ObjectiveThe goal of the study was to explore the relationship between parent–children relationships related to using the internet among kids and potentially associated factors.Materials and MethodsA sample of 1.216 Vietnamese students between the ages of 12 and 18 agreed to participate in the cross-sectional online survey. Data collected included socioeconomic characteristics and internet use status of participants, their perceived changes in relationship and communication between parents and children since using the internet, and parental control toward the child’s internet use. An (...) Ordered Logistic Regression was carried out to determine factors associated with parent–children relationship since using the internet.ResultsThe characteristics of the relationship between children and their parents since using the Internet were divided into three levels: deterioration, stability, and improvement. The topics that children most often communicate with their parents include learning, housework, and future directions. Two-way interactive activities, such as supporting parents to use the Internet, have a positive impact on the parent–child relationship. Stubborn parental control, such as establishing rules about contact or allowing Internet access and setting up global positioning system to track negatively affecting parent–child relationships.ConclusionFindings indicated that changes in the quality of the parent–child relationship were self-assessed by participants regard to kids’ internet use, especially in the COVID-19 epidemic context. Educational campaigns and programs to raise awareness of parents as to the dangers and negative influences that their children may encounter online, psychology of children’s behaviors and effects of different responding strategies are recommended. (shrink)

We developed a psychometric scale for measuring the subjective environmental perception of public spaces. In the scale development process, we started with an initial pool of 85 items identified from the literature that were related to environmental perception. A total of 1,650 participants rated these items on animated images of 12 public spaces through an online survey. Using principal component analyses and confirmatory factor analyses, we identified two affective factors with 8 items and six cognitive factors with 22 items. These (...) eight factors represent the core attributes underlying environmental perception of public spaces. Practicality of the scale and limitations of the study are also discussed. (shrink)

COVID-19, the most severe public health problem to occur in the past 10 years, has greatly impacted people's mental health. Colleges in China have reopened, and how to prevent college students from suffering secondary damage due to school reopening remains elusive. This cross-sectional study was aimed to evaluate the psychological impact of COVID-19 after school reopening and explore via machine learning the factors that influence anxiety and depression among students. Among the 478 valid online questionnaires collected between September 14th and (...) September 20th, 74 showed symptoms of anxiety, and 155 showed symptoms of depression. Descriptive analysis of basic personal characteristics indicated that students at a higher grade, having relatives or friends who have been infected, fearing being infected, and having a pessimistic attitude to COVID-19 easily experience anxiety or depression. The Synthetic Minority Oversampling Technique was utilized to counteract the imbalance of retrieved data. The Akaike Information Criterion and multivariate logistic regression were performed to explore significant influence factors. The results indicate that exercise frequency, alcohol use, school reopening, having relatives or friends who have been infected, self-quarantine, quarantine of classmates, taking temperature routinely, wearing masks routinely, sleep quality, retaining holiday, availability of package delivery, take-out availability, lockdown restriction, several areas in school closed due to COVID-19, living conditions in the school, taking the final examinations after school reopening, and the degree to which family economic status is influenced by COVID-19 are the primary influence factors for anxiety or depression. To evaluate the effect of our model, we used 5-fold cross-validation, and the average area under the curve values of the receiver operating characteristic curves of anxiety and depression on the test set reached 0.885 and 0.806, respectively. To conclude, we examined the presence of anxiety and depression symptoms among Chinese college students after school reopening and explored many factors influencing students' mental health, providing reasonable school management suggestions. (shrink)

Background: This study examined the cyberbullying experience and coping manners of adolescents in urban Vietnam and explored the mediating effect of different support to the associations between cyberbullying and mental health issues.Methods: A cross-sectional study was performed on 484 students at four secondary schools. Cyberbullying experience, coping strategies, psychological problems, and family, peer, and teacher support were obtained. Structural equation modeling was utilized to determine the mediating effects of different support on associations between cyberbullying and psychological problems.Results: There were 11.6 (...) and 28.3% of students who reported that they experienced and observed at least one cyberbullying act in the last 3 months, respectively. Among the victims, only 48.2% tried to stop the perpetrators. Meanwhile, the majority of observers belonged to the “Intervene” group who tried to report cyberbullying acts or help victims. Family support was found to partially mediate associations between cyberbullying experience and observation with levels of psychological problems among adolescents.Conclusion: The 3-month rate of cyberbullying experience and observation among urban adolescents aged 11–14 was low. However, current coping strategies against cyberbullying were not sufficient. Family support is an important factor that should be considered for designing interventions to mitigating the impacts of cyberbullying on the mental health of adolescents. (shrink)

