Infertility problems and mental health symptoms in a community-based sample: depressive symptoms among infertile men, but not women

Most researchers agree that men’s and women’s experiences of infertility are fundamentally different, and impacts upon the nature of psychological distress encountered. However, design flaws, including non-random samples unrepresentative of the general population, compromise many existing studies. Data derived from a random general community sample provides prevalence of current infertility, and permits examination of longitudinal associations between mental health symptoms and infertility among 1,978 participants aged 28-32 years. In the previous 12-months, infertility was experienced by 2.1% and 5.4% partnered men and women. Infertility independently predicted depressive symptomatology in men, and anxiety symptoms among women. Gender differences were sustained, even controlling for prior depression and anxiety. Health professionals are encouraged to proactively enquire about affective symptoms experienced by both women and men with infertility problems

Changes in genetic and environmental influences on disordered eating between early and late adolescence: a longitudinal twin study

Author version under embargo for a period of 6 months from the date of publication, made available in accordance with the publisher's policy.Background: We investigated the genetic and environmental contributions to disordered eating (DE) between early and late adolescence in order to determine whether different sources of heritability and environmental risk contributed to these peak times of emergence of eating disorders. Methods: Adolescent female twins from the Australian Twin Registry were interviewed over the telephone with the Eating Disorder Examination (EDE). Data were collected at 12-15 and 16-19 years (Wave 1: N=699, 351 pairs; Wave 3: N=499, 247 pairs). Assessments also involved self-report measures related to negative life events and weight-related peer teasing. Results: Unstandardised estimates from the bivariate Cholesky decomposition model showed both genetic influences and non-shared environmental influences increased over adolescence, but shared environmental influences decreased. While non-shared environmental sources active at ages 12-15 continued to contribute at 16-19 years, new sources of both additive genetic and non-shared environmental risk were introduced at ages 16-19. Weight-related peer teasing in early-mid adolescence predicted increases of DE in later adolescence, while negative life events did not. Conclusions: Two-thirds of the heritable influence contributing to DE in late adolescence was unique to this age group. During late adolescence independent sources of genetic risk, as well as environmental influences are likely to be related in part to peer teasing, appear key antecedents in growth of DE. Key words: Global EDE, adolescents, twins, genetic, environmental, longitudina

Disordered eating among mid-age women: is quality of life impacted over time?

Objective This longitudinal study of midlife women has three aims: examine quality of life (QoL) among women with and without indicators of disordered eating (DE); compare the obtained QoL effect to a younger cohort in the same longitudinal study and investigate potential moderating effects of depression and social support on the relationship between DE and QoL. Method We used self-report data from six waves of the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women s Health over 14 years. A total of 12,338 women participating in the mid-age cohort (ageing from 45-50 to 59-64) provided self-report indications of DE at Surveys 1 and 2, and QoL (SF-36 component scales - mental [MCS] and physical [PCS]) at Surveys 2-6. Results DE was reported by 10.25% of the women who also reported significantly poorer mental and physical QoL than those without DE; this effect was sustained over 12 years. Effect size differences for the midlife and younger women, between those with and without DE, showed a larger impact on physical QoL over time for the mid-age women. Midlife women with high levels of depressive symptoms (with and without DE) had the lowest initial mental QoL scores. Midlife women with high depression and DE had the greatest increase in mental QoL over time, but their mean score was still considerably lower than all other groups. Conclusions This study underscores the significant effect of midlife DE on QoL, particularly when comorbid with depression, suggesting specific support options are needed for mid-age women.A Kate Fairweather-Schmidt, Christina Lee, Tracey D Wad

Depression following adult, non-penetrating traumatic brain injury: A meta-analysis examining methodological variables and sample characteristics

