METHOD: This is a multi-site cross-sectional study. The authors conducted a survey based on a translated self-administered questionnaire to participants from seven core hospital departments.
RESULTS: While most health-care workers regardless of department and specialty took their duty to prevent suicide seriously, a large majority of them expressed negative attitudes such as finding suicidal behavior irritating, and more than half believed suicidal attempts were a way of making others sorry. However, psychiatric workers were less likely to have judgmental attitudes that included believing suicide attempters as being selfish or trying to get sympathy from others.
CONCLUSIONS: As there were more similarities than differences in health-care workers' attitudes toward suicide, recommendations on basic and continuous suicide prevention and management training among hospital workers were made. The interventions focused on improving knowledge, affective, and skill-based areas that were aimed to correct the wrongful understanding of and to minimize the negative attitudes toward suicidal individuals indicated by the study results.
METHOD: A total of 394 healthcare workers reported their responses on Maslach Burnout Inventory questionnaire, World Health Organization Quality of Life (WHOQOL)-BREF, and Brief Resilience Scale. Respondents were contacted through convenience sampling method and targeted population constituted Malaysian healthcare workers aged 18 years and above.
RESULTS: For occupational exhaustion, about 50.5% of participants have moderate degree, 40.6% have high degree, and 8.9% have low degree of burnout. Health workers from age 25 to 35 years have lower physical health compared to health workers aged <25 years (coefficient = -0.77, p = 0.021). Similarly, healthcare workers who were working more than 10 h every day were more likely to report poor psychological health (coefficient = -2.49, p = 0.06). Positive correlation between physical and psychological health was observed. Further, a negative correlation was found between occupational exhaustion and the quality of life.
CONCLUSION: It is important to target physical as well as psychological wellbeing of the healthcare workers. Also, it is important to understand the contribution of long working hours in declining the quality of life of the healthcare workers. Thus, allocating fixed working hours for healthcare workers would bring a much-required change.
METHOD: A nationwide online cross-sectional convenience sampling survey from April 21, 2022 to June 3, 2022 was conducted. The study used descriptive statistics to inform about vaccine hesitancy among parents. Cross-tabulation was performed to calculate the frequency and percentage of vaccine hesitancy, quality of life, e-health literacy, and the 5C psychological antecedents of vaccination among parents with children 5-11 years in Malaysia. Graphical methods were used to portray the levels of e-health literacy and levels of 5C psychological antecedents of vaccination. The study used both bi-variate and multivariate analysis to understand the relationship between vaccine hesitancy and the socio-demo-economic factors, quality of life, e-health literacy and 5C psychological antecedents.
RESULTS: Of 382 participants, almost one-third (33%) of participants reported vaccine hesitancy for their children. For 5C's psychological antecedents of vaccination, around one quarter (26.96%) reported disagreement for confidence in vaccination, almost half (52.36%) reported disagreement for vaccination complacency, three-fifths (60.99%) reported vaccination constraint, one quarter (25.92%) reported calculation antecedent, and almost one-third reported disagreement over collective responsibility antecedent (25.92%). Chi-square test revealed that gender, employment status, and parents' COVID-19 vaccination status were significantly associated (p<0.05) with vaccine hesitancy among parents. Assessing the influence of transactional e-health literacy, only the communication component contained a significant association (p<0.05). Among the 5C psychological antecedents, confidence, calculation, and collective responsibility were significantly associated (p<0.05) with vaccine hesitancy. Parents with secondary [OR: 8.80; CI: 2.44-31.79, (p<0.05)], post-secondary [OR: 5.21; CI: 2.10-13.41, (p<0.05)], and tertiary education [OR: 6.77; CI: 2.25-20.35, (p<0.05)] had significantly higher likelihood of vaccine hesitancy than those with primary education.
CONCLUSION: Highly educated parents are more skeptical and are more likely to perceive the vaccine as unsafe and ineffective for their children. It is critical to disseminate the required information about the vaccine safety to the educated group.
DESIGN: This CBPR design in implementation comprised in-depth interviews (IDIs) and focus group discussions (FGDs). Themes were identified from the data with inductive and deductive thematic analysis.
SETTING: FGDs were conducted in local community areas and IDIs were conducted in the local authority (LA) office and the Hulu Langat district health office.
PARTICIPANTS: All FGD and IDI participants consented to the study, and included health authorities (n=4), LAs (n=7), community leader (n=1), faith leader (n=1), patients diagnosed with dengue (IDIs, n=2) and permanent residents of Hulu Langat who had been exposed to dengue infectious disease (FGDs, n=27).
RESULTS: The main themes were categorised into community behaviour and stakeholder challenges. The community behaviour-related themes were awareness of dengue disease and Aedes mosquitoes, perception of risk and severity, and involvement of authorities. The themes related to stakeholder challenges were resource constraints and capacity issues, jurisdictional constraints and coordination, and educational dissemination and vandalism.
CONCLUSIONS: The actions of the authorities shape community and stakeholder behaviours. Effective communication, including clear and aesthetically pleasing messages, motivates individuals to take appropriate actions. It is crucial for the authorities to engage in inclusive communication and consider diverse perspectives, such as those of residents and individuals exposed to dengue infection. Authorities that provide accurate and unbiased information foster transparency and enable informed decision-making by all stakeholders.
OBJECTIVE: The current study examines the association between religious affiliation and suicidality among college students in six provinces in China.
