Objective:To identify the most frequent gender-specific suicide methods in Europe.Design:Proportions of seven predominant suicide methods utilised in 16 countries participating in the European ...Alliance Against Depression (EAAD) were reported in total and cross-nationally. Relative risk (RR) relating to suicide methods and gender was calculated. To group countries by pattern of suicide methods, hierarchical clustering was applied.Setting and participants:Data on suicide methods for 119 122 male and 41 338 female cases in 2000–4/5 from 16 EAAD countries, covering 52% of European population were obtained.Results:Hanging was the most prevalent suicide method among both males (54.3%) and females (35.6%). For males, hanging was followed by firearms (9.7%) and poisoning by drugs (8.6%); for females, by poisoning by drugs (24.7%) and jumping from a high place (14.5%). Only in Switzerland did hanging rank as second for males after firearms. Hanging ranked first among females in eight countries, poisoning by drugs in five and jumping from a high place in three. In all countries, males had a higher risk than females of using firearms and hanging and a lower risk of poisoning by drugs, drowning and jumping. Grouping showed that countries might be divided into five main groups among males; for females, grouping did not yield clear results.Conclusions:Research on suicide methods could lead to the development of gender-specific intervention strategies. Nevertheless, other approaches, such as better identification and treatment of mental disorders and the improvement of toxicological aid should be put in place.
Dengue virus (DENV) is a disease‐causing agent normally transmitted from person to person through the bite of an infected mosquito. In addition to mosquito‐borne cases of dengue, there are instances ...of transmission of dengue after receipt of blood products or donor organs or tissue. To improve blood safety, we developed a quantitative risk assessment model to estimate the dengue risk of transmission to blood transfusion recipients from preclinical and subclinical blood donors. We derived predictive coefficients from model simulations for predicting the risk outcomes such as monthly infectious blood units and transfusion‐transmitted DENV cases based on the rate of reported clinical cases. The model was validated with a previous study where donor blood samples from the 2012 dengue transmission season in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil were tested for DENV RNA by a transcription‐mediated amplification (TMA) assay. In that study, about 69·4% of donations were tested by the TMA assay and 78 samples were found positive, indicating that 112 DENV RNA‐positive donations would have been detected if testing screening had been performed on all donations. Our model estimated a mean of 93 (2.5–97.5th%ile: 47–186) infected units among the donations, which was consistent with the reported numbers.
Significance and Impact of the Study: This paper presented a risk assessment for transfusion‐transmitted dengue virus (TT‐DENV) and validation for estimating infectious blood units in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This approach showcases a rapid assessment that is desirable to evaluate risk of TT‐DENV and optimal risk mitigations in a timely manner during a pandemic. With modification of disease‐specific model inputs the model could also be used to inform regulatory decision‐making for other transfusion‐transmitted infectious diseases.
Introduction
For young people, just as in the general population, COVID-19 caused many changes in their lives. The literature review has shown an increased risk for mental illness symptoms as a ...consequence of the pandemic.
Objectives
With this study, we aimed to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 pandemic in university students’ anxiety and depression symptoms.
Methods
This study is part of a larger longitudinal research on university students’ mental health with the Portuguese version of The Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) and the Portuguese version of the Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD-7) data with evaluations on January, May and October 2019 and June 2020, as well as socio-demographic information.
Results
341 university students (257 females and 84 males) were included in this study, with a mean age of 19.91 (SD=1.58). In June 2020, the mean for perceived well-being loss was 60.47% (SD=26.56) and 59.54% (SD=28.95) for mental health loss. In the PHQ-9, the proportion of students with scores equal or above 15 ranged between 22.6% and 25.5% in 2019, however, in June 2020, the proportion was significantly higher (37.0%). The proportion of GAD-7 scores above the cut-off 10 ranged between 46.0% and 47.8% in 2019, and, in 2020, 64.5% of the students scored 10 or above. Compared with preceding trends, PHQ-9 scores were 3.11 (CI=2.40-3.83) higher than expected, and GAD-7 scores were 3.56 (CI=2.75-5.37) higher.
Conclusions
COVID-19 had a negative impact on depressive and anxiety symptoms in university students, in line with the literature and confirming the vulnerability of young people in such uncertain times.
The generalized inverse Weibull distribution de Gusmão, Felipe R. S.; Ortega, Edwin M. M.; Cordeiro, Gauss M.
Statistical papers (Berlin, Germany),
08/2011, Volume:
52, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
The inverse Weibull distribution has the ability to model failure rates which are quite common in reliability and biological studies. A three-parameter generalized inverse Weibull distribution with ...decreasing and unimodal failure rate is introduced and studied. We provide a comprehensive treatment of the mathematical properties of the new distribution including expressions for the moment generating function and the
r
th generalized moment. The mixture model of two generalized inverse Weibull distributions is investigated. The identifiability property of the mixture model is demonstrated. For the first time, we propose a location-scale regression model based on the log-generalized inverse Weibull distribution for modeling lifetime data. In addition, we develop some diagnostic tools for sensitivity analysis. Two applications of real data are given to illustrate the potentiality of the proposed regression model.
Abstract
Introduction
Adolescent mental health is an increasing concern due to the high prevalence of mental disorders and low levels of mental health literacy (MHL). Enhancing MHL and promoting ...access to services during this critical developmental phase is essential. Teachers and other educational professionals are vital in addressing mental health issues, encouraging positive mental health, reducing the stigma associated with mental illness, and promoting help-seeking behaviors.
