Aims
The aim of this study was to assess the psychological health associated with prenatal screening in low‐risk pregnancy for chromosomal aneuploidy.
Methods
This longitudinal study was performed on ...310 low‐risk pregnancies for chromosomal aneuploidies. Using the standard DASS‐21 questionnaire, levels of stress, anxiety, and depression were assessed—prior to the recommended time for the first‐trimester screening test (T1), after the first‐trimester tests on the second referral (T2) concurrently with the request for the second‐trimester tests (T3)—and compared between women undergoing the prenatal screening and in women refusing it.
Results
The results showed that the mean of stress, anxiety, and depression levels were not different between groups at T1; but the level of the stress, depression, and anxiety were higher in the screening group than the non‐screening group. The effect of group on changes in the stress, depression, and anxiety levels was significant.
Conclusion
The results revealed that the prenatal screening program in low‐risk pregnancies for chromosomal aneuploidy can be followed by rising psychological symptoms and this psychological burden should be conceded on prenatal screening tests for pregnant women.
The significance of planned pregnancy is an accepted principle for improving the health of pregnant women; and quality of life, as one of the important indicators of women's health, is reduced in ...high-risk pregnancies. The aim of this research was to investigate the changes in the health related quality of life (HRQL) in low risk pregnancies in different groups based on pregnancy context.
The present study was a prospective study conducted on 250 pregnant women divided into three groups of women with planned pregnancy, unplanned/wanted pregnancy and unwanted pregnancy. Then, using WHOQOL-26 questionnaire, the quality of life of these women was measured in physical, psychological, social and environmental dimensions at the beginning of pregnancy as well as at the end of the first, second and third trimesters.
Based on the results, the mean score of environmental-HRQL in women with unwanted pregnancy was significantly lower than the other two groups. All dimensions on HRQL were influenced by time and group. However, changes in the physical, psychological and social dimensions of HRQL varied within the groups. Physical- HRQL changes were different within the groups. The intergroup effect on environmental dimension of quality of life changes was significant.
It was observed in this study that HRQL in the women with unwanted pregnancy was lower than the women with planned pregnancy and those with unplanned /wanted pregnancy. Moreover, increase in gestational age would lower quality of life, but this decline had a similar pattern in different groups.
Connectives can facilitate the processing of discourse relations by helping comprehenders to infer the intended coherence relation holding between two text spans. Previous experimental studies have ...focused on pairs of connectives that are very different from one another to be able to compare and formalize the distinguishing effects of these particles in discourse comprehension. In this article, we compare two connectives, but and although, which overlap in terms of the relations they can signal. We demonstrate in a set of carefully controlled studies that while a connective can be a marker of several discourse relations, it can have a specific fine-grained biasing effect on linguistic inferences and that this bias can be derived (or predicted) from the connectives' distribution of relations found in production data. The effects that we find speak to the ambiguity of discourse connectives, in general, and the different functions of but and although, in particular. These effects cannot be explained within the earlier accounts of discourse connectives, which propose that each connective has a core meaning or processing instruction. Instead, we here lay out a probabilistic account of connective meaning and interpretation, which is based on the distribution of connectives in production and is supported by our experimental findings.
Iran is aging rapidly and is expected to see negative population growth rates later this century. This change is generating significant concern for policymakers, whose response is to seek ...‘demographic solutions’ to these issues: raise the fertility rate, decrease the divorce rate, and promote marriage among young people. Part of these policies has entailed curtailing access to free family planning services. This ‘call and response’ approach is unlikely to succeed in its stated aim, as it over-simplifies the real challenges of population aging as well as the multiple dimensions of population change. Such policies derive from simple representations of demographic change, most notably using the old-age dependency ratio. Using a microsimulation model, this paper suggests that increasing Iran’s currently low female labor force participation and translating educational gains into rising productivity is a more effective means of responding to the challenges of population aging, even under low fertility conditions. The advancement on previous such microsimulation exercises lies in the fact that this study explicitly considers the comparison between raising fertility and increasing female economic empowerment to offset population aging in a setting characterized by an overt pronatalist policy system. In tandem with reforming stressed institutional systems (such as the pension system), releasing the full potential of Iran’s existing (and future) human capital—especially of its women—is a far more effective policy direction than fertility-promoting policies.
The role of mental health is crucial in maintaining the dynamism and productivity of any given society. In contemporary times, a significant proportion of the workforce is comprised of women and ...mothers. Working in healthcare facilities, where exposure to pathogenic agents is an everyday nuisance, can have detrimental effects on mothers' stress and anxiety levels. Furthermore, such exposure can also endanger the health of both the family and society. Conversely, the employment of mothers could positively impact their social well-being. The primary objective of this study is to assess and compare the stress, anxiety, and social well-being scores of mothers employed in healthcare facilities and stay-at-home mothers during the COVID pandemic.
This study is a cross-sectional analysis of 246 mothers, equally divided into two groups: Mothers who work in health centers and stay-at-home mothers (123 individuals in each group). The study was conducted from 2021 to 2022, a multistage sampling method was utilized and two questionnaires were administered: The DASS 21 (21 questions) and the social well-being questionnaire (48 questions). The data were analyzed using SPSS 18, and descriptive and analytical tests (Independent Samples T-Test, Mann-Whitney) were employed.