BackgroundDepressive disorders are a common form of psychiatric illness and cause significant disability. Regulation authorities, the medical profession and the public require high safety standards for antidepressants to protect vulnerable psychiatric patients. Ketamine is a dissociative anaesthetic and a derivative of a hallucinogen. Its abuse is a major worldwide public health problem. Ketamine is a scheduled drug and its usage is restricted due to its abuse liability. Recent clinical trials have reported that ketamine use led to rapid antidepressant effects in (...) patients suffering from treatment-resistant depression. However, various flaws in study designs, and possible biased reporting of results, may have influenced those findings. Further analyses of ketamine use are needed to ensure patient safety.DiscussionThe use of ketamine in research and treatment of depressive disorders is controversial. Recently, mental health professionals raised ethical concerns about an ongoing ketamine trial in the UK. Also, a Canadian agency reviewed the existing evidence and did not recommend prescribing ketamine to treat depressive disorders. Findings obtained from tightly controlled research settings cannot be easily translated to clinical practice as substance abuse is commonly comorbid with depressive disorders. An effective antidepressant should reduce severity of depressive symptoms without liability problems. Although the US FDA has not approved the use of ketamine to treat depressive disorders, some psychiatrists offer off-label repeat prescription of ketamine. Prescribing ketamine for treating depressive disorders requires substantial empirical evidence. Clinicians should also consider research findings on ketamine abuse. Depressive disorders can be chronic conditions and the current evidence does not rule out the risk of substance abuse after repeat prescription of ketamine. Off-label ketamine use in treating depressive disorders may breach ethical and moral standards, especially in countries seriously affected by ketamine abuse. This article presents two real-world clinical vignettes which highlight ethical principles and theories, including autonomy, nonmaleficience, fidelity and consequentialism, as related to off-label ketamine use.ConclusionWe urge clinicians to minimise the risk of harming patients by considering the empirical evidence on ketamine properties and attempting all standard antidepressant therapies before considering the off-label use of ketamine. (shrink)

The stereotyped pattern of cell commitments during leech embryogenesis is described. The nature of cell commitments during segmentation differs significantly between leech and fruit fly. Despite the constancy of cell fate assignments in normal development, ablation experiments show that cell interactions are essential in setting some of these commitments. Interacting cells follow a positionally determined hierarchy of fate choices. For other cells, which appear to have fates fixed from birth, the possibility of determinative interactions between mother and daughter cells is (...) discussed. (shrink)

This is the first experimental study testing the effect of street performance on the subjective environmental perception of public space. It is generally believed that street performance can enhance people’s experience of public space, but studies advocating such a view have not used a control group to explicitly verify the effect of street performance. In response to this methodological limitation, we conducted two studies using experimental design. Study 1 was an online computer-based study where research participants evaluated the extent to (...) which the presence vs. absence of street performance could change their perception of public space. Study 2 was a between-group quasi-experiment in an actual public space where people physically present in the space evaluated the perception of the space with vs. without street performance. Overall, we found converging results that street performance could make public space more visitable, more restorative, and more preferable. The current findings not only fill in a gap in the literature on street performance, but they also inform the policy making and regulations of street performance. (shrink)

Throughout history, the generation, exercise, and dissemination of knowledge are fraught with dangers, the root causes of which are traceable to the definition of authority relations. The authors compare Greek myths and Chinese legends, setting the stage for a metarelational analysis of authority relations between teacher and students and between scholar-teachers and political rulers in Confucian-heritage cultures. These two relations are rooted in ideological conservatism. They are related in a higher-order relation or metarelation: Political control and the definition of the (...) teacher-student relationship reinforce each other in consolidating authoritarian values. Thus, ideological conservatism shapes educational philosophy and socialization. It conflicts with present demands for creativity in the service of knowledge-based economies. Hence, a major issue in cultural change to be addressed concerns the dilemma between maintaining authoritarian control and enhancing creativity. (shrink)

IntroductionThis study aimed to explore the mental wellbeing profiles and their related factors among urban young adults in Vietnam.MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted in Hanoi, which is the capital of Vietnam. There were 356 Vietnamese who completed the Mental Health Inventory-5 questionnaire. The Latent Profile Analysis was used to identify the subgroups of mental wellbeing through five items of the MHI-5 scale as the continuous variable. Multinomial logistic regression was used to determine factors related to subgroups.ResultsThree classes represented three levels (...) of MHI-5 score, which included “Poor mental health,” “Fair mental health,” and “Good mental health,” were, respectively, 14.3, 46.6, and 39.0%. Compared to a low household economy, participants with an average household economy had 2.11 and 4.79 times higher odds of being in a good mental health class relative to fair and poor mental health classes. Respondents with more than two acute symptoms had 3.85 times higher odds of being in a good mental health class relative to a poor mental health class, as compared to those without acute symptoms. Regarding the measurement of the Perceived Social Support Scale, people having support from their family had 1.80 and 2.23 times higher odds of being in classes of fair and good mental health relative to the poor mental health class; and participants having friend support also had 1.87 times higher odds of being in a good mental health class compared with the fair mental health class, as the MSPSS score increased by 1 unit. People with Rosenberg’s self-esteem scale increased by 1 score, those who had 1.17, 1.26, and 1.47 times higher odds of being in a good compared to fair mental health class, fair compared to poor mental health class, and good compared to poor mental health class, respectively.ConclusionOur findings were given to promote a new classification method for mental health screening among the general population. The current findings could be used as evidence to develop policies and plans that focus on encouraging early screening for mental health problems among the general young population in the future. (shrink)

