scholarly journals Medical and Social Assistance for the Transgender Community: Difficulties and Particularities in Psychiatric and Psychotherapeutic Assistance

2021 ◽  
Vol 74 ◽  
pp. 149-163
Author(s):  
Adrian CANTEMIR ◽  
Irina CANTEMIR ◽  
Adrian COSTACHE ◽  
Irina DOBRIN ◽  
Romeo DOBRIN ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Social Support ◽  
Sexual Minorities ◽  
Social Assistance ◽  
State Level ◽  
Health State ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
Health Community ◽  
Professional Mental Health ◽  
The Social

The purpose of this paper was to point out the difficulties faced by the transgender community when using psychiatric or psychotherapeutic services and their impact at the social, psychological, and health state level. Our approach favours the increase in the information degree of the medical and psychotherapeutic community concerning the topic, by placing the transgender community in the current psychosocial context. In order to collect the necessary data, we applied two questionnaires to the transgender community and to the professional mental health community, respectively; the first comprised 20 questions and the second comprised 11 questions, and the results were interpreted statistically. From among them, it is worth highlighting the important percentage of transgender who do not live in accordance to the desired identity and the existence of discriminating situations in the interaction with the physician or the psychologist. The conclusions of this paper reflect the difficulties and gaps related to the assistance of sexual minorities. We thus propose examples of practices that may allow an increase in medical and social support for the transgender community.

scholarly journals The social support, mental health, psychiatric symptoms, and functioning of persons with schizophrenia participating in peer co-delivered vocational rehabilitation: a pilot study in Taiwan

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kan-Yuan Cheng ◽  
Chia-Feng Yen
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Social Support ◽  
Vocational Rehabilitation ◽  
Psychiatric Symptoms ◽  
Skills Training ◽  
Service Users ◽  
Pilot Program ◽  
The Social ◽  
Functional Scores ◽  
Persons With Schizophrenia

Abstract Background Vocational peer support (VPS) services are recovery-oriented interventions in modern psychiatric care for persons with schizophrenia. However, few VPS services are found in Taiwan. Hence, a pilot program of peer co-delivered vocational rehabilitation to support persons with schizophrenia in Taiwan was proposed and evaluated. Methods Six peers were trained and were willing to co-lead and assist workplace problem-solving groups and care skills training in an extended vocational rehabilitation program from August 2017 to December 2018. The social support, mental health, psychiatric symptoms, and functioning of service users were assessed before and after peer co-delivered services, and the assessments were based on the following: Social Support Scale (SSS), Chinese Health Questionnaire-12 (CHQ-12), Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS), Global Assessment of Function (GAF), and the Chinese version of the Social Functioning Scale (C-SFS). Results The recruited 46 service users were mostly middle-aged (49.1 ± 9.8), with 27 being male (58.7%). After interventions, 42 service users who completed the program had a significantly increased SSS score (149.1 ± 31.8 vs. 161.2 ± 35.0, df = 41, t = 2.70, p = 0.01) and subscale of friend-peer dimension (44.4 ± 12.0 vs. 53.2 ± 13.2, df = 41, t = 4.72, p < 0.001). The objective (GAF: 69.8 ± 9.8 vs. 72.6 ± 8.8, df = 41, t = 3.50, p = 0.001) and subjective social functional scores (C-SFS: 75.2 ± 8.8 vs. 78.1 ± 9.5, df = 41, t = 2.59, p = 0.01) both significantly increased. The weekly wage elevated significantly (37.5 ± 35.5 vs. 43.6 ± 38.0, df = 41, t = 2.57, p = 0.01) and the BPRS-18 score decreased significantly, too (31.2 ± 6.7 vs. 29.3 ± 5.0, df = 41, t = − 2.83, p = 0.007). Conclusions Peer co-delivered vocational rehabilitation services may enhance the social support received by persons with schizophrenia and improve their occupational outcomes. The pilot program proposed can thus be a model for non-Western countries with limited resources allocated by governments to support persons with schizophrenia. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials NCT04767204, retrospectively registered on Feb 23, 2021.

