(Press-News.org) LAWRENCE -- Substance use disorder has long been considered a key factor in cases of parental neglect. But new research from the University of Kansas shows that such substance abuse does not happen in a vacuum. When examining whether parents investigated by Child Protective Services engaged in neglectful behaviors over the past year, a picture emerges that suggests case workers should look at substance misuse within the context of other factors, like mental health and social supports, to better prevent child neglect and help families.
KU researchers analyzed data of parents investigated for neglectful behavior toward children aged 2-17 and gauged the level of their substance use as well as if they met the criteria for clinical depression. Researchers also studied whether parents had positive social supports such as friends or family, help with children or financial assistance. The results showed that the relationship between parental substance use behaviors and neglect behaviors varied depending on whether the parent was also experiencing clinical depression in the past year and the types of social supports present in their life. For example, substance use disorder among parents with no co-occurring clinical depression contributes to higher annual neglect frequencies compared to substance use disorder among parents with co-occurring clinical depression.
Nancy Kepple"Substance use may matter differently across different contexts. When a parent is already experiencing clinical levels of depression, does substance misuse exacerbate already present neglect behaviors? Nobody really knows; the evidence is mixed," said Nancy Kepple, associate professor of social welfare at KU and lead author of the study. "This study is a part of building a case that it's not one single story when it comes to thinking about how parental substance use is associated with neglectful behaviors."
The study, co-written with recent KU doctoral graduate Amittia Parker, was published in the journal Children and Youth Services Review.
The study analyzed data from 3,545 parents of children from Wave 4 of the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being. Parents in the survey reported their levels of substance use as well as symptoms of depression and data on different types of social supports. Previously, little research had been done on the interaction of substance use, clinical depression and social support for parental neglect, as substance use has been viewed as the primary factor in such behaviors. Neglect is a difficult topic to study, Kepple said, as it is the omission of a behavior -- providing care and basic needs for a child -- as opposed to enacting physical or emotional harm.
Findings showing that the presence of clinical depression and varying types of social support alters the established relationship between substance use disorder and child neglect, suggesting that treatment should look beyond simply promoting abstinence among parents misusing alcohol and other drugs, the researchers said.
For parents without clinical depression, the types of social support alone did not explain neglectful behaviors. But, for their counterparts, it did. Parents experiencing clinical depression were associated with lower neglect frequency when they had people present in their life who they perceived could help raise their children, but those who reported having more friends to spend time with socially had higher rates of neglect.
"For parents who have clinical depression, their substance use does not seem to have as large of an effect if they have social supports that can provide tangible resources to help care for the child," Kepple said. "Interestingly, having more people to spend time with and who can pull parents out of their home may create opportunities for neglect. People in our lives can pull us away from our responsibilities as much as they can help us navigate through challenges."
The relationship between substance use and social supports is more complicated for parents with no co-occurring clinical depression. Social companionship could be protective or risky, depending on the type of substance use behaviors that a parent reported. For example, the study found neglect rates were comparable among parents reporting no people in their lives who provided opportunities for recreational activities, regardless of substance use behaviors. In contrast, researchers observed higher neglect risk for parents reporting either harmful/risky substance use or substance use disorders for parents reporting one to two people providing social companionship. Yet, findings showed parents reporting three or more sources of social companionship only increased neglect risks for the subsample of parents reporting past year substance use disorder.
Kepple said future research will further examine the types of social interactions parents have with individuals within their social networks and how that influenced neglectful or harmful behaviors. She also plans to work with parents in recovery from prior substance use disorder to understand how their experiences in recovery services and communities have affected their parenting.
Study results show the importance of not simply relying on a single factor to make determinations in services or treatment for parents who have neglected or are at risk of neglecting their children. To better serve families, evaluating the big picture, including factors like clinical depression, social supports and substance use is necessary, researchers argue. It may require more time, resources and clinical thinking; the data supports modern interventions that are providing comprehensive services that support recovery and well-being of parents to address neglect behaviors.
"Neglect is highly contextual," Kepple said. "There are lots of reasons it might be occurring, and that's what we need to understand and further explore. We can't just say 'there's substance misuse, that's a problem,' or 'they have social support, that's good.' When you break these things down, context matters. These findings suggest an individualized plan is likely the best plan, given the complex interactions that are occurring among different risk and protective factors. If systems mandate a parent remain abstinent from alcohol or substance use without addressing underlying mental health or social supports needs, we are not addressing the whole picture."
INFORMATION:
Proteomics produces enormous amounts of data, which can be very complex to analyze and interpret. The free software platform MaxQuant has proven to be invaluable for data analysis of shotgun proteomics over the past decade. Now, Jürgen Cox, group leader at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, and his team present the new version 2.0. It provides an improved computational workflow for data-independent acquisition (DIA) proteomics, called MaxDIA. MaxDIA includes library-based and library-free DIA proteomics and permits highly sensitive and accurate data analysis. Uniting data-dependent and data-independent acquisition into one world, MaxQuant 2.0 is a big step towards improving applications ...