METHODS: We conducted a cross-sectional study involving 11,407 college students from six universities in Ningxia, Shandong, Shanghai, Jilin, Qinghai, and Shaanxi. We collected the data between October 2017 and March 2018 using self-report questionnaires. They included self-report measures of depression, psychache, hopelessness, self-esteem, social support, and life purpose.
RESULTS: Participants with a Christian affiliation had 1.5 times (95% CI: 1.14, 1.99, p = 0.004) higher odds of indicating an elevated suicide risk, 3.1 times (95% CI: 1.90, 5.04, p<0.001) higher odds of indicating a previous suicide attempt, and increased overall suicidality (B = 0.105, p < 0.001) after accounting for demographic and risk/protective factors. Christians also scored the highest in depression, psychache, hopelessness, and the lowest social support, self-esteem, and purpose in life. Muslims reported decreased suicidality (B = -0.034, p = 0.031). Buddhism/Daoism yielded non-significant results in the multivariate analyses.
CONCLUSIONS: Christian college students reported increased suicidality levels, perhaps due to public policies on religion. The decreased suicidality levels among Muslims may be attributed to higher perceived social support. The associations between religious affiliation and suicidality, depression, and hopelessness contrast sharply with US samples. This finding may be influenced by interactions between the religious denomination, individual, and social/political factors. This conclusion includes the possibility of anti-religious discrimination, which this paper did not investigate as a possible mediator and therefore remains a conjecture worthy of future investigation.
METHODS: An online health survey was conducted between May to July 2017 among employees from 47 private companies located in urban Malaysia. A total of 5235 respondents completed the 20-min online employee health survey on a voluntary basis. Chi-Square or Fisher's exact tests were used to determine association between income with demographic and categorical factors of absenteeism and presenteeism. Multivariate linear regression was used to identify factors predicting absenteeism and presenteeism.
RESULTS: More than one third of respondents' monthly income were less than RM4,000 (35.4%), 29.6% between RM4,000-RM7,999 and 35.0% earned RM8,000 and above. The mean age was 33.8 years (sd ± 8.8) and 49.1% were married. A majority were degree holders (74.4%) and 43.6% were very concerned about their financial status. Mean years of working was 6.2 years (sd ± 6.9) with 68.9% satisfied with their job. More than half reported good general physical health (54.5%) (p = 0.065) and mental health (53.5%) (p = 0.019). The mean hours of sleep were 6.4 h (sd ± 1.1) with 63.2% reporting being unwell due to stress for the past 12 months. Mean work time missed due to ill-health (absenteeism) was 3.1% (sd ± 9.1), 2.8% (sd ± 9.1) and 1.8% (sd ± 6.5) among employees whose monthly income was less than RM4,000, RM4,000-RM7,999 and over RM8,000 respectively (p = 0.0066). Mean impairment while working due to ill-health (presenteeism) was 28.2% (sd ± 25.3), 24.9% (sd ± 25.5) and 20.3% (sd ± 22.9) among employees whose monthly income was less than RM4,000, RM4,000-RM7,999 and over RM8,000 respectively (p
METHODS: This qualitative study employed the hermeneutic phenomenological study design. Purposive sampling strategies were used to recruit Malaysians that had direct experiences with friends, family members and their community who were hesitating or refusing to accept the COVID-19 vaccines. A semi-structured interview guide was developed based on the expert knowledge of the investigators and existing literature on the topic. A series of focus group interviews (FGIs) was conducted online facilitated by a multidisciplinary team of experts. The group interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed.
RESULTS: Fifty-nine participants took part in seven FGIs. We found that "incongruence" was the overall thematic meaning that connected all the 3 main themes. These themes comprise firstly, the incongruence between the aims and implementation of the National Immunization Program which highlighted the gap between realities and needs on the ground. Secondly, the incongruence between Trust and Mistrust revealed a trust deficit in the government, COVID-19 news, and younger people's preference to follow the examples of local vaccination "heroes". Thirdly, the incongruence in communication showed the populace's mixed views regarding official media and local social media.
CONCLUSIONS: This study provided rich details on the complex picture of the COVID-19 immunization program in Malaysia and its impact on vaccine hesitancy and refusal. The inter-related and incongruent factors explained the operational difficulty and complexity of the NIP and the design of an effective health communication campaign. Identified gaps such as logistical implementation and communication strategies should be noted by policymakers in implementing mitigation plans.
METHOD: This cross-sectional study was conducted between February 15, 2022 and March 15, 2022, among 394 healthcare workers from Putrajaya and Selangor hospitals, Malaysia. Maslach Burnout Inventory, World Health Organization Quality of Life-BREF 26 inventory, and Brief Resilience Scale were utilized to capture information on burnout, quality of life, and resilience, respectively.
RESULTS: The mean score of physical health of participants who work more than 10 h (11.38) is lower than participants who work from 8 to 10 h (13.00) and participants who work 7 h daily (13.03), p-value < 0.001. Similarly, the mean score of psychological health of participants who work more than 10 h (12.35) is lower than participants who work from 8 to 10 h (13.72) and participants who work 7 h daily (13.68), p-value = 0.001. Higher income levels were associated with high resilience and quality of life.
CONCLUSION: It is imperative that healthcare practitioners and policy makers adopt and implement interventions to promote a healthy workplace environment, address ethical concerns, and prevent burnout among healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Managing the issue of long working hours could possibly result in improved resilience, burnout, and quality of life among healthcare workers. Despite this study able to tickle out some policy specific areas where interventions are needed, identifying effective solutions and evaluating their efficiency will require larger and interventional studies.