How Relationship Satisfaction Influences Post-Pandemic COVID-19 Anxiety: A Four-Wave Study in China

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jingyi Ou ◽  
yunhanqi ◽  
Ke Zhang ◽  
Yuexiao Du ◽  
Yihang He ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Social Support ◽  
Psychological Distress ◽  
Relationship Satisfaction ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Isolation ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Perceived Social Support ◽  
The Social

The social isolation due to the COVID-19 pandemic exerts lasing impacts on people’s mental health. However, whether and how people’s pre-existing positive social relationships can serve as stable reserves to alleviate people psychological distress following the disaster remains unknown. To address the question, the current study examined whether pre-pandemic relationship satisfaction would predict post-pandemic COVID-19 anxiety through middle-pandemic perceived social support and/or gratitude using four-wave data in China (N = 222, 54.50% female, Mage = 31.53, SD = 8.17). Results showed that people’s COVID-19 anxiety decreased from the peak to the trough pandemic stage; perceived social support increased markedly from the pre-pandemic to the peak and remained stable afterwards, while relationship satisfaction remained unchanged throughout. Further, it was middle-pandemic perceived social support, but not gratitude, mediated the association between pre-pandemic relationship satisfaction and post-pandemic COVID-19 anxiety, indicating perceived social support played a more crucial role than gratitude in this process. Last, it is suggested to distinguish perceived social support from gratitude as two different components of social interactions.

scholarly journals What does social support sound like? Challenges and opportunities for using passive episodic audio collection to assess the social environment

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anubhuti Poudyal ◽  
Alastair van Heerden ◽  
Ashley Hagaman ◽  
Celia Islam ◽  
Ada Thapa ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Social Support ◽  
Data Collection ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Mobile Phones ◽  
Adolescent Mothers ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
The Social ◽  
Audio Data

Abstract Background: The social environment, including social support, social burden, and quality of interactions, influences a range of health outcomes, including mental health. Passive audio data collection on mobile phones (e.g., episodic recording of the auditory environment without requiring any active input from the phone user) enables new opportunities to understand the social environment. We evaluated the use of passive audio collection on mobile phones as a window onto the relationship between the social environment within a study of mental health among adolescent mothers in Nepal.Methods: We enrolled 23 adolescent mothers who first participated in qualitative interviews to describe their social support and identify sounds potentially associated with that support. Then episodic recordings were collected for two weeks from the same women using an app to capture 30 seconds of audio every 15 minutes from 4am to 9pm. Audio data were processed and classified using a pretrained model. Each classification category was accompanied by a predicted accuracy score. Manual validation of the machine-predicted speech and non-speech categories (10%) was done for accuracy.Results: In qualitative interviews, mothers described a range of positive and negative social interactions and the sounds that accompanied these. Potential positive sounds included adult speech and laughter, baby babbling and laughter, and sounds from baby toys. Sounds characterizing negative stimuli included yelling, crying, screaming by adults and crying by babies. Sounds associated with social isolation included silence and TV or radio noises. Speech comprised of 43% of all passively recorded audio clips (n=7725). Manual validation showed a 23% false positive rate and 62% false-negative rate for speech, demonstrating potential underestimation of speech exposure. Other common sounds included music and vehicular noises.Conclusions: Passively capturing audio has the potential to improve understanding of the social environment. However, the limited accuracy of the pre-trained model used in this study did not adequately distinguish between positive and negative social interactions. To improve the contribution of passive audio collection to understanding the social environment, future work should improve the accuracy of audio categorization, code for constellations of sounds, and combine audio with other smartphone data collection such as location and activity.

scholarly journals Relationship of Perceived Social Support with Mental Health in Older Caregivers

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (11) ◽  
pp. 3886 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Muñoz-Bermejo ◽  
José Carmelo Adsuar ◽  
Salvador Postigo-Mota ◽  
Inés Casado-Verdejo ◽  
Claudia Mara de Melo-Tavares ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Social Support ◽  
Mental Health Problems ◽  
Perceived Social Support ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Health State ◽  
Physical And Mental Health ◽  
Older Caregivers ◽  
Elderly Caregivers ◽  
Mental Well Being

