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Risk and protective factors associated with the mental health of young adults in Kabul, Afghanistan

Overview of attention for article published in BMC Psychiatry, March 2018
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  • In the top 25% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • Good Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (76th percentile)
  • Average Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source

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1 blog
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1 Facebook page

Citations

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Title
Risk and protective factors associated with the mental health of young adults in Kabul, Afghanistan
Published in
BMC Psychiatry, March 2018
DOI 10.1186/s12888-018-1648-4
Pubmed ID
Authors

Qais Alemi, Carl Stempel, Patrick Marius Koga, Susanne Montgomery, Valerie Smith, Gagandeep Sandhu, Bianca Villegas, Jessica Requejo

Abstract

We examined the mental health status and severity of psychological distress symptoms among young adults residing in Kabul, Afghanistan and determined how such outcomes might be influenced by an array of risk and protective factors. A cross-sectional study design was adopted using convenience, snowball, and street-intercept recruitment techniques. Surveys were completed by 232 young adults between 18 and 35 years of age in September 2015. We used both etic (mental health component of the SF-8) and emic (Afghan Symptom Checklist) measures of mental health and psychological distress, respectively, and regressed these outcome measures against socio-demographic, physical health, and psychological variables (resilience, hope-optimism) using ordinary least squares (OLS) regression methods. We found that poor mental health is common in this sample, affecting 75% of participants; and, that distress symptoms (depressive, anxiety, and somatoform symptoms) occur often. Regression models were consistent in showing higher education as a risk-factor for both outcomes, whereas, age, ethnicity, and income significantly contributed only to the ASCL model as risk-factors. However, both outcomes were strongly influenced by protective factors such as good physical health status and higher perceived hope-optimism. Our study provides further evidence of how current economic conditions in Kabul contribute to poor mental health and symptom severity, but also show how positive physical health and perceived hope-optimism can be protective. This study provides support for developing culturally-competent policies and interventions that build on protective factors.

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Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 81 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 81 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Master 11 14%
Student > Ph. D. Student 10 12%
Researcher 9 11%
Student > Bachelor 8 10%
Student > Doctoral Student 6 7%
Other 11 14%
Unknown 26 32%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Psychology 15 19%
Medicine and Dentistry 10 12%
Nursing and Health Professions 9 11%
Social Sciences 7 9%
Computer Science 3 4%
Other 7 9%
Unknown 30 37%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 8. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 07 February 2019.
All research outputs
#4,090,270
of 23,577,654 outputs
Outputs from BMC Psychiatry
#1,542
of 4,897 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#79,454
of 333,710 outputs
Outputs of similar age from BMC Psychiatry
#51
of 92 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 23,577,654 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 82nd percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 4,897 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 12.7. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 67% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 333,710 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 76% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 92 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 40th percentile – i.e., 40% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.