Methods: Records of travellers aged 60 years and older attending the Tropical Medical Bureau clinic in Galway, Ireland between 2014 and 2018 were examined. Descriptive and inferential.analysis of data was performed.
Results: A total of 337 older travellers sought pre-travel health advice during the study period. The mean age of the cohort was 65.42 (±10) years. Most of the travellers (n = 267, 80%) had at least one travelling companion. Nearly half of older travellers (n = 155, 46.8%) were travelling with a single companion. Tourism was the main reason for travel for the majority (n = 260, 77.6%), followed by visiting friends and relatives (VFR) (n = 23, 6.9%) travellers. The mean interval remaining before the planned trip was 4.36 (±2) weeks, and the mean duration of travel was 3.16 (±1) weeks. The most popular single country of destination was India with 33 (9.8%) visitors, and South East Asia was the most popular region with 132 (39.2%) older travellers. The majority of travellers (n = 267, 79.2%) had a documented pre-existing medical condition. The most commonly reported medical conditions were hypertension (n = 26, 7.7%), dyslipidaemia (n = 18, 5.3%), diabetes mellitus (n = 12, 3.5%), insect bite sensitivity (n = 11, 3.3%), and hypothyroidism (n = 9, 2.6%). Antihypertensive agents (n = 32, 9.4%) and statins (n = 24, 7.1%) were the most frequently used medications. Typhoid (n = 112, 33.2%) and hepatitis A (n = 84, 24.9%) were the most common vaccinations administered to older travellers at the clinic.
Conclusions: This study provides an insight into the demographics, travel characteristics, and medical profile of elderly travellers seeking advice at a large travel clinic in Ireland. A wide range of travel destinations, diseases and medication use was reported among this group of travellers, which may enable travel medicine physicians to provide more tailored advice and to more appropriately counsel older travellers.
METHODS: The PubMed database was accessed to source relevant literature, using combinations of pertinent search terms. Only articles published in the English language were selected. Reference lists of published articles were also examined for relevant articles.
RESULTS: With regard to preferred destinations, South/Central America and the Caribbean were more likely to receive tourists looking for casual sex. Longer duration of travel, travelling alone or with friends, alcohol or drug use, being younger and being single were factors associated with higher levels of casual sex overseas. The majority of literature retrieved on sex workers focused on risk behaviours, sexually transmitted infections (STI), mobility of sex workers and how these factors affected their lives. Sex tourists require better access to effective methods of preventing HIV, such as pre-exposure prophylaxis, and better education on HIV prevention. Drugs and alcohol play a major role as risk factors for and cofactors in casual sexual behaviour while abroad.
CONCLUSIONS: Travellers need to be informed of the increased risks of STI before travel. They should be aware of the local prevalence of STIs and the risks associated with their sexual practices when they travel, including engaging with commercial sex workers, having unprotected sexual intercourse and becoming victims of sexual violence.
AIM: This study aims to determine the rate of depression among caregivers of person with depression and its psychosocial correlates, which include stigma, perceived social support, religious commitment and the severity of the patient's symptoms.
METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 165 patients diagnosed with MDD using the Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Interview (M.I.N.I.) together with their caregivers. Apart from gathering social demographic data, patients were administered the 16-item Quick Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology-Self-Rated Version (QIDS-SR 16), whereas the caregivers were required to answer Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS), Duke University Religion Index (DUREL) and Depression Stigma Scale (DSS). Those who scored ⩾5 on PHQ-9 were further assessed with interviewer-rated M.I.N.I. to diagnose the presence of depression.
RESULTS: A total of 47 (28.5%) caregivers were found to have depressive symptoms. Out of that total, 13 (7.9%) were diagnosed to have MDD using M.I.N.I. From univariate analysis, factors associated with depression in caregivers were the severity of symptoms in patients ( p
METHOD: The study was a cross-sectional design in nature, using self-reported questionnaires among the university students in Malaysia. Participants were selected using a convenience sampling approach. Perceptions regarding social support and physical environment were assessed using the Malay-translated version scales. The standard forward-backwards translation was conducted to translate the English version of the scales to the Malay version. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to validate the translated version scales; composite reliability (CR) and average variance extracted (AVE) were computed.
