associated with oral and vaginal sex.     

Bayesian model comparison with un-normalised likelihoods

Models for which the likelihood function can be evaluated only up to a parameter-dependent unknown normalizing constant, such as Markov random field models, are used widely in computer science, statistical physics, spatial statistics, and network analysis. However, Bayesian analysis of these models using standard Monte Carlo methods is not possible due to the intractability of their likelihood functions. Several methods that permit exact, or close to exact, simulation from the posterior distribution have recently been developed. However, estimating the evidence and Bayes’ factors for these models remains challenging in general. This paper describes new random weight importance sampling and sequential Monte Carlo methods for estimating BFs that use simulation to circumvent the evaluation of the intractable likelihood, and compares them to existing methods. In some cases we observe an advantage in the use of biased weight estimates. An initial investigation into the theoretical and empirical properties of this class of methods is presented. Some support for the use of biased estimates is presented, but we advocate caution in the use of such estimates.     

Austerity and the lives of people with learning disabilities. A thematic synthesis of current literature

Abstract

The Financial Crisis of 2008 resulted in many western economies implementing cuts in health and social care. This systematic review provides a holistic picture of the impact of austerity policy on the lives of people with learning disabilities (LD) and the collateral effects on the people who support them. Our review suggests that in the current climate of economic austerity, available funding to support people with LD is no longer aligned to their care needs. Cuts in disability services have adversely affected the well-being both of people with LD and their informal carers. Individuals with LD have lost social support and are experiencing increased social isolation. Heightened demands on family carers’ time have negatively influenced their wider roles, including parental functioning, and labour market participation. Our review provides the foundations for further discourse and research on the effects of austerity on people with LD and their family carers.     

Extending reading research with a focus on cultural understanding and research on intercultural communication: an empirical investigation in Argentina

The work presented here is an empirical study of how advanced learners of English as a foreign language in Argentina access and understand the culture-specific dimensions of literary narrative texts. It has three purposes. First, to extend research into reading in a foreign language to take account of the culture-specific content of texts. Second, to extend the focus of research on intercultural communication to include the analysis of reading processes. Finally, to introduce an approach to the analysis of the cultural dimension of the reading process using a new model of levels of cultural understanding. It is argued that cultural understanding goes beyond the quantification of prior knowledge or background knowledge in the form of idea units as evidence of the comprehension process. In this sense, the proposed model succeeds in portraying a more detailed picture of cultural understanding in this setting.