Global research hotspots and trends of family intervention for ASD / 中国学校卫生

Objective@#To summarize the global research hotspots and trends of family intervention on autism spectrum disorder (ASD), to provide ideas for the development of localized research on family intervention for ASD in China.@*Methods@#This study used the bibliometric software CiteSpace to conduct visual analysis on emerging cutting edge documents in the Web of Science core database in the field of family intervention for autism in the past 20 years (2001-2020). Data collection used 7 subject terms related to family caregiver intervention in February 2021. A total of 2 342 literature was obtained after data sorting.@*Results@#The number of international publications has risen rapidly since 2013. The average annual number of international publications was 29 during 2001- 2012, then 250 during 2013-2020, which increased by 8 times. Among them, the United States ranked the top of publication with 1 295 articles, while publications from two universities in Canada and the United Kingdom showed higher impacts. The high frequency keywords that reflected the international hotspots included children, adolescent, mother, behavior, and stress; the high centrality keywords included follow up, intellectual disability, early recognition, young children and language.@*Conclusion@#The research hotspots in the field of ASD family intervention in the past 20 years included targets, strategies and forms, as well as the implementation effects of ASD family interventions. The trends of research in the past five years (2016-2020) mainly focus on the intervention studies of children, adolescents and adults with ASD and the randomized controlled trials of ASD family intervention focusing on caregivers.

The relationship between 2019-nCoV and psychological distress among parents of children with autism spectrum disorder.

OBJECTIVES: The psychological distress caused by COVID-19 may be pronounced among the parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This study aimed to investigate psychological distress among parents of children with ASD during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: A total of 1764 parents of children with ASD and 4962 parents of typically developing (TD) children were recruited. The participants completed an online survey which contained demographic information, the impact due to COVID-19 crisis, resilience, coping styles, anxiety and depression. Hierarchical linear regression was used to assess the contributions of these variables to anxiety and depression. RESULTS: After adjusting for demographic variables, the following factors were associated with parents' anxiety and depression symptoms: (i) Whether or not the participants had a child with ASD; (ii) resilience; (iii) coping strategies, and; (iv) the impact due to COVID-19. Among these, the psychological stress caused by COVID-19 played the most important role in parental anxiety (ß = 0.353) and depression (ß = 0.242) symptoms. Parents of children with ASD had lower levels of resilience and positive coping, and used more negative coping strategies than parents of TD children. Among all participants, 8.0 and 24.2% of parents had symptoms of anxiety and depression, respectively. Compared to parents of TD children, more parents of children with ASD exhibited symptoms of anxiety and depression (12.2% vs. 6.6%; 31.0% vs. 21.7%, respectively). CONCLUSIONS: During the COVID-19 pandemic, parents experienced varying levels of anxiety and depression, particularly, parents of children with ASD. More specific attention should be paid to parental mental health and long-term effective intervention programs, that are targeted towards parents of children with ASD, and such programs should be promoted around China in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis.

Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Symptoms Impair Adaptive and Social Function in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Background: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often co-exists with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), which may aggravate functional impairment. However, it is unclear how comorbid ADHD symptoms influence the adaptive behavior and social interaction deficits of children with ASD. Methods: The study enrolled 340 children (ranging from 2 to 14 years) with ASD, with comorbid ASD and ADHD, or with typical development (TD). A psychological evaluation involving adaptive behavior and social function was conducted using the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale, Second Edition (VABS-II) and the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS). Results: There was a high prevalence of ADHD symptoms (46.6%) in children with ASD, and children with ASD + ADHD presented the worse profile of ASD symptoms. The ASD + ADHD group had higher scores on VABS and lower scores on SRS in comparison with the ASD alone group and TD group. The regression analysis revealed that ASD symptoms and ADHD symptoms were significantly associated with greater impairments in adaptive behavior and social function. The ADHD symptoms were responsible for an additional 0.8% of the variance in adaptive behavior, and 9.5% of the variance in social function. Conclusions: More severe ASD symptoms and greater impairment in adaptive function and social ability were found in children with ASD and comorbid ADHD, highlighting the need to identify ADHD comorbidities early on in children with ASD and to reduce their negative impact on functioning.

Auxiliary diagnosis model of children with autism spectrum disorder based on random forest / 中国学校卫生

Objective@#The random forest algorithm was used to construct a rapid screening diagnostic prediction model for children with autism spectrum disorder, to provide the references for early detection, early diagnosis of ASD children, and to reduce the pressure of ASD clinical diagnosis and assessment.@*Methods@#The random forest algorithm of machine learning was applied to build the auxiliary diagnosis model. Totally 346 ASD children and 90 normal children were evaluated by Social Responsiveness Scale and Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales. ROC curve, and accuracy was used to evaluate the models.@*Results@#Among the models, the accuracy of 13 feature factors and 7 feature factors were above 0.9, the sensitivity was up to 0.927, the specificity was up to 0.936 and the AUC was up to 0.979. The accuracy, sensitivity, specificity and AUC of the model were 0.943,0.959,0.931 and 0.978 respectively. The fitting and generalization effects of the three models were all satisfactory.@*Conclusion@#A random forest model based on the SRS Scales and Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales can be used to diagnose ASD accurately and provide scientific basis for the development of rapid screening and diagnosis tools.

Health information and health-seeking behaviour in Yemen: perspectives of health leaders, midwives and mothers in two rural areas of Yemen.

BACKGROUND: Humanitarian crises can lead to the rapid change in the health needs of women and newborns, which may give rise to a complex situation that would require various interventions as solutions. This study aimed to examine the health education and promotion patterns, health-seeking behaviour of mothers, and barriers to the use of maternal health services from public health facilities in two rural areas of Yemen. METHODS: We used a qualitative approach. We conducted in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with frontline health professionals and mothers respectively. Nine in-depth interviews were conducted with the health professionals, including 4 health leaders and 5 midwives, and 2 focus group discussions with mothers aged 18-45 years in Abyan and Lahj. Thematic analysis approach was used to analyze the data in Atlas.ti (version 8) Software. RESULTS: Our data showed that health education and promotion activities on maternal health were ad hoc and coverage was poor. Maternal health services were underutilized by women. According to the data from the focus group discussions, the poor quality of services, as indicated by inadequate numbers of female doctors, lack of medical equipment and medicines, and costs of services were barriers to use maternal health services. Moreover, the use of prenatal and postnatal care services was associated with women's' perceived need. However, according to the health professionals, the inadequate human resource, workload, and inadequate funding from government have contributed significantly to the perceived quality of maternal health services provided by public health facilities. Despite the identified barriers, we found that a safe motherhood voucher scheme was instituted in Lahj which facilitated the use of maternal health services by disadvantaged women by removing financial barriers associated with the use of maternal health services. CONCLUSION: This study identified several obstacles, which worked independently or jointly to minimize the delivery and use of health services by rural women. These included, inadequate funding, inadequate human resources, poor quality of health services, and high cost of services. These barriers need to be addressed to improve the use of reproductive health services in Yemen.