Mobilizing the community to address the prenatal health needs of Immigrant Punjabi women

In Canada, although prenatal education is available to all women, there are groups who do not access these services. One such group is Immigrant Punjabi women residing in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia. It was apparent that structured prenatal education, even when translation was available, would not meet the needs of this group. Efforts were required to help bring this issue into the community so that the community would endorse women's participation in prenatal preparation. The purpose of the project described in this article was to explore how community mobilization strategies could be used to improve the health of pregnant women in the Punjabi community. A collaborative approach was used with representatives from a variety of service agencies and the community. The mobilization strategy involved creating a platform to communicate with the community about prenatal health and health care, creating "buy-in" from the physicians serving the women of the community, and providing prenatal sessions that built on the existing knowledge of the women. We describe the mobilization process and discuss the insights gained.     

脑卒中高发区社区人群老年期痴呆的流行病学研究

目的研究脑卒中高发区人群中老年期痴呆的流行情况。方法于2000年7月1日～2001年6月31日在长沙市城区居民中进行老年期痴呆的调查研究。结果长沙市城区居民老年期痴呆的患病率为2.88%,其中Alzheimer病(AD)、血管性痴呆(vasculardementia,VD)和混合性痴呆分别为1.51%、0.89%和0.48%。痴呆患者中患高血压病和有脑卒中史的比例明显高于所有调查人群的平均水平(P<0.01)。结论老年期痴呆是影响老人身心健康的重要因素,预防脑卒中对降低其患病率应产生积极影响。     

A cluster analysis of early onset in common anxiety disorders

Early onset is regarded as an important characteristic of anxiety disorders, associated with higher severity. However, previous findings diverge, as definitions of early onset vary and are often unsubstantiated. We objectively defined early onset in social phobia, panic disorder, agoraphobia, and generalised anxiety disorder, using cluster analysis with data gathered in the general population. Resulting cut-off ages for early onset were ≤22 (social phobia), ≤31 (panic disorder), ≤21 (agoraphobia), and ≤27 (generalised anxiety disorder). Comparison of psychiatric comorbidity and general wellbeing between subjects with early and late onset in the general population and an outpatient cohort, demonstrated that among outpatients anxiety comorbidity was more common in early onset agoraphobia, but also that anxiety- as well as mood comorbidity were more common in late onset social phobia. A major limitation was the retrospective assessment of onset. Our results encourage future studies into correlates of early onset of psychiatric disorders.     

Case sampling for psychotherapy practice,theory, and policy guidance: Qualities and quantities

Random sampling of cases is usually infeasible for psychotherapy research, so opportunistic and purposive sampling must be used instead. Such sampling does not justify generalizations from sample to population-distribution statistics, but does justify reporting what independent-variable value configurations are associated with what dependent-variable value configurations. This allows only the generalization that these associations occur at least that frequently in the population sampled from, which is enough for suggesting and testing some psychotherapy theories and informing some psychotherapy practice. Although psychotherapy practice is a longitudinal process, formal psychotherapy outcome research is so far most feasible and most widely done in the form of two-phase cross-sectional input-outcome studies. Thus, the analysis of sampling for psychotherapy research here will be in terms of the independent- and dependent-variable value configurations produced in such two-phase studies.