Fathers' Help Seeking and Support: The Importance of Relationships for Mental Wellbeing

Becoming a father is a major transition for men, and may be a source of happiness and fulfilment, as well as distress. Perinatal mental health research has traditionally focused on mothers, with paternal mental health receiving limited attention. Men are adopting more caregiving roles and increasing their parental involvement, while maintaining their traditional role as a key provider for the family. Balancing these roles may lead to experiences of psychological distress, and help-seeking can be important in alleviating the impacts of paternal distress. However, research on fathers’ help-seeking and mental health needs remains scarce. Therefore, this thesis sought to better understand fathers’ experiences of help-seeking, and facilitators and challenges of paternal help-seeking to support mental health. Study 1 involved in-depth semi-structured interviews with 11 fathers about their experiences regarding transition to fatherhood and seeking support and advice in early years of parenthood. Fathers reported experiencing distress and uncertainty during the transition to parenthood; however, most did not believe their distress required seeking professional help. Fathers also used a variety of individual and interpersonal coping strategies. Partners were the most important source of emotional support for fathers, but some fathers felt it was inappropriate to seek their partner’s support while she was coping with the stress of pregnancy and new parenting. This study revealed that fathers viewed themselves in a rather traditional role of provider and as a source of emotional and financial stability for their family. This led to work-life balance stress and, for some, created a dilemma where they felt unable to seek emotional support from their most trusted person—their partner. In study 2 the role of social support, particularly partner support, was explored in relation to paternal mental health and parenting. Data from fathers participating in Growing Up in New Zealand (N = 2601) were used, focusing on data waves during pregnancy and at child ages 9 months and 2 years. Concurrent partner support, and to a lesser degree, other informal support (friends and family) was related to lower paternal distress during pregnancy and at child age 9 months. Although significant, the magnitude of the association was small. There was no evidence of social support in infancy buffering a negative association between distress and parenting outcomes at child age 2 years. Study 1 found that most fathers did not feel that their distress warranted a professional intervention. Following from this, study 3 investigated the relationships among mental health literacy (MHL), emotional distress, and fathers’ perceptions of barriers and modes of mental health help-seeking. Data were collected from a community sample of New Zealand and Australian fathers (N = 129). The study involved completing an online vignette survey, the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale 21 Items (DASS-21), and two open ended questions. Those with a high DASS-21 stress score were more likely to report the individual in the vignette as needing help or having a mental health problem. regardless of the accuracy of this choice. Additionally, more fathers were able to correctly recognise clear symptoms of depression (typical depression) compared to masked depression. Fathers described several informal and formal sources for support and internal and external barriers (e.g., stigma and time/cost) to help-seeking. This thesis adds to the growing knowledge on fathers’ mental wellbeing by examining paternal help-seeking and distress as well the role of social support. Overall, the findings of this research are consistent with the limited amount of existing research suggesting that partner support has a unique role in paternal mental health. The findings also suggest greater emphasis on the role of relationships and social support in fathers’ mental health and help-seeking. The main implications of this thesis for health professionals who interact with young families are that paternal mental health requires greater clinical and social attention, and fathers with low levels of social support, poor work-life balance and mental health literacy, and traditional masculine beliefs on help-seeking may be at high risk of experiencing mental health difficulties

Forecasting New Cases of Bipolar Disorder Using Poisson Hidden Markov Model

Background: Bipolar disorder (BD) is a major public health problem. In time series count data there may be over dispersion, and serial dependency. In such situation some models that can consider the dependency are needed. The purpose current research was to use Poisson hidden Markov model to forecast new monthly BD instances.Methods: In current study the dataset including the frequency of new instances of BD from October 2008 to March 2015 in Hamadan Province, the west of Iran were used. We used Poisson hidden Markov with different number of conditions to determine the best model according to Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) and Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC). Then we used final model to forecast for the next 24 months.Results: Poisson hidden Markov with two states were chosen as the final model. Each component of dependent mixture model explained one of the states. The results showed that the new BD cases is increase over time and due to forecasting results number of patients for the next 24 months comforted in state two with mean 85.15. The forecast interval was approximately (56, 100).Conclusion: As the Poisson hidden Markov models was not used to forecast the future states in other prior researches, the findings of this study set forward a forecasting strategy as an alternative to common methods, by considering its deficiencies