Methods
This study evaluates the WhySchool project, a mental health training program for teachers, school health professionals, and students in Portugal, consisting of two interventions. The first intervention was a prospective pre-post study for teachers and school health professionals who underwent training during 2015-2016 and 2018-2020, with three evaluation phases. The second intervention was a quasi-experimental study in 2019-2020 for students who received the intervention program in a classroom setting administered by previously trained teachers.
Results
The first intervention significantly improved teachers’ and school health professionals’ mental health literacy, help-seeking attitudes, stigma reduction, and confidence in referring students in case of need. These effects remained stable at the M2 follow-up. In the second intervention, MHL scores increased significantly in the intervention group, while the control group showed no significant change. Stigma reduction and help-seeking attitudes also improved significantly in the intervention group, with no significant change in the control group.
Conclusions
The WhySchool program significantly and positively impacted teachers’ and students’ mental health literacy, help-seeking attitudes, and stigma reduction. The results underscore the importance of incorporating mental health programs into school curricula and providing teachers and school staff with the necessary tools and knowledge to deliver these programs effectively.
This study examines the inclusion of preventive factors and new media developments in media recommendations on suicide reporting. Of the 193 member states of the United Nations screened for media ...recommendations, information was available for 74 countries. Similarities and differences in their contents were analyzed by cluster analysis. Results indicate that of these 74 countries, 38% have national suicide prevention programs, 38% have media recommendations, and 25% have press codes including suicide reporting. Less than 25% of the media recommendations advise against mentioning online forums, suicide notes, pacts, clusters, hotspots, details of the person, and positive consequences. No more than 15% refer to self-help groups, fictional and online reporting. We conclude that media recommendations need to be revised by adding these preventive factors and by including sections on new media reporting.
Screening for resistance to insect pests is one of the early stages of grass breeding programs. Pasture spittlebugs are sap-sucking insects that potentially cause severe damage to turfgrasses, ...including the loss of functional quality and perenniallity. The Brazilian flora has a large number of grass species with wide morphological variability and adaptability to different soil and climate conditions that can potentially be used as lawns. However, no study has screened turfgrass genotypes for resistance to spittlebug attack. In this study, we evaluated the intra- and interspecific variability of 35 turfgrass genotypes in the genera Paspalum, Axonopus, and Zoysia for resistance to the pasture spittlebugs, Deois flavopicta (Stal) and Notozulia entreriana (Berg) (Hemiptera: Cercopidae), as measured by damage scores, densities of nymphs and adults, and level of antibiosis resistance. Genotypes were grouped into three groups using cluster analysis and principal component analysis: GroupI had genotypes associated with low damage scores and high density of adult spittlebugs; GroupII had genotypes with intermediate damage scores and low density of nymphs and adults; and GroupIII was formed by genotypes with high damage scores and high nymph density. Intra- and interspecific genotypic variability was related to antibiosis resistance and morphological variation among genotypes with some indicating nonpreference resistance and others indicating tolerance resistance. Our results indicate that besides antibiosis resistance studies, it is essential to evaluate the morphological variability of grass genotypes when screening for resistance to insects. Further studies are needed to elucidate the intraspecific variability of Paspalum notatum Flüggé genotypes for resistance to spittlebug attack.
In this paper, we propose a novel class of probability distributions called Normal-G. It has the advantage of demanding no additional parameters besides those of the parent distribution, thereby ...providing parsimonious models. Furthermore, the class enjoys the property of identifiability whenever the baseline is identifiable. We present special Normal-G sub-models, which can fit asymmetrical data with either positive or negative skew. Other important mathematical properties are described, such as the series expansion of the probability density function (pdf), which is used to derive expressions for the moments and the moment generating function (mgf). We bring Monte Carlo simulation studies to investigate the behavior of the maximum likelihood estimates (MLEs) of two distributions generated by the class and we also present applications to real datasets to illustrate its usefulness.
•We compared the infestation by the horn fly (Haematobia irritans), in beef cattle raised in a silvopastoral and a conventional pasture system.•Parasite counts and dung fauna were studied, along with ...microclimate in the two systems.•Infestation by horn fly was lower in the silvopastoral pasture system.•The decrease in horn flies can most probably be ascribed to higher incidence of natural enemies.
The use of silvopastoral systems (SPS) can be a good alternative to reduce the environmental impacts of livestock breeding in Brazil. One of the reasons for its scarce adoption is the lack of information on health and productivity of cattle raised under these conditions. The experiment reported here was designed to compare the infestation by external parasites – the cattle tick (Rhipicephalus microplus), horn fly (Haematobia irritans), and larvae of the botfly (Dermatobia hominis) – in beef cattle raised in a SPS and a conventional pasture system (CPS), evaluated for 24 months. Data on air and soil temperature, solar radiation, wind incidence and water balance were used to characterize the SPS and CPS. R. microplus adult females and D. hominis larvae were counted on the body of each animal to determine the parasites burdens, but we did not find significant differences between the two systems. Horn flies counts on animals’ body, and analysis of the horn fly and its pupal parasitoids associated with the dung pats were obtained in the two systems. Horn fly infestation was significantly lower (p=0.01) in the SPS (13.17±3.46) in comparison with the CPS (24.02±4.43). In SPS and CPS, respectively, the mean densities of pupae of H. irritansin dung pats were 9.8 and 10.7; the mean density of adults of H. irritans, 3.7 and 3.5; and the density of its pupal parasitoids were 20.5 and 5.4. The effect of production system was significant (p<0.05) only for the occurrence of pupal parasitoids of the horn fly, where the greatest occurrences of these natural enemies were in the SPS. These data indicate that natural enemies were able to control, at least partially, the horn fly populations in the cattle.
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