Abstract Background Intimate partner violence (IPV) and violent discipline of children frequently co-occur, but are rarely addressed jointly in public health research or programming. In Senegal, both IPV and violent discipline are prevalent, particularly in rural regions, yet little is known about their intersection within households. This study investigates factors associated with IPV and violent discipline among young couples in southeastern Senegal and explores pathways between violence-related attitudes, social norms, IPV, and violence against children. Methods We conducted a cross-sectional baseline survey of 330 heterosexual couples (fathers aged 18–35 and their partners) in two rural communes in Senegal as part of a quasi-experimental evaluation of the REAL Fathers Initiative. Structured interviews assessed self-reported IPV, violent discipline of under-five children, social norms, parenting practices, and relationship quality. Multivariate logistic regressions and structural equation modeling (SEM) were used to identify predictors of IPV and violent discipline and test hypothesized pathways between them. Results Over half of couples (57%) reported IPV in the past three months; 89% of mothers and 71% of fathers reported using violent discipline. Mothers reported more frequent use of physical and harsh discipline than fathers. Among men, attitudes and injunctive norms supporting violence were significantly associated with physical discipline. Among women, higher education and confidence in nonviolent parenting were associated with lower likelihood of violent discipline. SEM showed a significant pathway from IPV to fathers’ use of physical violent discipline, with additional indirect effects through maternal violence. Conclusions Findings reveal high co-occurrence of IPV and violent discipline, shared risk factors, and evidence of interlinked pathways between partner and child-directed violence. These results underscore the need for integrated interventions targeting both forms of violence within the family system and support social norm change and parenting skills among young couples.
Abstract Drawing on Luthar’s relational framework of resilience, this study examines how parental resilience operates within marital dynamics to shape adolescent adjustment in Mexican-origin families. Using four waves of data from 604 families (M adolage = 12.41, SD = 0.97; 54.3% girls), we tested a longitudinal cascade linking W1 parental resilience to W4 adolescent anxiety and substance use via W2 marital warmth, W3 marital satisfaction, and W3 adolescents’ perceptions of interparental conflict. Actor-partner interdependence models revealed both intrapersonal and interpersonal pathways: wives’ resilience predicted own marital warmth, whereas husbands’ resilience predicted wives’ warmth. Indirect effects indicated that wives’ resilience was associated with lower adolescent anxiety and substance use through warmer marital interactions, higher marital satisfaction, and reduced perceived conflict. These findings position resilience as a promotive relational resource enacted within the marital dyad, advancing interparental positivity spillover theory by identifying parental resilience as upstream drivers of family processes that shape adolescent psychopathology.
In its debut novel, Stay With Me, Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ takes the personal tragedy of a childless Nigerian marriage and turns it into an introspective exploration of mental illness, trauma and isolation. The novel follows the psychological breakdown of Yejide, a woman whose infertility, forced polygyny and multiple maternal losses bring her to the edge of grief and madness in a culture that normalises men’s secrets while medicalising women’s pain. This paper explores the ways in which Adébáyọ̀ dramatises trauma as somatic (pseudocyesis and sickle-cell crises), relational (marital deception and betrayal) and cosmological (the Yoruba belief in abiku, the “spirit child” who dies to torment its mother). The novel’s alternate, retrospective first-person perspective formally represents the belatedness, dissociation and unspeakability of traumatic memory as articulated by Cathy Caruth and Judith Herman while alienation functions simultaneously at the gender, marriage and nation levels. The paper argues that Stay With Me reimagines the experience of infertility and loss as a symptom of structural violence and calls for a new critical focus on mental health in African women’s fiction through five interlocking themes: reproductive trauma, marital secrecy, stigmatised grief, sickle-cell disease as an intergenerational wound and the mirroring of domestic and national instability.
ABSTRACT Introduction Antipsychotic‐associated heart rate‐corrected QT (QTc) prolongation and sudden cardiac death are uncommon in young people, but risk is concentrated in patients with identifiable clinical vulnerability and during selected drug‐ or exposure‐related situations. We mapped the evidence and developed a risk‐stratified framework for clinical monitoring. Methods This structured narrative review searched PubMed in August 2026 using one comprehensive query and 41 targeted subqueries. After PMID‐based deduplication, 934 unique records underwent title screening, 382 abstract review, and 158 full‐text relevance assessment; 104 database‐derived sources met broad relevance criteria. Backward citation checking and author‐identified sources added 58 articles. Overall, 162 sources were considered and 100 providing direct, non‐redundant support were cited from the original search; three further sources were incorporated during peer review to address reviewer comments, for a final total of 103 cited references. Two authors independently assessed full‐text relevance. Youth evidence was prioritized; adult evidence was used for adult‐only agents or when youth‐specific data were unavailable. Findings were synthesized narratively without formal risk‐of‐bias or certainty assessment. Results Patient‐level factors, particularly electrolyte disturbance, bradycardia, restrictive eating disorder or medical instability, thyroid dysfunction, inherited channelopathy, structural disease, and interacting drugs, were more consistently associated with QTc risk than drug identity for many commonly used agents. Ziprasidone and pimozide had the strongest youth‐specific drug‐related signals. Adult evidence supported heightened caution with sertindole and iloperidone; high‐dose phenothiazines and amisulpride in overdose or renal impairment represented exposure‐ or context‐dependent risks. Clozapine required separate myocarditis‐focused surveillance. The evidence supports structured baseline risk assessment and targeted ECG and electrolyte testing, with repeat monitoring driven by risk factors, treatment changes, and agent‐specific warnings. Conclusion Monitoring should be tiered rather than uniformly scheduled for all patients. The proposed framework distinguishes core clinical risk assessment from targeted cardiac testing and identifies precautionary intervals that require prospective validation.
