Gender Dysphoria in Adolescents: Mental Health and Treatment Evaluation

Cohen-Kettenis, P.T. [Promotor]Doreleijers, T.A.H. [Promotor

Global data on earthworm abundance, biomass, diversity and corresponding environmental properties

14 p.Earthworms are an important soil taxon as ecosystem engineers, providing a variety of crucial ecosystem functions and services. Little is known about their diversity and distribution at large spatial scales, despite the availability of considerable amounts of local-scale data. Earthworm diversity data, obtained from the primary literature or provided directly by authors, were collated with information on site locations, including coordinates, habitat cover, and soil properties. Datasets were required, at a minimum, to include abundance or biomass of earthworms at a site. Where possible, site-level species lists were included, as well as the abundance and biomass of individual species and ecological groups. This global dataset contains 10,840 sites, with 184 species, from 60 countries and all continents except Antarctica. The data were obtained from 182 published articles, published between 1973 and 2017, and 17 unpublished datasets. Amalgamating data into a single global database will assist researchers in investigating and answering a wide variety of pressing questions, for example, jointly assessing aboveground and belowground biodiversity distributions and drivers of biodiversity change

Dealing with Moral Challenges in Treatment of Transgender Children and Adolescents: Evaluating the Role of Moral Case Deliberation

Treatment teams providing affirmative medical transgender care to young people frequently face moral challenges arising from the care they provide. An adolescent's capacity to consent, for example, could raise several issues and challenges. To deal with these challenges more effectively, several Dutch treatment teams started using a relatively well-established form of clinical ethics support (CES) called Moral Case Deliberation (MCD). MCD is a facilitator-led, collective moral inquiry based on a real case. This study's purpose is to describe the teams' perceived value and effectiveness of MCD. We conducted a mixed methods evaluation study using MCD session reports, individual interviews, focus groups, and MCD evaluation questionnaires. Our results show that Dutch transgender care providers rated MCD as highly valuable in situations where participants were confronted with moral challenges. The health care providers reported that MCD increased mutual understanding and open communication among team members and strengthened their ability to make decisions and take action when managing ethically difficult circumstances. However, the health care providers also expressed criticisms of MCD: some felt that the amount of time spent discussing individual cases was excessive, that MCD should lead to more practical and concrete results, and that MCD needed better integration and follow-up in the regular work process. We recommend future research on three matters: studying how MCD contributes to the quality of care, involvement of transgender people themselves in MCD, and integration of CES into daily work processes.New methods for child psychiatric diagnosis and treatment outcome evaluatio