Challenges and Implications for Menopausal Health and Help-Seeking Behaviors in Midlife Women From the United States and China in Light of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Web-Based Panel Surveys.

BACKGROUND: The global population of women of menopausal age is quickly increasing. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an accelerated increase in the use of telehealth services, especially technological solutions targeting women's health. Understanding the factors behind midlife women's help-seeking behaviors amidst the pandemic will assist in the development of person-centered holistic telehealth solutions targeting menopausal and postreproductive health. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to compare the factors underlying help-seeking for menopausal distress among midlife women in the United States and China. METHODS: We conducted 2 web-based panel surveys in the United States using Amazon Mechanical Turk and in China using Credamo between July and October 2022. A total of 1002 American and 860 Chinese women aged between 40 and 65 years took part in the survey. The survey was designed based on the Health Belief Model with questions related to their menopausal knowledge, perceived severity of menopausal symptoms, perceived susceptibility to menopausal distress, perceived benefits of help-seeking, perceived COVID-19- and non-COVID-19-related barriers against help-seeking, self-efficacy, and motivation to seek help. Structural equations models were fitted for the data using full information maximum likelihood to manage missing data. RESULTS: Knowledge was not directly related to help-seeking motivation in both samples. Among the Chinese sample, knowledge was negatively related to perceived severity but positively related to COVID-19-related barriers; in turn, higher perceived severity, benefits, COVID-19-related barriers, and self-efficacy and lower non-COVID-19-related barriers were related to more motivation to seek help. In the US sample, knowledge was negatively related to perceived severity, susceptibility, benefits, barriers (COVID-19- and non-COVID-19-related), and self-efficacy; in turn, higher self-efficacy, COVID-19-related barriers, and benefits were associated with more help-seeking motivation. The factors explained 53% and 45.3% of the variance of help-seeking motivation among the American and Chinese participants, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: This study revealed disparate pathways between knowledge, health beliefs, and the motivation for help-seeking among American and Chinese midlife women with respect to menopausal distress. Our findings show that knowledge may not directly influence help-seeking motivation. Instead, perceived benefits and self-efficacy consistently predicted help-seeking motivation. Interestingly, concern over COVID-19 infection was related to higher help-seeking motivation in both samples. Hence, our findings recommend the further development of telehealth services to (1) develop content beyond health education and symptom management that serves to enhance the perceived benefits of addressing women's multidimensional menopausal health needs, (2) facilitate patient-care provider communication with a focus on self-efficacy and a propensity to engage in help-seeking behaviors, and (3) target women who have greater midlife health concerns in the postpandemic era.

Empowering families facing end-stage nonmalignant chronic diseases with a holistic, transdisciplinary, community-based intervention: 3 months outcome of the Life Rainbow Program.

OBJECTIVES: Families facing end-stage nonmalignant chronic diseases (NMCDs) are presented with similar symptom burdens and need for psycho-social-spiritual support as their counterparts with advanced cancers. However, NMCD patients tend to face more variable disease trajectories, and thus may require different anticipatory supports, delivered in familiar environments. The Life Rainbow Programme (LRP) provides holistic, transdisciplinary, community-based end-of-life care for patients with NMCDs and their caregivers. This paper reports on the 3-month outcomes using a single-group, pre-post comparison. METHOD: Patients with end-stage NMCDs were screened for eligibility by a medical team before being referred to the LRP. Patients were assessed at baseline (T0), 1 month (T1), and 3 months (T2) using the Integrated Palliative Outcome Scale (IPOS). Their hospital use in the previous month was also measured by presentations at accident and emergency services, admissions to intensive care units, and number of hospital bed-days. Caregivers were assessed at T0 and T2 using the Chinese version of the Modified Caregiver Strain Index, and self-reported health, psychological, spiritual, and overall well-being. Over-time changes in outcomes for patients, and caregivers, were tested using paired-sample t-tests, Wilcoxon-signed rank tests, and chi-square tests. RESULTS: Seventy-four patients and 36 caregivers participated in this research study. Patients reported significant improvements in all IPOS domains at both 1 and 3 months [ranging from Cohen's d = 0.495 (nausea) to 1.793 (depression and information needs fulfilled)]. Average hospital bed-days in the previous month fell from 3.50 to 1.68, comparing baseline and 1 month (p < 0.05). At 3 months, caregiver strain was significantly reduced (r = 0.332), while spiritual well-being was enhanced (r = 0.333). SIGNIFICANCE: After receiving 3 month's LRP services, patients with end-stage NMCDs and their caregivers experienced significant improvements in the quality of life and well-being, and their hospital bed-days were reduced.

