School of Social Sciences and Public Policy

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https://hdl.handle.net/10292/2105
There is a wide range of research activity in AUT's School of Social Sciences and Public Policy. The school has an active research community, with staff and postgraduate research in areas such as psychology, sociology and public policy.

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Browsing School of Social Sciences and Public Policy by Subject "1701 Psychology"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Item
    Using Electronic Health Record Data to Predict Future Self-Harm or Suicidal Ideation in Young People Treated by Child and Youth Mental Health Services
    (Wiley, 2023-08-14) Tennakoon, G; Byrne, EM; Vaithianathan, R; Middeldorp, CM
    Introduction: Identifying young people who are at risk of self-harm or suicidal ideation (SHoSI) is a priority for mental health clinicians. We explore the utility of routinely collected data in developing a tool to aid early identification of those at risk. Method: We used electronic health records of 4610 young people aged 5–19 years who were treated by Child and Youth Mental Health Services (CYMHS) in greater Brisbane, Australia. Two Lasso models were trained to predict the risk of future SHoSI in young people currently rated SHoSI; and those who were not. Results: For currently non-SHoSI children, an Area Under the Receiver Operating Characteristics (AUC) of 0.78 was achieved. Those with the highest risk were 4.97 (CI 4.35–5.66) times more likely to be categorized as SHoSI in the future. For current SHoSI children, the AUC was 0.62. Conclusion: A prediction model with fair overall predictive power for currently non-SHoSI children was generated. Predicting persistence for SHoSI was more difficult. The electronic health records alone were not sufficient to discriminate at acceptable levels and may require adding unstructured data such as clinical notes. To optimally predict SHoSI models need to be tested and validated separately for those young people with varying degrees of risk.
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    Women’s Mental Health During COVID-19 in South Africa
    (Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2024-01-20) Kopylova, Natalia; Greyling, Talita; Rossouw, Stephanié
    Women’s mental health vulnerability, already a concern before the COVID-19 pandemic, has been exacerbated due to social isolation and restrictions on daily activities. This paper aims to follow a cohort of women from pre - to during the pandemic to determine the change in their mental health using the PHQ-2 scale (a mental health screening tool). Additionally, we investigate whether women with depressive symptoms before the pandemic suffered similarly to those without while controlling for pandemic-related factors. Primarily, we use the Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey dataset and apply pooled ordered logit and fixed effects ordered logit models. We find that the value of the PHQ-2 scale significantly increased during the first period of the pandemic and then eased over time. Interestingly, the behaviour of the individual scale items differed over time. This result questions the internal reliability of the scale during the pandemic and the importance of analysing the scale items individually. Furthermore, being depressed before the pandemic increases the probability of ‘depressive feelings’ and does not matter for ‘anhedonia’. Other factors increasing the probability of mental health disorders are taking care of children for 13–24 h a day and living with a person who has gone hungry. In contrast, wearing a mask and living in a grant-receiving household decreases the probability. These findings inform future researchers of the unexpected behaviour of scales and policymakers of the vulnerability of women’s mental health during unprecedented times, given their vital role in increasing the well-being of future generations.
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