2 research outputs found
Pregnancy and Mental Health of Young Homeless Women
Pregnancy rates among women in the U.S. who are homeless are much higher than rates among women who are housed (Greene & Ringwalt, 1998). Yet little research has addressed mental health, risk and resilience among young mothers who are homeless. This study utilizes a sample of women from the Midwest Longitudinal Study of Homeless Adolescents (MLSHA) to investigate pregnancy and motherhood over three years among unaccompanied homeless young mothers. Our data are supplemented by in-depth interviews with a subset of these women. Results show that almost half of sexually active young women (n = 222, μ age = 17.2) had been pregnant at baseline (46.4%), and among the longitudinal subsample of 171 women (μ age = 17.2), almost 70.0% had been pregnant by the end of the study. Among young mothers who are homeless, only half reported that they helped to care for their children consistently over time, and one-fifth of the women reported never seeing their children. Of the young women with children in their care at the last interview of the study (Wave 13), almost one-third met criteria for lifetime major depressive episode (MDE), lifetime posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and lifetime drug abuse, and onehalf met criteria for lifetime antisocial personality disorder (APD). Twelve-month diagnoses are also reported. The impacts of homelessness on maternal and child outcomes are discussed, including the implications for practice, policy, and research
Impacts of Urban Areas and Their Characteristics on Avian Functional Diversity
Urban development is rapidly expanding across the globe and is a major driver of
environmental change. Despite considerable improvements in our understanding of
how species richness responds to urbanization, there is still insufficient knowledge
of how other measures of assemblage composition and structure respond to urban
development. Functional diversity metrics provide a useful approach for quantifying
ecological function. We compare avian functional diversity in 25 urban areas, located
across the globe, with paired non-urban assemblages using a database of 27 functional
traits that capture variation in resource use (amount and type of resources and how
they are acquired) across the 529 species occurring across these assemblages. Using
three standard functional diversity metrics (FD, MNTD, and convex hull) we quantify
observed functional diversity and, using standardized effect sizes, how this diverges
from that expected under random community assembly null models. We use regression
trees to investigate whether human population density, amount of vegetation and city
size (spatial extent of urban land), bio-region and use of semi-natural or agricultural
assemblages as a baselinemodulate the effect of urbanization on functional diversity. Our
analyses suggest that observed functional diversity of urban avian assemblages is not
consistently different from that of non-urban assemblages. After accounting for species
richness avian functional diversity is higher in cities than areas of semi-natural habitat.
This creates a paradox as species responses to urban development are determined by
their ecological traits, which should generate assemblages clustered within a narrow
range of trait space. Greater habitat diversity within cities compared to semi-natural areas
dominated by a single habitat may enhance functional diversity in cities and explain
this paradox. Regression trees further suggest that smaller urban areas, lower human
population densities and increased vegetation all enhance the functional diversity of
urban areas. A city’s attributes can thus influence the functional diversity of its biological
assemblages, and their associated ecological functions. This has important implications
for the debate regarding how we should grow the world’s cities whilst maintaining their
ecological function.Peer reviewe