The birth of a child is a critical and potentially stressful experience for women, entailing several changes both at the individual and interpersonal level. This event can lead to different forms of ...distress, ranging in intensity and duration. Many studies highlighted medical, psychological, and social variables as risk factors potentially influencing the onset or aggravation of perinatal maternal conditions. The current pandemic emergency and the restrictive measures adopted by local governments to prevent the spread of the coronavirus infection may negatively affect mothers-to-be and new mothers potentially increasing the likelihood of anxiety, depressive or post-traumatic symptoms to develop. Moreover, the forced quarantine combined with the limited access to professional or family support may increase feelings of fatigue and isolation. The present study aims to investigate women's psychological well-being during pregnancy and in the first months after childbirth, integrating the evaluation of some traditionally studied variables with the specificities of the current situation. 575 Italian women have been administered an online self-report questionnaire assessing the presence of anxiety disorders, depressive and post-traumatic symptoms as well as the expectations toward childbirth (for mothers-to-be) or the subjective experience of childbirth (for postpartum women). Findings revealed a higher percentage of women than that reported in the literature scored above the clinical cut-off both during pregnancy and postpartum on a series of measures of psychological well-being, thus demonstrating that this period was perceived as particularly challenging and stressful and had significant impact on the women's well-being. Moreover, some socio-demographic, medical, and pandemic-related variables, especially the lack of presence and support from one's partner during labor and delivery as well as in the first days postpartum was found to predict women's mental health. These findings suggest the need for developing specific interventions targeted at women who cannot benefit from the support of their partners or family.
Digital transformation in the field of agricultural extension is quite essential for agriculture in the future. The problem is that not all extension workers understand the use of cyber extension. ...The research objective is to explore the relationship between individual motivation (IM), social capital (SC), digital extension adoption (CEA), knowledge sharing (KS), and agricultural extension performance (EP) in Indonesia. The research method used was explanatory, with purposive location selection and a population focused on agricultural extension workers. Sampling was carried out using quota techniques. Data analysis in this study used Structural Equation Modeling with Partial Least Squares (SEM-PLS). More specifically, IM and SC act as construct variables, while CEA and KS not only act as construct variables but also as mediators. Agricultural Extension (EP) performance is measured as a latent variable. The research results reveal that all construct variables, namely IM, SC, CEA, and KS, positively and significantly influence the EP. These findings demonstrate the importance of these factors in supporting digital transformation in agricultural extension in Indonesia and can provide valuable guidance for decision-makers and practitioners in efforts to increase the effectiveness of agricultural extension using digital technology.
In the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, Italy, Spain, New York, and Hong Kong stood out for the ir high rates of infections. Given this scenario, a web-based international multisite and ...cross-sectional study was conducted between April and May 2020 to investigate the psychological impact of the pandemic and the restrictions imposed by the governments in these countries. We expected similar patterns in European countries, and no significant differences in terms of psychological impairment between Hong Kong (with a previous experience related to SARS, but subjected to restrictions for a longer time) and the other areas. Participants were 1955 adults from the above-mentioned areas. We assessed anxiety (GAD-7), depression (PHQ-9), COVID-19-related threats, and perceived burden of restrictive measures. Two-explorative factor analyses (EFAs) with Promax rotation identified COVID-19-related factors: personal physical threat, personal economic threat, global economic threat, and restriction-related burden. ANOVAs studied locations’ differences and two-separate hierarchical multiple regression analyses by location determined whether and how COVID-19-related variables were associated with anxiety and depression, adjusting for age and sex. Italy and Hong Kong showed higher anxiety than Spain (
p
< 0.05); Hong Kong scored higher on depression than Italy and Spain (
p
< 0.001), which highlighted the lowest mean-score. New York participants showed the poorest mental health conditions. Anxiety was predicted by restriction-related burden (β
NY
= 0.242; β
HK
= 0.116) and personal economic threat (β
NY
= 0.246; β
HK
= 0.145) in New York (Adj.
R
2
= 0.125) and Hong Kong (Adj.
R
2
= 0.079); by global economic threat (β = 0.199) and restriction-related burden (β = 0.124) in Italy (Adj.
R
2
= 0.108); and by personal physical threat (β = 0.144) in Spain (Adj.
R
2
= 0.049). Depression was predicted by restriction-related burden (β
NY
= 0.313; β
HK
= 0.120) and personal economic threat (β
NY
= 0.229; β
HK
= 0.204) in New York (Adj.
R
2
= 0.161) and Hong Kong (Adj.
R
2
= 0.089); by global economic threat (β = 0.209) in Italy (Adj.
R
2
= 0.149); and no predictors emerged in Spain. Findings could contribute to understanding the specific impact of the pandemic on people’s psychological health in each area, along with the factors that impacted mental health. This information may be useful to implementing prevention interventions in case of restrictions.
While the beneficial effect of vaccination, restrictive measures, and social distancing in reducing mortality due to SARS-CoV-2 is intuitive and taken for granted, seasonality (predictable ...fluctuation or pattern that recurs or repeats over a one-year period) is still poorly understood and insufficiently taken into consideration. We aimed to examine SARS-CoV-2 seasonality in countries with temperate climate.
We identified countries with temperate climate and extracted average country temperature data from the National Center for Environmental information and from the Climate Change Knowledge Portal. We obtained mortality and vaccination rates from an open access database. We used the stringency index derived from the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker to quantify restriction policies. We used Spearman's and rank-correlation non-parametric test coefficients to investigate the association between COVID-19 mortality and temperature values. We employed multivariate regression models to analyze how containment measures, vaccinations, and monthly temperatures affected COVID-19 mortality rates.
The time series for daily deaths per million inhabitants and average monthly temperatures of European countries and US states with a temperate climate had a negative correlation (p < 0.0001 for all countries, 0.40 < R < 0.86). When running multivariate regression models with country fixed effects, we noted that mortality rates were significantly lower when temperature were higher. Interestingly, when adding an interaction term between monthly temperatures and vaccination rates, we found that as monthly temperatures dropped, the effect of the vaccination campaign on mortality was larger than at higher temperatures.
Deaths attributed to SARS-CoV-2 decreased during the summer period in temperate countries. We found that the effect of vaccination rates on mortality was stronger when temperatures were lower. Stakeholders should consider seasonality in managing SARS-CoV-2 and future pandemics to minimize mortality, limit the pressure on hospitals and intensive care units while maintaining economic and social activities.
•Vaccines and restrictive measures are known to reduce SARS-CoV-2 mortality.•The effect of temperature changes on COVID-19 mortality is insufficiently studied.•We analyzed the effect of lockdown, vaccines and temperatures on COVID-19 mortality.•We found a concordant drop in 2020 and 2021 summer mortality in temperate countries.•The effect of vaccination on survival was stronger when temperatures were lower.
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