Avun hakemiseen johtava tiedonhankinta:tutkimus opiskelijoiden hakeutumisesta mielenterveyspalvelujen piiriin

Tiivistelmä. Mielenterveyden häiriöt ovat yleinen ja tilastojen mukaan paheneva ongelma korkeakouluopiskelijoiden elämässä. Tämä pro gradu -tutkielma pyrkii selvittämään, minkälaista tiedonhankintakäyttäytymistä opiskelijoilla ilmenee mielenterveyteen liittyvän avun hakemisen tilanteessa ja sitä edeltävänä aikana. Tutkimuksessa selvitetään erityisesti avun hakemiseen liittyviä tiedonlähteitä, tiedon hankinnan esteitä ja tiedon välttelyä. Tutkimuksen aineisto kerättiin teemahaastattelulla. Apuna käytettiin kriittisten tapahtumien menetelmää. Sen avulla yritettiin tunnistaa ne yksittäiset tapahtumat, jotka johtivat avun hakemiseen. Aineisto analysoitiin teoriaohjaavan sisällönanalyysin avulla. Tutkimuksen keskeisenä teoriana oli välttelyn kierteen malli (Biddle, Donovan, Sharp & Gunnell 2007), joka kuvaa nuorten aikuisten mielenterveyteen liittyvää avun hakemista ja sen välttelyä. Mallia käytettiin haastattelussa aineistonkeruun apuna. Tulokset osoittivat, että opiskelijat hakeutuvat avun piiriin odotettua nopeammin ja itseohjautuvammin, jos apua vain on helposti saatavilla. Avun hakemista edeltää lyhyt ajanjakso, jolloin tietoa hankitaan ystäviltä ja internetistä. Muuten mielenterveysaiheista tietoa saadaan lähinnä passiivisesti havainnoimalla, esimerkiksi sosiaalisen median uutisvirrasta. Avun hakemiseen johtavia kriittisiä tapahtumia tunnistettiin useita ja niistä saatiin muodostettua viisi kategoriaa. Kategoriat ovat: omien oireiden tunnistaminen, toisen ihmisen väliintulo, muut terveysongelmat, traumaattiset kokemukset ja suunnitelmallinen avun hakeminen. Tulokset tukevat aikaisempaa tutkimusta tiedonlähteiden osalta. Stigman vaikutus avun hakemiseen oli sen sijaan odotettua vähäisempi. Suurimpia syitä avun hakemisen lykkäämiselle olivat epätietoisuus, voimattomuus ja resurssien puute

Fitness benefits of prolonged post-reproductive lifespan in women

Most animals reproduce until they die, but in humans, females can survive long after ceasing reproduction. In theory, a prolonged post-reproductive lifespan will evolve when females can gain greater fitness by increasing the success of their offspring than by continuing to breed themselves. Although reproductive success is known to decline in old age, it is unknown whether women gain fitness by prolonging lifespan post-reproduction. Using complete multi-generational demographic records, we show that women with a prolonged post-reproductive lifespan have more grandchildren, and hence greater fitness, in pre-modern populations of both Finns and Canadians. This fitness benefit arises because post-reproductive mothers enhance the lifetime reproductive success of their offspring by allowing them to breed earlier, more frequently and more successfully. Finally, the fitness benefits of prolonged lifespan diminish as the reproductive output of offspring declines. This suggests that in female humans, selection for deferred ageing should wane when one's own offspring become post-reproductive and, correspondingly, we show that rates of female mortality accelerate as their offspring terminate reproduction

Middleborns disadvantaged? testing birth-order effects on fitness in pre-industrial finns