Skoltech researchers and their colleagues from the University of Southern California have performed genetic analysis of a Russian sunflower collection and identified genetic markers that can help predict the oil's fatty acid composition. The research was published in BMC Genomics.
Genomic selection, which helps quickly create new crop varieties, has been a much-discussed topic worldwide for the last 10 years. DNA sequencing and extensive genotyping have been applied to obtain genetic profiles of crops. When analyzed and compared to field data, those profiles help identify genetic ...
A study by Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) has found that as the type of COVID-19 misinformation rectified by Singapore's mainstream news media evolved over the course of the pandemic, the role played by the media in debunking those myths became increasingly important to citizens in the nation's fight to manage the outbreak.
Out of 2,000 news articles on COVID-19 published between 1 January to 30 April 2020, the NTU team analysed 164 news articles.
The team observed that news reports correcting science and health-related COVID-19 misinformation were dominant at the start of the outbreak ...
The UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Secretariat today released the first official draft of a new Global Biodiversity Framework to guide actions worldwide through 2030 to preserve and protect Nature and its essential services to people.
The framework includes 21 targets for 2030 that call for, among other things:
At least 30% of land and sea areas global (especially areas of particular importance for biodiversity and its contributions to people) conserved through effective, equitably managed, ecologically representative and well-connected systems of protected areas (and other effective area-based conservation measures)
A 50% of greater reduction in the rate of introduction of invasive ...
Children living in urban areas with high levels of air pollution, noise and traffic may be at higher risk of childhood obesity, according to a study by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal)--a centre supported by the "la Caixa" Foundation--and the University Institute for Primary Care Research Jordi Gol (IDIAP Jordi Gol). The study was funded by the La Marató de TV3 Foundation.
Published in Environment International, the study analysed data on 2,213 children aged 9 to 12 years in the city of Sabadell (Barcelona) who were participating in the ECHOCAT and INMA projects. ...
For 30 years, University of Tokyo Associate Professor Hisayoshi Nozaki has traveled an hour west of Tokyo to visit the Sagami River and collect algal samples to understand how living things evolved different sexes. Through new analysis of samples collected in 2007 and 2013 from dam lakes along the river, Lake Sagami and Lake Tsukui, researchers identified a species of freshwater algae that evolved three different sexes, all of which can breed in pairs with each other.
This phenomenon of three sexes is slightly different from hermaphroditism. In species that normally have two sexes, a hermaphroditic individual who can produce both the male and female sex cells usually exists due to unusual gene expression. Many plants and some invertebrate species have three ...
China's first meteorological satellite launched in 1988. It was named Fengyun, which roughly translates to "wind and cloud". Since then, 17 more Fengyun meteorological satellites were launched, with seven still in operation, to monitor Earth's wind, clouds and, more recently, extreme weather events such as hurricanes and wildfires. With more than 30 years of Earth observational data freely available to international partners, the Fengyun Meteorological Satellite program works as part of Earth's operational observation system, along with the United States' National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellites and Europe's polar orbiting meteorological satellite series to provide ...
RUDN University mathematicians have developed a model for calculating the density of 5G stations needed to achieve the required network parameters. The results are published in Computer Communications.
Network slicing (NS) is one of the key technologies that the new 5G communication standard relies on. Several virtual networks, or layers, are deployed on the same physical infrastructure (the same base stations). Each layer is allocated to a separate group of users, devices, or applications. To slice the network, one need the NR (New Radio) technology, which operates on millimetre waves. Most of the research in this area is aimed at creating an infrastructure of NR stations ...
"All living beings, including us, depend on photosynthesis," says Prof. Wataru Sakamoto of the Institute of Plant Science and Resources at Okayama University, Japan, as he begins to explain the core concepts behind a recent breakthrough in understanding plant physiology, which he was involved in. "Photosynthesis produces the energy needed to sustain plants and the oxygen we breathe. This reaction occurs in two steps, the first of which involves capturing light energy
and producing oxygen. This step takes place in a cell organelle in the plant cells called the chloroplast: specifically, ...
RUDN and Shahid Beheshti University (SBU) chemist proposed a protocol for converting cellulose into a catalyst for the synthesis of oxadiazoles. The new approach makes the catalyst 3 times more stable compared to the same catalyst obtained by the traditional method. The results are published in Carbohydrate Polymers
One of the directions of green chemistry is the biopolymers functionalization. Chemists modify polymers obtained from plants and animals -- they add functional molecular groups to them to get useful substances. For example, the catalysts for oxadiazoles synthesis are created from cellulose. They are necessary to produce polymers, dyes, medicines, and photographic ...
