5,284 research outputs found
Supported internet-delivered cognitive behavioral therapy programs for depression, anxiety, and stress in university students: open, non-randomised trial of acceptability, effectiveness, and satisfaction
BACKGROUND: Many university campuses have limited mental health services that cannot cope with the high demand. One alternative is to use internet-delivered cognitive behavioral therapy (iCBT) as a way of tackling barriers such as lack of availability and scheduling issues. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to assess feasibility, acceptability, effectiveness, and satisfaction of a supported iCBT intervention offering 3 programs on depression, anxiety, and stress to university students. The design was an open or nonrandomized feasibility trial. METHODS: Participants were recruited from 3 counseling centers at a large midwestern University in the United States. Those agreeing to take part chose 1 of 3 iCBT programs-Space from Depression, Space from Anxiety, or Space from Stress -all comprised 8 modules of media-rich interactive content. Participants were supported throughout the trial by a trained professional. The Patient Health Questionnaire 9 (PHQ-9), Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7 (GAD-7) questionnaire, and stress subscale of the Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21) were completed at baseline, 8 weeks, and 3-month follow-up. A Satisfaction With Treatment (SAT) questionnaire was completed at 8 weeks, and qualitative interviews were completed by a subsample of participants at 3 months. RESULTS: A total of 102 participants were recruited, with 52 choosing Space from Anxiety, 31 choosing Space from Depression, and 19 choosing Space from Stress. Mixed-effects models showed a significant decrease in symptoms of depression (Fâ‚„=6.36, P<.001), anxiety (Fâ‚„=7.97, P<.001), and stress (Fâ‚„=8.50, P<.001) over time across all 3 programs. The largest decreases in PHQ-9 scores at 8 weeks were among participants who chose the Space from Depression program (d=0.84); at 3 months, the largest decreases in PHQ-9 scores were among those who chose the Space from Stress program (d=0.74). The largest decreases in GAD-7 scores were among those who chose the Space from Anxiety program (d=0.74 at 8 weeks and d=0.94 at 3 months). The largest decrease in DASS-21 stress subscale scores was among those who chose the Space from Stress program (d=0.49 at 8 weeks and d=1.16 at 3 months). The mean time spent using the platform per session was 27.4 min (SD 33.8), and participants completed 53% (SD 37.6) of the total program content on average. Most (37/53, 69%) participants found the programs helpful or very helpful and liked the convenience and flexibility of the intervention. Qualitative interviews (n=14) indicated the intervention met students' expectations, and they saw it as a valuable complement to face-to-face treatment. CONCLUSIONS: The iCBT programs tested in our study appear to be feasible, acceptable, and effective in a university environment. Participants described the benefits of having a flexible, supported Web-based intervention available on campus. Larger trials should be conducted to further test the effectiveness of supported Web-based interventions that give students a choice of program depending on their symptom profile.Published versio
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Synaesthesia in children
Synaesthesia is a developmental condition that triggers phantom sensations (e.g., colours or tastes) when exposed to everyday stimuli such as graphemes, music, and pain. Yet, despite synaesthesia being a developmental condition, there is very little work in children to date. In this thesis, I explore two types of synaesthesia in children aged 6-10 years old; grapheme-colour synaesthesia (letters and numbers elicit colours) and grapheme-personality synaesthesia (letters and numbers elicit personalities). I first use tests designed specifically for children to identify individuals with these types of synaesthesia. Here I tested children with and without synaesthesia who had been identified from a very large screening endeavour, called MULTISENSE (funded by the European Research Council; I played a central role in this project, but my thesis focuses on the children identified by this process, rather than the screening itself). Then once this cohort was identified I looked at group differences between synaesthetes and non-synaesthetes in two domains: personality and cognition (specifically, numerical cognition). Throughout the thesis I use tests targeted specifically for our child population. Where these did not already exist in Chapter 2 (e.g., suitable self-report personality measures for children) we created and validated them independently. In Chapter 3 I use some of these measures to identify whether synaesthetes have a different personality profile to non-synaesthetes. In the second half of the thesis I tested synaesthetes’ numerical cognition, and looked, too, at ‘synaesthesia-like’ phenomena in the general population. Here in Chapter 4 I explored whether a widely implemented maths tool that pairs numbers with colours aids non-synaesthete children in their numerical cognition. I then finally return to synaesthetes in Chapter 5 using the same tests of numerical cognition to determine if grapheme-colour synaesthetes show advantages in this domain. Overall, this thesis shows that child synaesthetes have a distinct personality profile, and show a pattern of differences in numerical cognition found also in ‘synaesthesia-like’ phenomena such as the educational colour-coding of numbers
Engaging Employers as Partners in Subsidized Employment Programs
The majority of studies of subsidized employment programs for public assistance recipients and low-income, unemployed individuals have focused on employment and earnings outcomes for participants. As employers are key stakeholders in a subsidized employment program, engaging them effectively is essential. This paper reports on interviews with 81 employers in four Northern California counties regarding their experiences in working with employees in a subsidized employment program. The findings focus on marketing, program structure, and suggestions for program improvement
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Stop the Stigma! Eliminating Implicit and Explicit Bias Toward Adult Obese Women Receiving Gynecological Care: A Quality Improvement Project to Cultivate Empathy and Increase Knowledge of Best Practices
Background: Increased weight carries significant health risks, yet obese individuals face stigma, implicit and explicit bias by health care providers that affects quality of care and increases health care avoidance. Obese women may delay or avoid gynecological care due to fear of stigma, inadequate equipment and embarrassment about their weight. Review of Literature: In the United States, 70.7% of adults, almost three quarters of the adult population are overweight or obese. Purpose: The purpose of this quality improvement project was to improve the quality of care and empathy toward obese women by health care providers in an OB/GYN practice through education about the experiences of obese women who receive healthcare and provision of resources within OB/GYN practices. Methods: A quality improvement project with an educational design was implemented using a Plan, Do, Check, Act framework. The plan was implemented at an OB/GYN practice in Western Massachusetts using a team approach consisting of the DNP student, providers and staff. The Thin-Fat Implicit Bias Test and Anti-Fat Attitudes test were administered pre-and post-educational program to assess change in provider bias toward obese women. Results: A decrease in explicit bias was shown both immediately and 3 months after the intervention. There was minimal decrease and some increase in implicit bias after the intervention which may be related to confounding factors such as increased familiarity with the testing procedure. At 3 months some participants were avoidant at follow-up suggesting possible shame, embarrassment, or deeper feelings which merit future exploration.