Comparing dyadic cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) with dyadic integrative body-mind-spirit intervention (I-BMS) for Chinese family caregivers of lung cancer patients: a randomized controlled trial.

PURPOSE: The study adopted a randomized controlled trial to compare the effect of culturally compatible psychosocial interventions on multiple aspects of quality of life (QoL) for family caregivers of lung cancer patients. METHODS: 157 Chinese informal caregivers of lung cancer patients were recruited together with the family members for whom they were providing care, and randomly assigned to either integrative body-mind-spirit intervention (I-BMS) or cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). Patient-caregiver dyads attended the same arm of intervention in separate groups for 8 weeks. Assessments of generic QoL, anxiety, depression, perceived stress, insomnia, and caregiving burden were measured before intervention (T0), within 1-week (T1), 8-week (T2), and 16-week (T3) post-intervention. RESULTS: Adopting the intention-to-treat analysis, family caregivers in receipt of both I-BMS and CBT exhibited a statistically significant improvement in generic QoL immediately following intervention and at follow-up assessments, with moderate effect size. Improvement of insomnia was found at T1 for both modes, which deteriorated at follow-up; both modes reduced anxiety and perceived stress at follow-up. No intervention effect was observed in depression and domains of caregiving burden. There was no significant interaction effect between intervention type and time. No main or interaction effect between sample background variables and intervention type was found to predict symptomatic changes at T1 and T3. CONCLUSIONS: Culturally attuned I-BMS and CBT exhibited equivalent effectiveness in improving psychological distress and generic QoL for family caregivers of lung cancer patients. To improve the evaluation of outcomes, future study could benefit from incorporating a usual care control.

Effectiveness of holistic group health promotion program on educational stress, anxiety, and depression among adolescent girls - A pilot study.

BACKGROUND: Academic stress is one of the major stresses among adolescents and it has been associated with poor mental health. AIM: Evaluate effectiveness of holistic intervention on educational stress among adolescent girls. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Randomized controlled design was adopted and study was conducted at selected colleges of Dharwad city, India. 60 adolescent girls were randomly assigned to either experimental or control group. All subjects were initially assessed for educational stress, depression and anxiety. The experimental group subjects received 8 sessions of holistic intervention. No intervention was given to control group subjects. Post intervention assessments were done at the end of 1st, 2nd and 3rd months. RESULTS: Experimental group subjects showed statistically significant decrease in educational stress, depression and anxiety over 3 months follow-up compared to control group subjects. CONCLUSION: This study provided evidence of integrating a holistic intervention in reducing stress.

Competence Enhancement Program of Expressive Arts in End-of-Life Care for Health and Social Care Professionals: A Mixed-Method Evaluation.

In the recent decades, expressive arts (EXA) has been used in end-of-life care (EOLC) for facilitating the quality of life of the patients and the caregivers. However, it may not be practical for every EOLC service to dispense EXA activities solely by extensively trained art therapy specialists. There is currently a lack of brief training for nonart therapists, which may have stifled the application of the techniques in clinical settings. The current study therefore described and evaluated the effectiveness of a 2-day EXA training workshop in enhancing practice, knowledge, and self-competence among health and social care professionals working in EOLC using a mixed-method approach. The quantitative findings show significant improvement in perceived competence of providing services per holistic and person-centered EOLC objectives, nonpharmaceutical management of symptoms, and evidence-based psychosocial care as well as self-competence in death work (SCDW) after the workshop. The qualitative findings corroborated the quantitative results by suggesting that the improvement in competence could be associated with enhanced communication, meaning reconstruction, and therapeutic relationship with the clients as well as the improvement in mood, socialization, and self-esteem among the clients through the learned EXA activities. Our findings support the efficacy of a brief training of EXA activities for nonart therapists in enhancing multifaceted intervention competence. Further research on brief training will be needed to promote the use of EXA activities in the EOLC context.

Study protocol of a randomized controlled trial comparing integrative body-mind-spirit intervention and cognitive behavioral therapy in fostering quality of life of patients with lung cancer and their family caregivers.

Compared to cancers at other sites, lung cancer often results in greater psychosocial distress to both the patients and their caregivers, due to the poor prognosis and survival rate, as well as the heavy symptom burden. In recent years, making protocols of proposed or on-going studies publicly available via clinical trial registries and/or peer-reviewed journals has benefited health sciences with timely communication of the latest research trends and improved transparency in reporting. However, such practice is yet to be a common sight in evidence-informed social work. Hence, this paper discusses the value of publishing protocols in social work research and presents the protocol of a randomized controlled trial that compares the effectiveness of integrative body-mind-spirit intervention with cognitive behavioral therapy for enhancing quality of life of patients with lung cancer and their family caregivers. The data collection process was still on-going at the time of manuscript submission.