December 20, 2022
by Patricia Tomasi
A new study published in Scientific Reports looked at whether birdsongs can alleviate anxiety and paranoia in health participants. “The study is on the effects of environmental sounds on mental well-being,” study author Emil Stobbe told us. “Our physical environment can be categorized into natural and human-made (built/ urban) environments. Both of these surroundings contain auditory information that humans process in their daily life.”
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December 6, 2022
by Patricia Tomasi
A new study in the Journal of Child Development looked at whether more hours in center-based care cause more externalizing problems. “This study revisits the question of whether increasing a child’s time in center-based care leads to increases in problem behaviors,” study author Catalina Rey-Guerra told us. “We decided to revisit this topic because, for the last four decades, there have been a lot of disagreements around the answer to this question.”
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November 29, 2022
by Patricia Tomasi
A new study published in the Journal of Child Development looked at developmental changes in students’ use of dimensional comparisons to form ability self-concepts in math and verbal domains. “We know that adolescent students may compare their math performance with their own reading performance to determine whether they are a ‘math person’ or ‘reading person’,” study author Sirui Wan told us.
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November 22, 2022
by Patricia Tomasi
A new study published in the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes looked at longitudinal outcomes in children with HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders in Zambia. “Our study is about cognitive development in children and adolescents with HIV,” study author David Bearden told us. Bearden is an assistant professor of Neurology and Pediatrics at the University of Rochester Medical Center.
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November 15, 2022
by Patricia Tomasi
A new study published in Health Services Research looked at the effect of mental health staffing on suicide-related events. “We wanted to answer a seemingly simple question: does increasing mental health staffing at Veterans Health Administration (VHA) facilities reduce suicide-related events?” study author Yevgeniy Feyman told us. “While this seems straightforward on its face, the existing evidence is mixed. Some work has found that staffing reduces suicide related events, while others have found no effect.”
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November 8, 2022
by Patricia Tomasi
“Our study is about estimating the population level mental health impacts of sexual violence experiences in mid-adolescence and understanding whether and to what extent sexual violence contributes to the gender gap in mental health problems in adolescence,” study author Francesca Bentivegna told us. “We did this by examining the link between sexual violence and psychological distress, self-harm, and attempted suicide, in both girls and boys aged 14-17 years. We also estimated the effect of eliminating sexual violence at this stage (in a hypothetical scenario) on mental health problems.”
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November 1, 2022
by Patricia Tomasi
A new study published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology looked at the mechanisms underlying childhood exposure to blue spaces and adult subjective well-being. “Our study is about the benefits of childhood contact with blue spaces, a collective name to indicate all the areas with waterbodies or watercourses, such as the sea, lakes and rivers,” study author Valeria Vitale told us. “We were hoping to find a positive link between the exposure to blue spaces during childhood and adult well-being and explore potential pathways that may explain this relationship.”
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October 25, 2022
by Patricia Tomasi
“Our study was about adolescent health in the context of parental incarceration and foster care,” study author, Luke Muentner told us. “Really, we were hoping to get a deeper understanding of how exposure to both the criminal legal and the child welfare system differentially impacts youth mental health compared to peers who were exposed to only one system as well as those who were never systems-impacted.”
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October 18, 2022
by Patricia Tomasi
A new study published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research looked at the performance of machine learning models in predicting suicidal ideation, attempts, and deaths. “My study sought to quantify the ability of existing machine learning models to predict future suicide-related events,” study author Karen Kusuma told us. “While there are other research studies examining a similar question, my study is the first to use clinically relevant and statistically appropriate performance measures for the machine learning studies.”
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October 11, 2022
by Patricia Tomasi
A new study published in Child Development looked at whether older children verify adult claims because they are skeptical of those claims. “When children between four and seven years old are told something surprising, for example that a smaller object is heavier than a much larger object, they will frequently pick up those objects,” study author Samuel Ronfard, Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto at Mississauga told us. “Older children engage in such exploratory behavior more frequently than younger children.”
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