In the United States, approximately 2.53 million people sustain a concussion each year. Relative to adults, youth show greater cognitive deficits following concussion and a longer recovery. An accurate and reliable imaging method is needed to determine injury severity and symptom resolution. The primary objective of this study was to characterize concussions with diffusion tensor imaging. This was performed through a normative Z-scoring analysis of DTI metrics, fractional anisotropy, axial diffusivity, and radial diffusivity, to quantify patient-specific injuries and identify commonly (...) damaged brain regions in paediatric concussion patients relative to healthy controls. It was hypothesized that personalizing the detection analysis through normative Z-scoring would provide an understanding of trauma-induced microstructural damage. Concussion patients were volunteers recruited from the Emergency Department of the McMaster Children’s Hospital with a recent concussion, 9 males and 17 females, mean age 14.22 ± 2.64, while healthy paediatric brain DTI datasets were obtained from an MRI data repository. Significant abnormalities were commonly found in the longitudinal fasciculus, fronto-occipital fasciculus, and corticospinal tract, while unique abnormalities were localized in a number of other areas reflecting the individuality of each child’s injury. Total injury burden, determined by the number of regions containing outliers per DTI metric per patient, was used as the metric to quantify the overall injury severity of each patient. The primary outcome of this analysis found that younger patients experienced a significantly greater injury burden when measured using fractional anisotropy. These results show that DTI was able to detect microstructural changes caused by concussion, on a per-person basis, and has the potential to be a useful tool for improving diagnostic accuracy and prognosis of a concussion. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to investigate Iranian psychotherapists’ behaviors and beliefs toward sexual orientation and gender identity. The sample consisted of 358 Iranian psychotherapists, of whom 29.3% were male and 67% were female. Results from the chi-square analyses showed that more male participants reported accepting homosexual clients and treating them as having a pathological disorder than their female counterparts; and licensed respondents reported engaging more in accepting only male or female clients, accepting more homosexual and transgender clients for (...) treatment, and treating them as having a pathological disorder when compared with their unlicensed counterparts. Furthermore supervised respondents reported accepting more homosexual clients than their unsupervised counterparts. However results from the multivariate analysis of variance has indicated that the female participants reported “accepting homosexuals or transgender clients for treatment” more often than the male participants; unsupervised participants reported “accepting homosexual or transgender clients for treatment” and “treating homosexuality per se as a pathological disorder” more often than their supervised counterparts. (shrink)

Previous research conducted in 1999 highlighted ethical concerns behind challenge studies inducing psychosis with ketamine and made recommendations to enhance ethical standards. Recently, a plethora of clinical trials have evaluated the efficacy of ketamine to treat mood disorders, which lead to complex ethical issues. Pharmaceutical companies and researchers hope to profit by developing patentable variations on ketamine for treating depression. Media have labeled ketamine as a “miracle” antidepressant. Some clinics offer expensive off-label use of ketamine to treat mood disorders. This (...) article examines the ecological validity of ketamine trials, measures to protect patients, informed consent procedures, financial inducements to participants and conflict of interest of researchers, therapeutic misconception, concealment, and deception. Further recommendations are purposed to improve ethical standard of clinical research involving ketamine. (shrink)

Participatory research (PR) has been analyzed and documented from different points of view, with emphasis on the benefits generated for farmers. The effect of PR on organizational learning has, however, received little attention. This paper analyzes the interaction between a research and a development institution, the International Potato Center (CIP) and CARE in Peru, respectively, and makes the case that PR can contribute to creating a collaborative learning environment among organizations. The paper describes the evolution of the inter-institutional collaborative environment (...) between the two institutions for more than a decade, including an information-transfer period (1993–1996), an action-learning period (1997–2002), and a social-learning period (2003–2007). Several lessons learned from each period are described, as are changes in institutional contexts and stakeholders’ perceptions. The case shows that research and development-oriented organizations can interact fruitfully using PR as a mechanism to promote learning, flexibility in interactions, and innovation. Interactions foster the diffusion of information and the sharing of tacit knowledge within and between organizations, which in turn influences behavior. However, the paper also argues that long-term inter-organizational interactions are needed to facilitate learning, which can be used to influence the way organizations implement their interventions in a constantly changing environment. (shrink)