RESULTS: A total of 857 students participated in this study (female: 49.1%, male: 50.9%). The mean age of the participants was 20.2 (SD = 1.6). The fit indices of the initial hypothesized measurement models (social support and physical environment) were not satisfactory. Further improvements were made by adding covariances between residuals' items within the same factor for each hypothesized model. The final re-specified measurement models demonstrated adequate factor structure for the social support scale with 24 items (CFI = .932, TLI = .920, SRMR = .054, RMSEA = .061), and the physical environment scale with five items (CFI = .994, TLI = .981, SRMR = .013, RMSEA = .054). The CR was .918 for family support, .919 for friend support, .813 for perceived availability, and .771 for perceived quality. The AVEs were .560 for family support, .547 for friend support, .554 for perceived availability, and .628 for perceived quality. The intra-class correlation (ICC) based on test-retest was .920 for family support, .984 for friend support, .895 for availability of facilities, and .774 for quality of facilities.
CONCLUSION: The Malay version of the social support scale for exercise and the physical environment scale for physical activity were shown to have adequate psychometric properties for assessing perceived social support and physical environment among the university students in Malaysia.
PERSPECTIVE: This study presented the psychometric properties of the social support and physical environment scales based on CFA and was the first to translate these scales from the original English version to the Malay version.
METHODS: This study was a secondary data analysis from the National Health and Morbidity Survey (NHMS) 2017, a cross-sectional survey conducted among Malaysian school-going adolescents aged 13 to 17. The NHMS utilised a two-stage stratified cluster sampling. Multivariate Multinomial Logistic Regression analysis was applied.
RESULTS: The overall prevalence of single substance use and polysubstance use among adolescents were 17.2% and 5.1% respectively. The multinomial model showed a higher likelihood of being single or polysubstance user among male (single user OR = 3.0, poly user OR = 4.6), others Bumiputeras vs Malay (single user OR = 1.7, poly user OR = 5.3), those who live with a single parent (single user OR = 1.2, poly user OR = 1.4), involved in truancy (single user OR = 1.7, poly user OR = 3.6) and being bullied (single user OR = 1.3, poly user OR = 3.4), those who had lack of peer support (single user OR = 1.3, poly user OR = 1.4), poor parental bonding (single user OR = 1.4, poly user OR = 1.8), depression (single user OR = 1.4, poly user OR = 3.2) and those who had no close friend (single user OR = 1.3, poly user OR = 2.7).
CONCLUSION: Our study highlighted multiple significant associated factors of single and polysubstance use among adolescents in Malaysia. This result can assist in the development of specific intervention and prevention programs targeting high-risk groups.
METHODS: A qualitative approach using focus group discussions was conducted to get in-depth information about medicines use pattern and practice from the general public. Adult people who reported using medicines at the time of study or in the previous month were approached. Two focus group discussions were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. The obtained data were analysed using thematic content analysis.
RESULTS: This study found that there are some misunderstanding about the appropriate use of medicines. The majority of the participants reported that they were complying with their medication regimen. However, forgetting to take medicines was stated by 4 participants while 2 participants stopped taking medicines when they felt better. In addition, 10 participants reporting using medicines according to their own knowledge and past experience. Whereas 4 participants took medicines according to other informal resources such as family, friends or the media. Seven participants have experienced side effects with using medicines, 4 of them informed their doctor while 3 participants stopped taking medicines without informing their doctor.
CONCLUSION: There was a misunderstanding about medicines use in terms of medication compliance, self-management of the illness and the resources of information about using medicines. Many efforts are still needed from health care professionals to provide sufficient information about medicines use in order to decrease the risk of inappropriate use of medicines and to achieve better therapeutic outcome.