Mitigating the adverse physical health risks associated with COVID-19 has been a priority of public health incentives. Less attention has been placed on understanding the psychological factors ...related to the global pandemic, especially among vulnerable populations. This qualitative study sought to understand the experiences of children and adolescents during COVID-19. This study interviewed 48 families during the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, and a national lockdown, to understand its impacts. The study used an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) methodology. Parents and children discussed the negative impact of the restrictions on young people's wellbeing. Children and adolescents experienced adverse mental health effects, including feelings of social isolation, depression, anxiety, and increases in maladaptive behaviour. Families with children with Autism Spectrum Disorders reported increased mental health difficulties during this period mostly due to changes to routine. The findings highlight the impact of severe restrictions on vulnerable populations' wellbeing and mental health outcomes, including children, adolescents, and those with Autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
The COVID-19 pandemic significantly affected family life, increasing parental stress around health, job losses, reduced salaries, and maintaining domestic life in lockdown and social isolation. The ...transition to home-schooling and remote work with school and workplace closures caused additional stressors as families began living, working, and educating in one place. This research aims to understand the relationship between the pandemic and parental stress, focusing on family well-being and established characteristics of the family unit that may cause some family members to experience the adverse consequences of the pandemic in more or less profound ways, especially mothers. Previous research shows that mothers carry more family responsibilities than fathers and can experience higher stress levels. This study employed a quantitative cross-sectional online survey to extend our understanding of the interaction between home-schooling, work and home life, and stress levels in a group of 364 parents. In total, 232 mothers and 132 fathers completed the survey. Results revealed mothers were 10 times more likely to be responsible for home-schooling than fathers, and 44% of mothers felt they had no help with home-schooling and were generally more stressed than fathers. These results show that lack of support, managing home-schooling, and being a mother predicted increased stress. 10% of mothers reported leaving their jobs due to pressure added by home-schooling. This study broadens the understanding of the pandemic’s impact on gender imbalances in family responsibilities. It emphasises the need for extra consideration for the impact on mothers as we emerge from this pandemic.
The novel coronavirus (COVID‐19) was declared a global pandemic in March 2020. Unlike previous highly contagious diseases that brought the threat of global instability this century such as SARS‐CoV, ...Zika virus (ZIKV), Swine flu (H1N1), and the Avian flu (H5N1), COVID‐19 was unable to be contained. Global restrictions were implemented to curb the spread of the virus, which included but were not limited to the closure of all educational institutions and the advice to engage in remote working. This study aims to understand the experience of working mothers who managed work and home duties during the COVID‐19 pandemic in Ireland. Thirty working mothers were interviewed in this study, and qualitative analyses were conducted to gain insight into their work and family life during the restrictions. The findings of the analysis indicate that working mothers have been negatively impacted by COVID‐19 in relation to their psychological well‐being, experiences of negative emotions, and the redefinition of family dynamics, in which working mothers have adopted additional and disproportionate care burden. These findings are consistent with the current research arguing that COVID‐19 has highlighted an increase in the gender gap in domestic labor as well as the undermining of career advancement for working mothers.
Objective: This study sought to provide updated estimates of the occurrence of intimate partner violence (IPV) in the general adult population of Ireland and to better understand gender-specific ...profiles of IPV, their risk factors, and their relationship with suicidality. Method: Data (N = 1,098) from Wave 4 of the Irish arm of the COVID-19 Psychological Research Consortium (C19PRC) study were used. Results: 32.1% of the sample experienced lifetime IPV, with IPV more common among females. Latent class analysis results showed that females had a more complex profile of IPV (four classes) than males (three classes). Risk factors for females included younger age, having children, lower income level, lower social support, and lower social contact, while risk factors for males were living in an urban environment, having children, and lower social support. All IPV exposure was found to be associated with a significantly higher likelihood of experiencing multiple suicide-related phenomena for males and females. Conclusion: IPV is a major public social health issue affecting approximately one-in-three females and one-in-four males in Ireland and is strongly associated with suicide-related phenomena.
Clinical Impact Statement
This research highlights the prevalence and impact of intimate partner violence (IPV) among the Irish adult population and demonstrates that IPV is a major public social health issue. This paper can be used to help inform government policies relating to IPV as well as aid organization that are responsible for helping victims of IPV by providing critical up-to-date information.
Mind wandering is a common experience for students. About 30% of the time, while learning, they will think about something unrelated, such as what they have planned for dinner. These off-task ...thoughts negatively impact their learning outcomes (Wong et al., 2022). Previous research has been conducted in video-based learning to assert whether including interpolated testing at pauses in a video leads to reduced mind wandering and improved learning outcomes (Jing et al., 2016; Szpunar et al., 2013; Welhaf et al., 2022). The results of these studies have been mixed and do not clearly show that interpolated testing at pauses in a video has the desired effect. Therefore, it has been suggested that interpolated testing only has limited practical effect on reducing mind wandering (Welhaf et al., 2022). In this study, we aim to determine if writing self-explanations at pauses in a video has a stronger effect on reducing mind wandering and increasing learning outcomes than interpolated testing. For this study, we recruited 138 participants, distributed across three groups. The participants were asked to watch the same video across all three groups. The difference between the three groups was in the interaction the participants were asked to engage in at pauses in the video. The pause times were identical across groups. The first group, the control group, was only asked about their thoughts. The second group, the interpolated testing group, answered multiple-choice questions. The third group, the self-explanation group, was asked to write an explanation to themselves about what they learned. Knowledge gain was measured using a knowledge test before and after the video. Additionally, all participants were instructed to monitor their thoughts and click on a button whenever they realized they were mind wandering. This way of measuring mind wandering deviates from previous studies investigating mind wandering while learning from video. In previous research, mind wandering was measured using probe-caught thought reports. When using this method, the participants are interrupted periodically and instructed to report whether they were mind wandering. We deviate from this measurement method because we expect, based on generative learning theory (Fiorella & Mayer, 2015), that the expectation of having to write a self-explanation will lead the participants to be more aware of their thoughts. To test this hypothesis, we used self-caught thought reports and asked the participants to self-report their mind wandering once they realized they were mind wandering. The results of our analysis show no significant difference between the groups in their knowledge gain or the number of thought reports written. However, the number of thought reports written correlates with knowledge gain. This result indicates that participants who were more aware of their mind wandering performed better on a knowledge test after the video. While it is inevitable that mind wandering will occur, the deciding factor on whether this mind wandering negatively influences the learning outcomes could be how aware the students are of their thoughts while learning. Consequently, further research should be conducted into how this awareness of mind wandering can be increased.
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