Effectiveness of Mindfulness Intervention on Cognitive Functions: A Meta-analysis of Mindfulness Studies

Background: The experience of cognitive deficits is common among patients with degenerative and psychiatric disorders. Objective: The present study aimed to evaluate the effect of the empirical literature of mindfulness intervention on cognitive functions. Methods: This study was conducted in June 2020 by using the scientific records were retrieved by a systematic search of several bibliographic databases on the Medline, Scopus, ISI Web of Sciences, Google scholar database from 2000 to 2020 for testing the effect of mindfulness intervention on cognitive functions. For data analysis CMA2 software were used. Heterogeneity assessed by Cochran’s Q statistics test. Publication Bias assessed by Orwin fail safe N, Begg’s method kendall’s Tau, Egger’s method intercept and funnel plot. Results: from 17 initial studies, 28 effect sizes were calculated. Among the 28 effect sizes, 6 indicators were negative and 22 indicators were positive. key results from the meta-analysis, Compared to healthy controls showed that people were receive mindfulness intervention significantly improved in working memory and attention function, with this enhance medium magnitude (Hedges’ g = 0.32, 0.35 respectively, see Figure 2). There was no significant improve by use mindfulness intervention on executive function. Conclusions: The results prove the initial evidence that mindfulness intervention can improve some neurocognitive processing such as attention function and working memor

Forecasting Schizophrenia Incidence Frequencies Using Time Series Approach

Introduction: Understanding the prevalence of schizophrenia has important implications for both health service planning and risk factor epidemiology. The aims of this study are to systematically identify and collate studies describing the prevalence of schizophrenia, to summarize the findings of these studies, and to explore selected factors that may influence prevalence estimates.Methods: This historical cohort study was done on schizophrenia patients in Farshchian psychiatric hospital from April 2008 to April 2016. To analyze the data, the Holt-Winters Exponential Smoothing (HWES) method was applied. All the analyses were done by R.3.2.3. Software using the packages “forecast” and “tseries”. The statistical significant level was assumed as 0.05.Results: Our investigation show that a constant frequency of Schizophrenia incidence happens every month from August 2008 to February 2015 while a considerable increase occurs in March 2015. The high frequency of Schizophrenia incidence remains constant to the end of 2015 and a decrease is shown in 2016. Also, data demonstrate the development of Schizophrenia in the next 24 months with 95% confidence interval.Conclusion: Our study showed that a significant increase happens in the frequency of Schizophrenia from 2016. Although the development is not constant and the same for all months, the amount of increase is considerably high comparing to before 2016.

Prevalence and predictors of water pipe (shisha) use among Iranian high school children

Introduction: Water pipe use is becoming increasingly common among Iranian adolescents. This study examined the prevalence and predictors of water pipe use among public high schoolchildren aged 14-17 in Iran. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade public high schoolchildren in Sanadaj City, capital of Kurdistan province of Iran during the academic year 2012-2013. Cluster sampling was used to select a sample from 8 public high schools. The data were collected using validated self-administrated questionnaire that included questions on water pipe use, socio-demographic characteristics, smoking-related knowledge, attitude toward smoking, normative believes regards perceived prevalence water pipe use among peer and adults, perception of harm, self-esteem and refusal skill. A multivariate logistic regression analysis was performed to assess predictors of water pipe use. Results: A total of 1837 students participated in this study. Students’ ages ranged from 14 to 17 years (mean age±15.09; SD±0.82 years). The overall prevalence of ever water pipe use was 36.2% (43.1% in male and 29.2% in female, (p<0.001). Age, gender, living arrangement, pocket money, academic grade, parental history of smoking, attitude, and normative believes regards perceived prevalence water pipe use among peer and adults were predictors of water pipe use among study participants. Conclusions: The overall prevalence of water pipe is high among high school children in Sanandaj. Age, gender, pocket money, academic grade, parents smoking, attitude toward smoking and normative believes were identified as the most important predictors increasing the risk of water pipe use in the studied students

Oxybutynin reduces sweating in depressed patients treated with sertraline: a double-blind, placebo-controlled, clinical study

