Associations of number of victimizations with mental health indicators and health-risk behaviours among a nationally representative sample of in-school adolescents in Curaçao

Cyberbullying victimization and suicidal ideation among in-school adolescents in three countries: implications for prevention and intervention

BACKGROUND

Countries in South and Central America and the Caribbean are among the countries with the highest adolescent cyberbullying crimes. However, empirical evidence about the effect of cyberbullying victimization on suicidal ideation among in-school adolescents in these countries remains limited. The present study examined the association between cyberbullying victimization and suicidal ideation among in-school adolescents in Argentina, Panama, St Vincent, and the Grenadines.

METHODS

A representative cross-sectional data from 51,405 in-school adolescents was used. Hierarchical logistic regression analysis was used to estimate the association between cyberbulling victimization and suicidal ideation.

RESULTS

Overall, 20% and 21.1% of the adolescents reported cyberbullying victimization and suicidal ideation, respectively in the past year before the survey. Suicidal ideation was higher among adolescents who experienced cyberbullying victimization (38.4%) than those who did not experience cyberbullying victimization (16.6%). Significantly higher odds of suicidal ideation were found among adolescents who had experienced cyberbullying victimization than those who had not experienced cyberbullying victimization [aOR = 1.88, 95% CI: 1.77-1.98].

CONCLUSION

This finding calls for developing and implementing evidence-based programs and practices by school authorities and other relevant stakeholders to reduce cyberbullying victimization among adolescents in this digital age. Protective factors such as parental support and peer support should be encouraged.

Non-Disclosure and Suicidal Ideation in Adolescent Victims of Bullying: An Analysis from the Family and School Context

In recent years, suicide rates among bullying victims have raised much concern among educators and health professionals. Suicide is the fourth leading cause of preventable death among adolescents, data that warn about the need to monitor the signs before victims' suicidal behavior to prevent this fatal outcome. In the present study, the role of victims' silence about their victimization situation was analysed, as well as the particular impact of family and school environments. More specifically, we examined the mediating role of the victim's non-disclosure between the parental styles (observing the father's and mother's roles separately) and the school climate, concerning suicidal ideation in victims. The sample consisted of 2,977 adolescents (48.5% boys), aged 11-17 years (M = 14.1, SD = 1.42), of whom 635 (21.3%) reported having been victims of bullying in the past year. The results showed that parental styles of rejection and indifference were positively related to victims' non-disclosure of bullying and suicidal ideation. Conversely, a positive school climate showed a negative relationship with victims' disclosure of the bullying situation and suicidal ideation. The findings also indicated that non-disclosure mediates the relationship between the mother's parental style and suicidal ideation. These findings expand knowledge about the role of bullying victims' social context and the variable disclosure with regards to suicidal ideation in adolescents victimized by peers at school.

Artificial intelligence based health indicator extraction and disease symptoms identification using medical hypothesis models

Patient health record analysis models assist the medical field to understand the current stands and medical needs. Similarly, collecting and analyzing the disease features are the best practice for encouraging medical researchers to understand the research problems. Various research works evolve the way of medical data analysis schemes to know the actual challenges against the diseases. The computer-based diagnosis models and medical data analysis models are widely applied to have a better understanding of different diseases. Particularly, the field of medical electronics needs appropriate health indicator extraction models in near future. The existing medical schemes support baseline solutions but lack optimal hypothesis-based solutions. This work describes the optimal hypothesis model and Akin procedures for health record users, to aid health sectors in clinical decision-making on health indications. This work proposes Medical Hypothesis and Health Indicators Extraction from Electronic Medical Records (EMR) and International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) patient examination database using the Akin Method and Friendship method. In this Health Indicators and Disease Symptoms Extraction (HIDSE), the evidence checking procedures find and collect all possible medical evidence from the existing patient examination report. Akin Method is making the hypothesis decision from count-based evidence principles. The health indicators extraction scheme extracts all relevant information based on the health indicators query and partial input. Similarly, the friendship method is used for making information associations between medical data attributes. This Akin-Friendship model helps to build hypothesis structures and trait-based feature extraction principles. This is called as Composite Akin Friendship Model (CAFM). This proposed model consists of various test cases for developing the medical hypothesis systems. On the other hand, it provides limited accuracy in disease classification. In this regard, the proposed HIDSE implements Deep Learning (DL) based Akin Friendship Method (DLAFM) for improving the accuracy of this medical hypothesis model. The proposed DLAFM, Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) associated Legacy Prediction Model for Health Indicator (LPHI) is developed to tune the CAFM principles. The results show the proposed health indicator extraction scheme has 8-10% of better system performance than other existing techniques.

Adolescent suicide attempts in three diverse island nations: patterns, contextual differences and demographic associations

Objective

Most epidemiological studies on suicidal behavior have been focused on high-income country settings. This study examine factors associated with suicidal behaviors among school-attending adolescents in three island nations. In this secondary analysis of the publicly available 2015 nationally representative GSHS data, we tested demographic, social, and behavioral attributes using multivariable logistic regression to association with suicide attempts.

Results

Within the recall period, 13.6% of participants reported having attempted suicide one or more times in the Cook Islands, 10.8% in Curaçao, and 9.8% in East Timor. In the Cook Islands, suicide ideation (AOR = 19.42, 95% CI = 9.11–41.41), anxiety (AOR = 2.51, 95% CI = 1.08–5.82), physical bullying (AOR = 3.3, 95% CI = 1.10–9.91), and cigarette smoking (AOR = 3.82, 95% CI = 1.38–10.54) were associated with suicide attempts. For Curaçaoo, suicide ideation (AOR = 7.88, 95% CI = 5.20–11.95) and suicide planning (AOR = 7.01, 95% CI = 4.24–11.60) were statistically significant. While for East Timor, suicide ideation (AOR = 4.59, 95% CI = 2.14–9.88), suicide planning (AOR = 3.36, 95% CI = 1.76–6.29), bullying victimization (AOR = 2.69, 95% CI = 1.02–7.12), and serious injuries (AOR = 2.22, 95% CI = 1.31–3.74) were statistically significant. Suicide attempt is relatively common in each of the three island nations. The socioeconomic context of adolescents might play a significant role in moderating suicidal behavior. Therefore, prevention efforts should be grounded in view of geographic, demographic, and socioeconomic contexts of the populations at risk.

Supplementary Information

The online version of this article 10.1186/s13104-021-05804-4 contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.