Parental investment is a limited resource for which offspring compete in order to increase their own survival and reproductive success. However, parents might be selected to influence the outcome of sibling competition through differential investment. While evidence for this is widespread in egg-laying species, whether or not this may also be the case in viviparous species is more difficult to determine. We use pre-industrial Finns as our model system and an equal investment model as our null hypothesis, which predicts that (all else being equal) middleborns should be disadvantaged through competition. We found no overall evidence to suggest that middleborns in a family are disadvantaged in terms of their survival, age at first reproduction or lifetime reproductive success. However, when considering birth-order only among same-sexed siblings, first-, middle-and lastborn sons significantly differed in the number of offspring they were able to rear to adulthood, although there was no similar effect among females. Middleborn sons appeared to produce significantly less offspring than first-or lastborn sons, but they did not significantly differ from lastborn sons in the number of offspring reared to adulthood. Our results thus show that taking sex differences into account is important when modelling birth-order effects. We found clear evidence of firstborn sons being advantaged over other sons in the family, and over firstborn daughters. Therefore, our results suggest that parents invest differentially in their offspring in order to both preferentially favour particular offspring or reduce offspring inequalities arising from sibling competition

Fitness Consequences of Advanced Ancestral Age over Three Generations in Humans

A rapid rise in age at parenthood in contemporary societies has increased interest in reports of higher prevalence of de novo mutations and health problems in individuals with older fathers, but the fitness consequences of such age effects over several generations remain untested. Here, we use extensive pedigree data on seven pre-industrial Finnish populations to show how the ages of ancestors for up to three generations are associated with fitness traits. Individuals whose fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers fathered their lineage on average under age 30 were ~13% more likely to survive to adulthood than those whose ancestors fathered their lineage at over 40 years. In addition, females had a lower probability of marriage if their male ancestors were older. These findings are consistent with an increase of the number of accumulated de novo mutations with male age, suggesting that deleterious mutations acquired from recent ancestors may be a substantial burden to fitness in humans. However, possible non-mutational explanations for the observed associations are also discussed

Demographic and reproductive associations with nematode infection in a long-lived mammal

Infection by macroparasites, such as nematodes, varies within vertebrate host systems; elevated infection is commonly observed in juveniles and males, and, for females, with different reproductive states. However, while such patterns are widely recognized in short-lived model systems, how they apply to long-lived hosts is comparatively understudied. Here, we investigated how infection varies with host age, sex, and female reproduction in a semi-captive population of individually marked Asian elephants Elephas maximus. We carried out 1,977 faecal egg counts (FECs) across five years to estimate nematode loads for 324 hosts. Infection patterns followed an established age-infection curve, whereby calves (5 years) exhibited the highest FECs and adults (45 years) the lowest. However, males and females had similar FECs across their long lifespan, despite distinct differences in life-history strategy and clear sexual dimorphism. Additionally, although mothers invest two years in pregnancy and a further three to five years into lactation, nematode load did not vary with four different measures of female reproduction. Our results provide a much-needed insight into the host-parasite dynamics of a long-lived host; determining host-specific associations with infection in such systems is important for broadening our knowledge of parasite ecology and provides practical applications for wildlife medicine and management

Causes and Correlates of Calf Mortality in Captive Asian Elephants (Elephas maximus)

Juvenile mortality is a key factor influencing population growth rate in density-independent, predation-free, well-managed captive populations. Currently at least a quarter of all Asian elephants live in captivity, but both the wild and captive populations are unsustainable with the present fertility and calf mortality rates. Despite the need for detailed data on calf mortality to manage effectively populations and to minimize the need for capture from the wild, very little is known of the causes and correlates of calf mortality in Asian elephants. Here we use the world's largest multigenerational demographic dataset on a semi-captive population of Asian elephants compiled from timber camps in Myanmar to investigate the survival of calves (n = 1020) to age five born to captive-born mothers (n = 391) between 1960 and 1999. Mortality risk varied significantly across different ages and was higher for males at any age. Maternal reproductive history was associated with large differences in both stillbirth and liveborn mortality risk: first-time mothers had a higher risk of calf loss as did mothers producing another calf soon (<3.7 years) after a previous birth, and when giving birth at older age. Stillbirth (4%) and pre-weaning mortality (25.6%) were considerably lower than those reported for zoo elephants and used in published population viability analyses. A large proportion of deaths were caused by accidents and lack of maternal milk/calf weakness which both might be partly preventable by supplementary feeding of mothers and calves and work reduction of high-risk mothers. Our results on Myanmar timber elephants with an extensive keeping system provide an important comparison to compromised survivorship reported in zoo elephants. They have implications for improving captive working elephant management systems in range countries and for refining population viability analyses with realistic parameter values in order to predict future population size of the Asian elephant