Careful considerations for the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder during and following pregnancy.

INTRODUCTION: The focus on perinatal mental health has expanded recently, though there is less research on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Therefore, a review of the literature was undertaken and coupled with expert clinical insights to discuss current clinical practice recommendations for PTSD in the perinatal period. AREAS COVERED: This review covers considerations for the assessment, prevention, and treatment of PTSD during the perinatal period. Within these sections, evidence-based and promising practices are outlined. Extra attention is afforded to treatment, which includes considerations from both psychotherapeutic and psychopharmacological perspectives. This review closes with coverage of three important and related areas of consideration, including bereavement, intimate partner violence, and childhood sexual abuse. EXPERT OPINION: Psychotherapeutic interventions for PTSD during pregnancy are limited, and no strong recommendations can be supported at this time while evidence points toward the effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapies and eye movement desensitization therapy as first-line treatments postpartum though research evidence is also limited. Research on psychopharmacological interventions is similarly scarce, though selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors may be beneficial. Clinicians should also be mindful of additional considerations that may be needed for the treatment of PTSD in the context of bereavement, intimate partner violence, and history of sexual violence.

Technology-Facilitated Sexual Harassment Against Women and Psychological Dysfunction: A Test of Objectification Theory.

Objectification theory was tested to examine the potential mediating role of self-objectification in the relationship between technology-facilitated sexual harassment (TFSH) and psychological functioning in a sample of women (N = 481). The results indicated that TFSH was associated with eating pathology, alcohol use, and sexual functioning. Furthermore, partial support for the objectification theory was achieved, with self-objectification potentially explaining the relationships between TFSH and eating pathology, and TFSH and alcohol use. This research may shed light on the role of objectification processes in the context of TFSH in women, as well as inform mental health interventions for women victims of TFSH.

Motives to engage with or refrain from gambling and loot box content: an exploratory qualitative investigation.

This study examined motives to engage or refrain from engaging with gambling and loot boxes (i.e., in-game "boxes" that can be won within a game or purchased with in-game currency or real money, and which contain a random selection of prizes or objects). University students (n = 321) and community members (n = 279) completed an online questionnaire that included open-ended motives questions. Qualitative inductive content analysis was used to identify a number of overlapping motives to engage with or refrain from gambling and loot box content. Themes associated with motives to gamble included enjoyment, the chance to win, boredom, and charitable intentions. Self-reported reasons to engage with loot boxes included enjoyment, the chance to win, game progression, and passive engagement. In contrast, themes associated with refraining from gambling included negative consequences (e.g., addiction), uncertain outcomes, disinterest, finances, and accessibility. Similarly, reasons to refrain from loot boxes included negative consequences, gambling concerns, disinterest, finances, and accessibility. Overall, these findings, and particularly the overlapping themes between gambling and loot boxes engagement, provide further context and insight into the burgeoning research on loot boxes and assist in delineating their relation to gambling.Motives to engage with or refrain from gambling and loot box content: An exploratory qualitative investigation.

Women's Experiences of the Intersections of Work and Intimate Partner Violence: A Review of Qualitative Research.

The impacts of intimate partner violence (IPV) on work, workplaces, and employment are receiving increasing attention from researchers, employers, and policy makers, but research synthesis is needed to develop evidence-based strategies to address the problem. The purpose of this review of qualitative research is to explore abused women's experiences of the intersections of work and IPV, including the range of benefits and drawbacks of work. Multiple search strategies, including systematic database searches by a professional librarian, resulted in 2,306 unique articles that were independently screened for eligibility by two team members. Qualitative research articles were eligible for inclusion and were also required to (1) sample women with past and/or current IPV experience and (2) report results regarding women's experiences or views of the benefits and/or drawbacks of work. Ultimately, 32 qualitative research articles involving 757 women were included and analyzed using thematic synthesis. Results revealed the potential of work to offer survivors a great range of benefits and drawbacks, many of which have received little research attention. The importance of work for women survivors has been emphasized in the literature, often with respect to financial independence facilitating the leaving process. However, our research underscores how the impact of work for many women survivors is not straightforward and, for some, involves a "trade-off" of benefits and drawbacks. Those developing work-related interventions, services (e.g., career counseling), or policies for women who experience IPV should consider the range of benefits and drawbacks in their planning, as "one-size-fits-all" solutions are unlikely to be effective.

