Caregiving is the routine rendering of care by a caregiver who has taken the sole responsibility for ensuring that the fundamental needs of the care recipient are met. With the population aging and the increasing trend of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), the need and the demand for home care will rise exponentially. Caregiving for most chronic illnesses has become a fastidious task requiring a combination of formal and informal caregivers to meet the needs of care recipients. The informal caregiving role falls squarely on the shoulders of the family, which remains the basic unit of every society connected biologically, legally or by choice, from which one expects a measure of physical, inancial, and emotional support. This chapter discusses caregiving, home care, and the family against the backdrop of diverse world realities in beliefs and atitudes towards healthcare services and home care. It atests to the preferences for home care by some group of patients with chronic/terminal illnesses, especially the elderly, and it also expounds on reasons for this preference, the beneits to the patients and the family, including the family's need for support in dealing with the burden of caregiving for relatives with chronic illnesses.
Today, online social media are as ubiquitous as they are inextricable, especially as they have become critical to every aspect of our everyday lives. In the face of this upsurge in social media use, particularly in the adolescent age-group, rates of suicide, attempted suicide, and deliberate self-harm have spiked. This chapter aims to elucidate on current-day definitions of these terminologies as well as their epidemiology regionally and globally. Furthermore, it explores any established causality as well as possible associations and contributory factors such as cyberbullying and substance abuse. The chapter also explores how trending issues such as celebrity suicide and suicide reporting have impacted on the prevalence of suicide and examines its comorbidities. Novel concepts such as the Werther and Papageno effect are highlighted. It explicates on present-day recommendations to curb this menace while also examining the possibilities and merits of using social media as a prohibitive and rehabilitative tool against suicidal behavior.
Background Despite the need to curb the menace resulting from the negative trajectory of disruptive behaviour disorders (DBD) in societies of the world today, there is yet a dearth of locally standardised tools for the early detection of these disorders in Nigeria. This study was aimed at standardising the DBD teacher rating scale (DBD-TRS) to be culturally specific using teachers' ratings of their students. Objectives To establish norm scores for the three categories of DBD on the DBD-TRS, to evaluate the reliability, validity, predictive power, sensitivity and specificity of DBD-TRS items for identifying DBD symptoms amongst children/adolescents between the ages of 4 and 16 years. Methods A cross-sectional survey of the five divisions of Lagos was conducted using multi-stage sampling technique. A randomly selected sample of teachers from a selection of regular schools across the five divisions of Lagos retrospectively rated systematically selected samples of their students in absentia; by referring to the names in their class registers for the recently concluded school session. The DBD-TRS and the previously validated strengths and difficulties questionnaire (SDQ) were used for the ratings. Results Ratings were completed for 1508 children/adolescents by 197 teachers from 30 regular schools. The norm scores for the three categories of DBD were determined by gender, age, and grade/class. Satisfactory psychometric properties were established for the DBD rating scale. All DBD items had high negative predictive power and positive predictive power, high specificity, and low false positive rates. However, ADHD items had lower PPP (0.23-0.55). Conclusion The DBD rating scale demonstrated sufficient technical merits to be used as a preliminary tool for identifying children that may require further clinical evaluation by mental health experts for behavioural disorders.
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