Search

The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has spread rapidly across the world in a short period of time and with a heterogeneous pattern. Understanding the underlying temporal and spatial dynamics in the spread of COVID-19 can result in informed and timely public health policies. In this paper, we use a spatio-temporal stochastic model to explain the temporal and spatial variations in the daily number of new confirmed cases in Spain, Italy and Germany from late February 2020 to mid January 2021. Using a hierarchical Bayesian framework, we found that the temporal trends of the epidemic in the three countries rapidly reached their peaks and slowly started to decline at the beginning of April and then increased and reached their second maximum in the middle of November. However decline and increase of the temporal trend seems to show different patterns in Spain, Italy and Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Adolescent depression has been recognized as a complex problem that presents a global public health challenge. Left undetected and untreated, depression can significantly reduce quality of life. Objective: The main purpose of this paper is to re-visit risk and protective factors for depression in adolescents with a specific focus on exploring the individual, familial, and social contexts of depression (especially high and very high depression levels) in a multi-country sample of youth in order to see if these factors are mitigated by cultural location. Methods: Questionnaire data from a cross-sectional study of a randomly selected sample of 5149 middle-school students from four EU-countries (Austria, Germany, Slovenia, and Spain) was used. Applying variance analysis, we examined the prediction strength for the observed risk and protective factors. Results: In all participating countries we show that in for both male and female adolescents, depression is linked to a broad range of interactive individual, and social protective and risk factors, such that even if the contribution of a single factor is low but still significant and this factor's prediction strength is low or moderate, taken together, the cumulative prediction strength of these factors yields a remarkably similar coefficient of determination of 42-49% in all samples. Conclusions: We have established a significant and relevant combination of the individual and social multifactorial risk and protective factors that characterize depression in adolescents of both genders, no matter their country of location and with that, we call for a multifaceted and comprehensive approach to mental health assessment, prevention and intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focusses on coping strategies employed by children and adolescents with diagnosed short stature, assesses the impact of socio-demographic and clinical characteristics on coping, examines the relationship between coping and health related quality of life (QoL) and investigates the role of coping strategies in mediating the relationship between height and QoL. Coping with a disease (CODI) and quality of life in short stature youth (QoLISSY-QoL) questionnaires were completed by 137 short-statured children and adolescents between 8 and 18 years, participating in the crosssectional European QoLISSY study. Clinical and socio-demographic data were collected to examine differences in coping via variance and regression analyses, associations between CODI and QoLISSY were inspected using correlation and mediation analyses. Most frequently employed coping strategies in the CODI were 'Acceptance' and 'Wishful Thinking', with 'Emotional Reaction' used least. Significant effects of age, diagnosis and treatment status on coping strategies were detected. CODI scales 'Acceptance' and 'Distance' were associated with higher QoLISSY-QoL scores, 'Emotional Reaction' and 'Wishful Thinking' with lower scores. Coping strategies predicted 60 % of the QoLISSY-QoL variance. Relationships between height deviation and QoLISSY-QoL were mediated by the coping strategies of 'Wishful Thinking' and 'Distance'. Findings suggest that coping efforts vary with socio-demographic and clinical characteristics, that protective coping strategies in terms of QoL can be identified and that coping mediates the relationship between short stature and QoL. Future longitudinal research should focus on the adaptive function of coping in relation to QoL over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]