The mean age was 35.7 ± 7.1 for working mothers and 34.3 ± 6.3 for stay-at-home mothers. The average stress score for employed mothers was 5.72 ± 4.7, and for stay-at-home mothers, it was 7.16 ± 4.3, which indicates a statistically significant difference in stress levels between the two groups (
= 0.04). However, the two groups had no significant difference in the mean anxiety score (
= 0.08). The mean score for social well-being was 165.5 ± 18.4 for working mothers and 162.17 ± 21.2 for stay-at-home mothers. This difference was not statistically significant (
= 0.18). Except for the social acceptance dimension (
= 0.003), no statistically significant differences were observed in the social well-being dimension between the two groups.
The social acceptance of working mothers appears to be greater than that of stay-at-home mothers. Higher social acceptance suggests that they hold a more positive outlook on people and are at ease in social situations, which may have helped to alleviate their stress and anxiety.
One of the most important goals of sexual intercourse is to arouse the psychological effects of intercourse and to increase sexual self-concept, which changes following sexual behaviors such as the ...use of contraception methods. This study was performed to investigate the relationship between sexual self-concept and contraception sexual behavior in 15-49-year-old women covered by community health centers.
The present descriptive correlational study was performed on 297 married women referring to Isfahan community health centers in 2020 who were selected as cluster that randomly classified. The tools included demographic information and the Snell's Multidimensional Sexual Self-Concept Questionnaire, the data of which were analyzed via SPSS version 22 software by Mann-Whitney
test and Pearson correlation.
Among a total of 297 women, 5.4% of the samples used hormonal methods and 94.6% used non-hormonal methods, which was the most common intermittent method. The results also showed that the mean score of negative sexual self-concept in women using the hormonal level method was significantly higher (
= 0.012). Positive and positive sexual self-concept score was significantly higher in women using non-hormonal methods (
= 0.048 and
= 0.002). Therefore, there was a significant relationship between sexual self-concept and contraception method.
Due to the relationship between contraception and sexual self-concept, it is recommended to pay attention to the aspects of sexual self-concept and contraception during reproductive health counselling sessions so that if there is a disorder, useful advice can be provided or referred, if necessary.
At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic there was an urgent need to identify individuals at highest risk of severe outcomes, such as hospitalisation and death following infection. The QCOVID risk ...prediction algorithms emerged as key tools in facilitating this which were further developed during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic to identify groups of people at highest risk of severe COVID-19 related outcomes following one or two doses of vaccine.
To externally validate the QCOVID3 algorithm based on primary and secondary care records for Wales, UK.
We conducted an observational, prospective cohort based on electronic health care records for 1.66m vaccinated adults living in Wales on 8th December 2020, with follow-up until 15th June 2021. Follow-up started from day 14 post vaccination to allow the full effect of the vaccine.
The scores produced by the QCOVID3 risk algorithm showed high levels of discrimination for both COVID-19 related deaths and hospital admissions and good calibration (Harrell C statistic: ≥ 0.828).
This validation of the updated QCOVID3 risk algorithms in the adult vaccinated Welsh population has shown that the algorithms are valid for use in the Welsh population, and applicable on a population independent of the original study, which has not been previously reported. This study provides further evidence that the QCOVID algorithms can help inform public health risk management on the ongoing surveillance and intervention to manage COVID-19 related risks.
Pregnancy and the transition to parenthood are periods in parents' lives that require tremendous adjustment. The physical and mental health of mothers during these periods is significantly associated ...with maternal acceptance. The present study aimed to evaluate the correlation between intimate partner violence (IPV) during pregnancy and parental acceptance by primiparous mothers in Isfahan, Iran.
A cross-sectional descriptive and correlational study was conducted from September 2021 to February 2022 in Isfahan, Iran. The target population was primiparous mothers in the postpartum period referred to nine different health centers across Isfahan. The participants (n=308) completed three questionnaires, namely demographic, Tabrizi intimate partner violence screening, and parental acceptance questionnaire. Data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics with SPSS software (version 22.0). P<0.05 was considered statistically significant.
The mean score of total IPV was 40.45±28.94. Domestic violence during pregnancy was reported by 59 (19.2%) mothers. The most common types were psychological violence (74.4%), followed by financial abuse (35.1%), sexual violence (17.2%), and physical violence (14.9%). The mean score of parental acceptance was 115.77±12.58. There was a significant inverse correlation between parental acceptance and IPV score (r=-0.15, P=0.005). The number of siblings and birth order had a significant inverse correlation with parental acceptance (r=-0.13, P=0.002; r=-0.13, P=0.002, respectively). Moreover, the age difference between the mothers and their next siblings had a significant direct correlation with parental acceptance (r=0.12, P=0.003).
Primiparous mothers subjected to IPV during pregnancy had lower parental acceptance after delivery.
Although the practice of child or early marriage—defined as marriage by age 18—has been declining around the world, one in every five young women still marry as children. The majority of child brides ...live in Asia and that includes over 400 million women. Yet, no study to date has investigated cross-national differences in early marriage and its correlates in Asia. Using data from multiple sources, this paper describes the geographical distribution of early marriage in Asia, assesses the extent to which the exiting variation is related to demographic, economic, and gender-related factors, and examines the association between early marriage and health outcomes. The findings suggest that (1) the prevalence of early marriage varies widely among Asian countries; (2) the best single predictor of early marriage is the proportion of girls progressing to secondary school; and (3) early marriage is associated with poor health outcomes among women and children.
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