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors are primarily used in the pharmacological treatment of patients experiencing a major depressive disorder. However, one of the common unwanted effects is excessive sweating or hyperhidrosis. Oxybutynin is an anticholinergic medication which reduces sweating. The aim of this double-blind study was to examine the effect of administration of oxybutynin on subjective sweating in patients treated with sertraline.; A total of 140 patients experiencing a major depressive disorder (mean age 37.69 ± 10.44 years, 86 females [61.4%]) treated with sertraline (mean dose 83 mg/day) were consecutively enrolled in the study, and all reported excessive sweating as a side effect. Thereafter, the patients were randomly assigned to either an oxybutynin 5 mg/day group or to a placebo group. At the beginning and end of the 2-week trial, the patients completed questionnaires related to sweating and medication-related side effects.; Over time, subjective sweating reduced significantly in the treatment group as compared with the control group. Oxybutynin-induced side effects were uncommon. Relative to male patients, female patients reported less subjective sweating.; Administration of oxybutynin successfully reduced excessive sweating in patients experiencing a major depressive disorder and treated with sertraline. However, possible gender effects should be taken into account

Homesickness, Depression and Happiness in University Students of Hamadan, Iran

Background and aims: Students are exposed to multiple various mental disorders. One of the most important difficulties the students encounter are homesickness and depression the occurrence of which cause less happiness in the students. This study was conducted to investigate the relationship among 3 factors of homesickness, depression, and happiness in dormitory students of Hamedan University of Medical Sciences. Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out on 387 dormitory students of Hamedan University of Medical Sciences from January to April 2016. The participants of the study were selected through stratified random sampling technique with proportional allocation. Data were collected through self-reporting and four questionnaires including demographic data questionnaire, homesickness Benfleet questionnaire, University Students Depression Inventory (USDI), and Oxford happiness questionnaire. A quantitative analysis of the inquiry was performed using SPSS software, version 23. Results: The results showed that depression had an indirect relationship (-0.6) with happiness. That is, by increasing the depression scores happiness will decrease. In addition, depression had a significantly direct relationship (0.3) with homesickness. It implies that an increase in homesickness score leads to an increase in depression score. Moreover, homesickness had a significantly indirect relationship (-0.2) with happiness. Namely, an increase in homesickness, results in a decrease in happiness. Conclusion: In view of the results obtained and given the importance of mental health of the students in dormitories, it seems that the reasons related to homesickness and depression should be recognized and included in intervention and prevention programs. Besides, appropriate interventions must be designed and implemented in this regard

Neurological, Psychiatric, and Biochemical Aspects of Thiamine Deficiency in Children and Adults.

Thiamine (vitamin B1) is an essential nutrient that serves as a cofactor for a number of enzymes, mostly with mitochondrial localization. Some thiamine-dependent enzymes are involved in energy metabolism and biosynthesis of nucleic acids whereas others are part of the antioxidant machinery. The brain is highly vulnerable to thiamine deficiency due to its heavy reliance on mitochondrial ATP production. This is more evident during rapid growth (i.e., perinatal periods and children) in which thiamine deficiency is commonly associated with either malnutrition or genetic defects. Thiamine deficiency contributes to a number of conditions spanning from mild neurological and psychiatric symptoms (confusion, reduced memory, and sleep disturbances) to severe encephalopathy, ataxia, congestive heart failure, muscle atrophy, and even death. This review discusses the current knowledge on thiamine deficiency and associated morbidity of neurological and psychiatric disorders, with special emphasis on the pediatric population, as well as the putative beneficial effect of thiamine supplementation in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and other neurological conditions

Further evidence of psychological factors underlying choice of elective cesarean delivery (ECD) by primigravidae

Objective: Requests for elective cesarean delivery (ECD) have increased in Iran. While some sociodemographic and fear-related factors have been linked with this choice, psychological factors such as self-esteem, stress, and health beliefs are under-researched. Methods: A total of 342 primigravidae (mean age = 25 years) completed questionnaires covering psychological dimensions such as self-esteem, perceived stress, marital relationship quality, perceived social support, and relevant health-related beliefs. Results: Of the sample, 214 (62.6%) chose to undergo ECD rather than vaginal delivery (VD). This choice was associated with lower self-esteem, greater perceived stress, belief in higher susceptibility to problematic birth and barriers to an easy birth, along with lower perceived severity of ECD, fewer perceived benefits from VD, lower self-efficacy and a lower feeling of preparedness. No differences were found for marital relationship quality or perceived social support. Conclusions: The pattern suggests that various psychological factors such as self-esteem, self-efficacy, and perceived stress underpin the decision by primigravidae to have an ECD