Background: Elderly caregivers present increased physical and mental health problems. These factors can lead to a lack of autonomy and a need for social support. This study aims to analyse the relationships between perceived social support and mental health status in elderly caregivers aged 65 and older. Methods: a cross-sectional study based on data from the Spanish National Health Survey (ENSE-17) carried out on 7023 people. The study population was restricted to 431 caregivers aged ≥65 years. A study of the correlation between the mental health state and the perceived social support was carried out. Both variables were related to the sex of the caregiver. Results: Perceived social support by older caregivers is significantly related to mental health (p = 0.001), and stress (p < 0.001). Also, there is a significant relationship between perceived social support and mental well-being (p = 0.001), self-esteem (p = 0.005) and stress (p = 0.001) in older women caregivers. Conclusions: Older caregivers have adequate mental well-being and perceive high social support. Perceived social support can contribute to improving the mental well-being of older caregivers.

scholarly journals Does social support moderate the association between hunger and mental health in youth? A gender-specific investigation from the Canadian Health Behaviour in School-aged Children study

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nour Hammami ◽  
Scott T. Leatherdale ◽  
Frank J. Elgar
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Social Support ◽  
Health Behaviour ◽  
Negative Association ◽  
Mental Health Score ◽  
Health Score ◽  
School Aged Children ◽  
The Social ◽  
Canadian Health ◽  
Gender Specific

Abstract Background Youth who go hungry have poorer mental health than their counterparts – there are gender differences in this relationship. This study investigated the role of social support in the association between hunger and mental health among a nationally representative sample of youth in Canada in gender-specific analyses. Methods We used a probability-based sample of 21,750 youth in grades 6–10 who participated in the 2017–2018 Canadian Health Behaviour in School-aged Children. Self-report data were gathered on hunger, mental health (measured via the World Health Organization-5 well-being index) and five sources of support – peer, family and teacher support as well as the school climate and neighborhood support. We conducted adjusted, gender-specific, multilevel regression analyses assessing the association between mental health, social support and hunger. Results We found that youth who reported lower support were more likely to experience going to bed hungry (relative to never hungry) across all support factors. As for the social support factors, all the social support factors were associated with a higher mental health score, even after controlling for hunger. Despite these results our final set of models showed that our measures of social support did not alleviate the negative association between hunger and mental health. As for gender-specific findings, the negative association between hunger and a mental health was more pronounced among females relative to their male counterparts. We also found that certain social support factors (i.e., family, teacher and neighborhood support) were associated with a higher mental health score among females relative to males while controlling for hunger status. Conclusions We find that five social support factors are associated with a higher mental health score among ever hungry youth; however, social support did not overpower the negative association between hunger and mental health. Food insecurity is a challenge to address holistically; however, hungry youth who have high social support have higher odds of better mental health.

scholarly journals Masculinity, Social Connectedness, and Mental Health: Men’s Diverse Patterns of Practice

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 1247-1261 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah K. McKenzie ◽  
Sunny Collings ◽  
Gabrielle Jenkin ◽  
Jo River
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Social Support ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Connectedness ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Support Networks ◽  
Social Connections ◽  
Science Literature ◽  
The Social ◽  
Patterns Of Practice

Men’s mental health has remained undertheorized, particularly in terms of the gendered nature of men’s social relations. While the importance of social connections and strong supportive networks for improving mental health and well-being is well documented, we know little about men’s social support networks or how men go about seeking or mobilizing social support. An in-depth understanding of the gendered nature of men’s social connections and the ways in which the interplay between masculinity and men’s social connections can impact men’s mental health is needed. Fifteen life history interviews were undertaken with men in the community. A theoretical framework of gender relations was used to analyze the men’s interviews. The findings provide rich insights into men’s diverse patterns of practice in regards to seeking or mobilizing social support. While some men differentiated between their social connections with men and women, others experienced difficulties in mobilizing support from existing connections. Some men maintained a desire to be independent, rejecting the need for social support, whereas others established support networks from which they could actively seek support. Overall, the findings suggest that patterns of social connectedness among men are diverse, challenging the social science literature that frames all men’s social relationships as being largely instrumental, and men as less able and less interested than women in building emotional and supportive relationships with others. The implications of these findings for promoting men’s social connectedness and mental health are discussed.

scholarly journals The Social Distribution of Distress and Well-Being in the Canadian Aboriginal Population Living Off Reserve

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Wingert
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Social Support ◽  
Health Outcomes ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Coping Resources ◽  
Mental Health Outcomes ◽  
Aboriginal Population ◽  
The Social

