With an advancement of digital technology, excessive screen time has become a grave concern. This has pushed researchers and practitioners to focus on digital well-being. Screen time during COVID-19 has further increased as a result of public health measures enforced by governments to curb the pandemic. With the global societies under lockdown, the only medium to stay socio- emotionally connected was the digital one. A lack of comprehensive empirical overviews on screen time in COVID-19 era in the present literature prompted us to conduct this review. The present review attempts to understand the virtual social connectedness, excessive use of digital technology, its consequences and suggest strategies to maintain healthy use of digital technology. Results reveal that screen time has increased drastically during COVID-19. Though there are mixed consequences of prolonged screen time use and blurred understanding between healthy and unhealthy social connectedness over digital media, the suggestions for negative implications on (physical and) mental health warrant a strict need for inculcating healthy digital habits, especially knowing that digital technology is here to stay and grow with time.

IntroductionPower relations permeate research partnerships and compromise the ability of participatory research approaches to bring about transformational and sustainable change. This study aimed to explore how participatory health researchers engaged in co-production research perceive and experience ‘power’, and how it is discussed and addressed within the context of research partnerships.MethodsFive online workshops were carried out with participatory health researchers working in different global contexts. Transcripts of the workshops were analysed thematically against the ‘Social Ecology of Power’ framework and mapped at the micro (individual), meso (interpersonal) or macro (structural) level.ResultsA total of 59 participants, with participatory experience in 24 different countries, attended the workshops. At the micro level, key findings included the rarity of explicit discussions on the meaning and impact of power, the use of reflexivity for examining assumptions and power differentials, and the perceived importance of strengthening co-researcher capacity to shift power. At the meso level, participants emphasised the need to manage co-researcher expectations, create spaces for trusted dialogue, and consider the potential risks faced by empowered community partners. Participants were divided over whether gatekeeper engagement aided the research process or acted to exclude marginalised groups from participating. At the macro level, colonial and ‘traditional’ research legacies were acknowledged to have generated and maintained power inequities within research partnerships.ConclusionsThe ‘Social Ecology of Power’ framework is a useful tool for engaging with power inequities that cut across the social ecology, highlighting how they can operate at the micro, meso and macro level. This study reiterates that power is pervasive, and that while many researchers are intentional about engaging with power, actions and available tools must be used more systematically to identify and address power imbalances in participatory research partnerships, in order to contribute to improved equity and social justice outcomes.

Death anxiety is a common phenomenon that humans experience. It is multidimensional. There has been an upsurged interest around the discussion on death anxiety across the globe, however, much of the literature focuses on the concept of death anxiety, religiosity, and its role in mental health conditions. Further, studies on death anxiety are scattered and at times disconnected. It is important to review existing literature to get an overview of the current direction in research and understand its relevance to facilitate therapeutic processes. In this scoping review, literature was searched in databases such as PubMed, Scopus, and PsychINFO using key words such as “death anxiety”, “fear of death”, religion”, “culture”, and “psychopathology” combined with Boolean operators to narrow down the search results. The initial search yielded 614 records, of which 546 records were removed based on title review (363), abstract review (94), and full-text review (89). Finally, 68 articles were appraised, narratively synthesized, and thematically presented. Major themes revealed in the literature were theoretical frameworks of death anxiety, religiosity, universality, psychological effects of death anxiety, psychopathology, and religious coping strategies. There is a need to assess client’s death anxiety and address them using religious rituals and coping mechanisms.

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