Comorbid Depression and Substance Abuse in Domestic Homicide: Missed Opportunities in the Assessment and Management of Mental Illness in Perpetrators.

Almost 40% of murdered women are victims of domestic homicide across the world. However, research has yet to examine comorbid depression and substance abuse in domestic homicide perpetrators, despite comorbid mental health conditions being associated with homicide in the general population. A retrospective case analysis approach was performed using domestic homicide cases that had been reviewed by the Domestic Violence Death Review Committee in Ontario, Canada. Group comparisons were made by compiling cases into groups based on perpetrators with depression and/or substance abuse: a no history of depression and/or substance use group, depression only group, substance abuse only group, and comorbid depression and substance abuse group. Statistical analyses compared groups on number and types of risk factors and service provider contacts. A major finding of the current study was the resounding lack of mental health care and batterer intervention program engagement across groups. Results also indicated that perpetrators with comorbid depression and substance abuse have an elevated number of risk factors for domestic homicide and elevated number of service provider contacts. Furthermore, results indicated that perpetrators with comorbid depression and substance abuse had an increased likelihood of having engaged in hostage-taking behavior and increased likelihood of having contact with mental health and health care providers. The study demonstrates the necessity for future research into the barriers associated with help-seeking by perpetrators, family and friends, as well as the barriers to agency referral and to mental health agencies providing service to perpetrators. It also highlights the need for service providers to take multiple mental health conditions into account when working with perpetrators of domestic homicide. Overall, this study underscores the importance of mental health and domestic violence training for service providers in different sectors. Moreover, it emphasizes the necessity of collaboration among service providers to address both violence-specific and mental health-specific concerns in perpetrators of domestic violence.

Intimate Partner Violence and Work: A Scoping Review of Published Research.

Increasingly, intimate partner violence (IPV) is recognized as having important impacts on work. The purpose of this scoping review is to describe the nature and extent of research on IPV and workers, the workplace, and/or employment. Using multiple search strategies, including searches conducted by a professional librarian from database inception to May 2018, 2,306 unique articles were retrieved and independently screened for eligibility by two team members. A total of 235 articles met predefined inclusion criteria, which were that articles must: (1) report findings of a research study, (2) be published in a peer-reviewed journal, and (3) be focused on IPV and the workplace, workers, and/or employment. The most common topics examined were the relationship between IPV and employment, IPV- and work-related factors, and the impacts of IPV on work. Most articles were quantitative and cross-sectional and focused on the abuse of women by men. Major research gaps include evaluations of interventions to address IPV and work and research focused on the experiences and needs of perpetrators and gender and sexual minorities. Further evidence synthesis is recommended in several areas and implications for policy and practice are discussed.

Detection of gene orthology from gene co-expression and protein interaction networks.

BACKGROUND: Ortholog detection methods present a powerful approach for finding genes that participate in similar biological processes across different organisms, extending our understanding of interactions between genes across different pathways, and understanding the evolution of gene families. RESULTS: We exploit features derived from the alignment of protein-protein interaction networks and gene-coexpression networks to reconstruct KEGG orthologs for Drosophila melanogaster, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Mus musculus and Homo sapiens protein-protein interaction networks extracted from the DIP repository and Mus musculus and Homo sapiens and Sus scrofa gene coexpression networks extracted from NCBI's Gene Expression Omnibus using the decision tree, Naive-Bayes and Support Vector Machine classification algorithms. CONCLUSIONS: The performance of our classifiers in reconstructing KEGG orthologs is compared against a basic reciprocal BLAST hit approach. We provide implementations of the resulting algorithms as part of BiNA, an open source biomolecular network alignment toolkit.