This article examines how the social structure distributes risk and protective factors and mental health outcomes within the off reserve Aboriginal population in Canada. It uses the stress process model, a prominent model in the sociology of mental health, to explore pathways between social status, stress, coping resources, and mental health outcomes. Path analyses are used to decompose total effects on distress and well-being into direct and indirect or mediating pathways. The results suggest that stress, mastery, and social support are important mediators between social status and mental health outcomes. Stress appears to be a stronger contributor to distress while mastery and social support are of higher relative importance to well-being.

scholarly journals The Effect of Social Media Use on Depressive Symptoms in Older Adults with Self-Reported Hearing Impairment: An Empirical Study

Healthcare ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (11) ◽  
pp. 1403
Author(s):  
Yiming Ma ◽  
Changyong Liang ◽  
Xuejie Yang ◽  
Haitao Zhang ◽  
Shuping Zhao ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Social Support ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Depressive Symptoms ◽  
Older People ◽  
Hearing Impairment ◽  
Social Isolation ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
The Social ◽  
Subjective Aging

Older people with hearing impairment are more likely to develop depressive symptoms due to physical disability and loss of social communication. This study investigated the effects of social media on social relations, subjective aging, and depressive symptoms in these older adults based on the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) framework. It provides new empirical evidence to support improving the mental health and rebuilding the social relations of older people. A formal questionnaire was designed using the Wenjuanxing platform and distributed online through WeChat; 643 valid questionnaires were received from older people with self-reported hearing impairments, and SmartPLS 3.28 was used to analyze the data. The results show that (1) social media significantly impacts the social relations of older people with hearing impairment (social networks, β = 0.132, T = 3.444; social support, β = 0.129, T = 2.95; social isolation, β = 0.107, T = 2.505). (2) For these older people, social isolation has the biggest impact on their psychosocial loss (β = 0.456, T = 10.458), followed by the impact of social support (β = 0.103, T = 2.014); a hypothesis about social network size was not confirmed (β = 0.007, T = 0.182). Both social media (β = 0.096, T = 2.249) and social support (β = 0.174, T = 4.434) significantly affect the self-efficacy of hearing-impaired older people. (3) Both subjective aging (psychosocial loss, β = 0.260, T = 6.036; self-efficacy, β = 0.106, T = 3.15) and social isolation (β = 0.268, T = 6.307) significantly affect depressive symptoms in older people with hearing impairment. This study expands the theories of social media aging cognition, social support, and social networks and can provide practical contributions to the social media use and mental health of special persons 60 years and older.

scholarly journals Citizen Social Science in practice: a critical analysis of a mental health community-based project

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabelle Bonhoure ◽  
Anna Cigarini ◽  
Julian Vicens ◽  
Josep Perelló
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Citizen Science ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Computational Social Science ◽  
Mental Condition ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Health Community ◽  
The Social

“Citizen Social Science” is a fast-growing term within Citizen Science world but not many experiences have been shared in the literature to better shape its meaning. This article discusses novel possibilities of these participatory practices through the critical analysis of a concrete community-based project. We here embrace under the “Social” tag of Citizen Social Science both Computational Social Science methodologies and the Social concerns expressed by the mental health community. The interpretation place persons with a mental condition, as well as caregivers and relatives, at the center of the research cycle by taking the role of Competent Experts In-The-Field. A synergetic relation between Citizen Science, Mental Health research and Computational Social Science also imply a conceptual shift in comparison to standard approaches such as the inclusion of research subjects as active co-designers or the consideration of communitarian spaces as most natural experimental spaces. We here describe how these concepts are put into practice during the whole duration of a research project that has studied the social interactions inside the Community Mental Health Care ecosystem. Important steps entail the creation of a Knowledge Coalition, including a diversity of relevant actors with diverse knowledge and expertise, that is later involved in co-designing the research and in embedding experimental settings in communitarian spaces. The experience allows us to open a wider discussion on the possibilities and limitations of Citizen Social Science practices. Having in mind the ethical debate raised by Citizen Science Public Health and Patients’ driven research, we propose a set of values and practices to be agreed on. We also analyse the participation of the scientists in these kind of projects, which forces them to adopt the role of “camaleons” when executing diverse and versatile tasks. We additionally advocate for a more extended collective interpretation of the results in order to produce socially robust knowledge and enhance actions and policies grounded on these results. Exemplified with the experience herein presented, a more horizontal process that include the enhancement of participation and the revision of the notion of experiment offer new opportunities for Social Sciences from a multidisciplinary perspective.

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