BACKGROUND: Depression is one of the most frequently reported psychological problems following TBI, however prevalence estimates vary widely. Methodological and sampling differences may explain some of this variability, but it is not known to what extent. METHODS: Data from 99 studies examining the prevalence of clinically diagnosed depression (MDD/dysthymia) and self-reports of depression (clinically significant cases or depression scale scores) following adult, non-penetrating TBI were analysed, taking into consideration diagnostic criteria, measure, post-injury interval, and injury severity. RESULTS: Overall, 27% of people were diagnosed with MDD/dysthymia following TBI and 38% reported clinically significant levels of depression when assessed with self-report scales. Estimates of MDD/dysthymia varied according to diagnostic criteria (ICD-10: 14%; DSM-IV: 25%; DSM-III: 47%) and injury severity (mild: 16%; severe: 30%). When self-report measures were used, the prevalence of clinically significant cases of depression differed between scales (HADS: 32%; CES-D: 48%) method of administration (phone: 26%; mail 46%), post-injury interval (range: 33-42%), and injury severity (mild: 64%; severe: 39%). CONCLUSION: Depression is very common after TBI and has the potential to impact on recovery and quality of life. However, the diagnostic criteria, measure, time post-injury and injury severity, all impact on prevalence rates and must therefore be considered for benchmarking purposes.A.J. Osborn, J.L. Mathias, A.K. Fairweather-Schmid

Does resilience predict suicidality? A lifespan analysis

Accepted author version posted online: 18 Jun 2014In this article, we examine the association between resilience and suicidality across the lifespan. Participants (n = 7485) from the Personality and Total Health (PATH) Through Life Project, a population sample from Canberra and Queanbeyan, Australia, were stratified into three age cohorts (20-24, 40-44, 60-64 years of age). Binary Logistic regression explored the association between resilience and suicidality. Across age cohorts, low resilience was associated with an increased risk for suicidality. However, this effect was subsequently made redundant in models that fully adjusted for other risk factors for suicidality among young and old adults. Resilience is associated with suicidality across the lifespan, but only those in midlife continued to report increased likelihood of suicidality in fully-adjusted models.Danica W. Y. Liu, A. Kate Fairweather-Schmidt, Rachel M. Roberts, Richard Burns, Kaarin J. Anste

Large eddy simulation of a turbulent non-premixed propane-air reacting flame in a cylindrical combustor

Large Eddy Simulation (LES) is applied to investigate the turbulent non-premixed combustion flow, including species concentrations and temperature, in a cylindrical combustor. Gaseous propane (C3H8) is injected through a circular nozzle which is attached at the centre of the combustor inlet. Preheated air with a temperature of 773 K is supplied through the annulus surrounding of this fuel nozzle. In LES a spatial filtering is applied to the governing equations to separate the flow field into large-scale and small-scale eddies. The large-scale eddies which carry most of the turbulent energy are resolved explicitly, while the unresolved small-scale eddies are modelled using the Smagorinsky model with Cs = 0.1 as well as dynamically calibrated Cs. The filtered values of the species mass fraction, temperature and density, which are the functions of the mixture fraction (conserved scalar), are determined by integration over a beta probability density function (β-PDF). The computational results are compared with those of the experimental investigation conducted by Nishida and Mukohara. According to this experiment, the overall equivalence ratio of 0.6, which is calculated from the ratio of the air flow rate supplied to the combustion chamber to that of the stoichiometric reaction, is kept constant so that the turbulent combustion at the fuel nozzle exit starts under the fuel-rich conditions

Gender differences in temporal relationships between gambling urge and cognitions in treatment-seeking adults

© 2018 Elsevier. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ This author accepted manuscript is made available following 12 month embargo from date of publication (April 2018) in accordance with the publisher’s archiving policyMany gambling-specific CBT programs seek to target either gambling-related urge or cognitions or both. However, little is known of the influence of one symptom type on another across time and whether these differ for men and women help-seeking problem gamblers. The aim of this study was threefold: to determine presence of measurement invariance for urge and cognition measures over time; to investigate the effect of baseline urge on end-of-treatment gambling-related cognitions – and the reciprocal relationship; and, identify whether these pathways differ across gender. Self-reported gambling urge (GUS), and gambling-related cognitions (GRCS) data from treatment-seeking problem gamblers prior to and post treatment (N = 223; 62% men) were analyzed with cross-lagged panel models, moderated by gender. Conceptualization of urge and cognitions were found to be temporally stable. There was no significant association between baseline GUS scores and post-treatment GRCS scores, nor the reverse relationship. Putatively, this infers that coexisting urge and gambling-related cognition components of problem gambling operate independently over time. Analyses revealed gambling urge had a significantly stronger tracking correlation across time for men than women when adjusting for cognition paths. This investigation provides early evidence for tailoring CBT in response to sub-population gambling-related characteristics, demonstrated across men and women

The Australian Defence Force Mental Health Prevalence and Wellbeing Study: design and methods