Conclusions: Continued education and awareness is needed to sustain and decrease stigma toward obese women in the health care setting
The BeHealthyR Study: A randomized trial of a multicomponent intervention to reduce stress, smoking and improve financial health of low-income residents in Rotterdam
Background: Compared to higher socioeconomic status (SES) groups, those in lower SES groups are financially strained, experience higher rates of smoking-related morbidity, are in poorer health and have reduced life expectancy. This is especially true for the city of Rotterdam, where a large inequality in health is observed between low and high SES groups. The BeHealthyR study (Dutch: Grip en Gezondheid) is a randomized controlled trial (RCT) which will evaluate the impact of a theory-based multicomponent behavior intervention aiming to reduce stress, smoking, and improve financial health by means of a group-based stress management program combining cognitive and behavioral techniques, and nudges in low-SES residents living in Rotterdam. Methods: The BeHealthyR study is a three-arm RCT. Between February 2018 and July 2019, low-SES participants who perceive stress, smoke, are financially strained and reside in Rotterdam (one of the four largest cities in The Netherlands) are recruited. Subsequently, participants are randomly assigned to either a stress management condition (SM), stress management with a buddy condition (SM-B) or a control condition (CC). Participants in the SM and SM-B conditions will attend four weekly group sessions (1.5 h/session) and a follow-up session eight weeks later. The SM condition includes psychoeducation and exercises, and cognitive and behavioral intervention techniques. Demographic data and objective measures will be collected at baseline (T0), four weeks post-baseline (T1), and twelve weeks post-baseline (T2). Primary outcome measures are to reduce stress, smoking and improve financial health. We hypothesize that low-SES participants in the intervention conditions, compared with those in the control condition, will experience less stress, smoke less and have improved financial health. Discussion: This study is a group-based intervention which aims to investigate the effects of a theory-based behavioral change intervention employing several components on reducing stress, smoking, and improving financial health in low-SES residents living in Rotterdam. If effective, the findings from the present study will serve to inform future directions of research and clinical practice with regard to behavioral change interventions for low-SES groups. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov (ID: NCT03553979). Registered on January 1 2018
Spartan Daily, September 14, 1977
Volume 69, Issue 7https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/6230/thumbnail.jp
What I Learned From Losing
The main purpose of this document is to discuss the impact I made upon the St. Cloud community while running for Minnesota Senate as well as to serve as a reflection of what could have been if I won. In addition, I have included what caused me to enter the political realm. It is formatted as a culminating project/portfolio containing both a literature review as well as an appendix made up of surveys pertaining to balancing a budget, law enforcement, and immigration. Fundamental problems that I believe Minnesota residents need to care more about and focus their attention on are blatant signs of Americans living in a police state, improper budgeting by local government agencies, and the importance of accepting, respecting, and welcoming immigrants and refugees
Ranking with Slot Constraints
We introduce the problem of ranking with slot constraints, which can be used
to model a wide range of application problems -- from college admission with
limited slots for different majors, to composing a stratified cohort of
eligible participants in a medical trial. We show that the conventional
Probability Ranking Principle (PRP) can be highly sub-optimal for
slot-constrained ranking problems, and we devise a new ranking algorithm,
called MatchRank. The goal of MatchRank is to produce rankings that maximize
the number of filled slots if candidates are evaluated by a human decision
maker in the order of the ranking. In this way, MatchRank generalizes the PRP,
and it subsumes the PRP as a special case when there are no slot constraints.
Our theoretical analysis shows that MatchRank has a strong approximation
guarantee without any independence assumptions between slots or candidates.
Furthermore, we show how MatchRank can be implemented efficiently. Beyond the
theoretical guarantees, empirical evaluations show that MatchRank can provide
substantial improvements over a range of synthetic and real-world tasks
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Deficits in narrative abilities in child British Sign Language users with specific language impairment
This study details the first ever investigation of narrative skills in a group of 17 deaf signing children who have been diagnosed with disorders in their British Sign Language development compared with a control group of 17 deaf child signers matched for age, gender, education, quantity, and quality of language exposure and non-verbal intelligence. Children were asked to generate a narrative based on events in a language free video. Narratives were analysed for global structure, information content and local level grammatical devices, especially verb morphology. The language-impaired group produced shorter, less structured and grammatically simpler narratives than controls, with verb morphology particularly impaired. Despite major differences in how sign and spoken languages are articulated, narrative is shown to be a reliable marker of language impairment across the modality boundaries
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