BACKGROUND: The Australian Defence Force (ADF) Mental Health Prevalence and Wellbeing Study (MHPWS) is the first study of mental disorder prevalence in an entire military population. OBJECTIVE: The MHPWS aims to establish mental disorder prevalence, refine current ADF mental health screening methods, and identify specific occupational factors that influence mental health. This paper describes the design, sampling strategies, and methodology used in this study. METHOD: At Phase 1, approximately half of all regular Navy, Army, and Air Force personnel (n=24,481) completed self-report questionnaires. At Phase 2, a stratified sub-sample (n=1,798) completed a structured diagnostic interview to detect mental disorder. Based on data from non-responders, data were weighted to represent the entire ADF population (n=50,049). RESULTS: One in five ADF members met criteria for a 12-month mental disorder (22%). The most common disorder category was anxiety disorders (14.8%), followed by affective (9.5%) and alcohol disorders (5.2%). At risk ADF sub-groups were Army personnel, and those in the lower ranks. Deployment status did not have an impact on mental disorder rates. CONCLUSION: This study has important implications for mental health service delivery for Australian and international military personnel as well as contemporary veterans.Miranda Van Hooff, Alexander C. McFarlane, Christopher E. Davies, Amelia K. Searle, A. Kate Fairweather-Schmidt, Alan Verhagen, Helen Benassi, and Stephanie E. Hodso

Outcomes of telephone-delivered low-intensity cognitive behaviour therapy (LiCBT) to community dwelling Australians with a recent hospital admission due to depression or anxiety: MindStep™

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were madeBackground In 2006, the British government launched ‘Improving Access to Psychological Therapies’ (IAPT), a low intensity cognitive behaviour therapy intervention (LiCBT) designed to manage people with symptoms of anxiety and depression in the community. The evidence of the effectiveness of IAPT has been demonstrated in multiple studies from the UK, USA, Australia and other countries. MindStep™ is the first adaptation of IAPT in Australia, delivered completely by telephone, targeting people with a recent history of a hospital admission for mental illnesses within the private health system. This paper reports on the outcome of the first 17 months of MindStep™ implemented across Australia from March 2016. Methods This prospective observational study investigated the MindStep™ program in a cohort of clients with a recent hospitalisation for mental illnesses. The study used quantitative methods to compare pre-post treatment clinical measures (N = 680) using Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) and the Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD-7). This study also included in-depth interviews with participants (N = 14) and coaches (N = 4) to determine the feasibility and acceptability of the program. Results Of the 867 clients referred to MindStep™, 757 had initial assessments by phone making an enrolment rate of 87.3%. Following assessment, 680 commenced treatment and of them, 427 (62.7%) completed treatment. According to ‘per-protocol’ analysis (N = 427), there was a large effect size for post-treatment PHQ-9 (d = 1.03) and GAD-7 (d = 0.99) scores; reliable recovery rate was 62% (95% CI: 57–68%). For intent-to-treat analysis using multiple imputation (N = 680), effect sizes were also large for pre-post treatment change: PHQ-9 (d = 0.78) and GAD-7 (d = 0.76). The reliable recovery rate was 49% (95% CI: 45–54%). Qualitative findings supported these claims where participants were positive about MindStep™ and found the telephone delivery and use of mental health coaches highly acceptable. Conclusions MindStep™ has demonstrated encouraging outcomes that suggest LiCBT can be successfully delivered to people with a history of hospital admissions for anxiety and depressive disorders and achieve target recovery rates of > 50%. Other promising evaluation findings indicate the MindStep™ option is acceptable, feasible and safe within the stepped models of mental health care delivery in Australia

Eating pathology in midlife women: similar or different to younger counterparts?

Objective This study examined potential similarities and differences between women with eating disorders (EDs) in midlife and their younger counterparts. Method Seven hundred and three women assessed by a specialist eating disorder service were divided into three groups based on age (18–25, 25–40, and 40+) and compared on a number of clinical and demographic measures. Distribution of ED diagnoses was also examined between groups. Results Midlife women were less likely to receive a diagnosis of anorexia nervosa and more likely to receive a diagnosis of binge‐eating disorder than their younger counterparts. Duration of illness was longer and age of ED onset later in the midlife group but no differences were seen on measures of global ED pathology, psychosocial impairment, or psychological distress. Discussion This study adds to the developing literature concerning EDs in midlife women, although further work is needed to support the findings presented here and to examine profiles of males presenting to treatment centers