Alessandro Cuomo, Mario Pinzi, Andrea M. Fagiolini
Introduction: Violence against women (VAW) and violence against children (VAC) interconnect in a variety of important ways. Parenting programmes may offer promise for preventing both forms of violence, through supporting co-parenting as an avenue for reducing inter-parental conflict, and for engaging men without stigma. Method: This paper presents results from a pilot study with 50 families of the new Co-parenting Sinovuyo Caring Families Programme for Parents and Teens, which took place in rural Manicaland, Zimbabwe. It is a version of the Parenting for Lifelong Health (PLH) Teen programme, adapted to include a more explicit focus on preventing VAW and the engagement of fathers for the Zimbabwean context. A mixed methods embedded intervention design was used to assess changes in VAW and VAC from baseline to endline. Qualitative data included discussions with participant advisory boards before the pilot, individual interviews with participants at the endline, and a focus group discussion with all parenting group facilitators at the endline. Quantitative data included assessments at the endline and baseline with the primary outcome of intimate partner violence (IPV). Results: This programme led to significant reductions in reported physical IPV, co-parenting struggles, harsh parenting, parenting stress, and teen behaviour problems, but not in emotional IPV, teen-reported IPV, or attitudes to harsh punishment of children. There were significant increases in positive parenting and equitable gender attitudes. These quantitative findings are supported by the qualitative findings with participants and facilitators highlighting improved relationships between themselves and their community, families doing things together and less conflict in the home. Conclusion: This programme is promising for the prevention of VAW and VAC simultaneously.
This study investigates the co-occurrence of intimate partner violence (IPV) against mothers and their risk of perpetrating child maltreatment (CM) in North Macedonia, the Republic of Moldova, and Romania. Risk factors for IPV, CM, and their co-occurrence were identified. Two samples ( N 1 = 112, N 2 = 701) of mothers with children with behavioral problems were assessed. IPV was reported by 64% of mothers, CM by 96%, and their co-occurrence by 63%. Mothers exposed to emotional IPV reported more physical and emotional CM. Mothers exposed to physical IPV reported more physical CM. Motheŕs own history of CM and offspring's behavior problems were associated with IPV and CM co-occurrence.
Antonia Brühl, Catherine L. Ward, Jamie M. Lachman et al.
This study explored the association between parental discipline and mental health in a sample of 21,366 Chinese preschool children (mean age = 4.82 ± 0.89 years; 51.77% boys, 48.23% girls). Parenting practices were measured as overall parenting scores, laxness, overreactivity, and verbosity, and children’s mental health was assessed by the official simplified Chinese version of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). Both outcomes were dichotomized using validated cut-offs for Chinese preschoolers, and odds ratios are reported as the odds of meeting these cut-off definitions (Total Difficulties Score > 14; adequate Prosocial Behavior Score ≥ 6). The results indicated that higher parenting scores (for total difficulties: AOR = 4.03; 95% CI: 3.64–4.46; for prosocial behavior: AOR = 0.48; 95% CI: 0.45–0.51), particularly in laxness (for total difficulties: AOR = 1.28; 95% CI: 1.23–1.34; for prosocial behavior: AOR = 0.88; 95% CI: 0.85–0.91) and overreactivity (for total difficulties: AOR = 1.83; 95% CI: 1.76–1.90; for prosocial behavior: AOR = 0.66; 95% CI: 0.64–0.68), were associated with higher odds of a Total Difficulties Score > 14 (i.e., risk of mental health difficulties) and lower odds of an adequate Prosocial Behavior Score (≥ 6), while verbosity (for total difficulties: AOR = 0.80; 95% CI: 0.77–0.84; for prosocial behavior: AOR = 1.23; 95% CI: 1.19–1.27) was associated with lower odds of a Total Difficulties Score > 14 and higher odds of an adequate Prosocial Behavior Score (≥ 6). Subgroup analyses suggested potential effect modification by education level and child age, but most interaction effects were not significant after multiple comparison correction. The findings emphasize the need for balanced parenting and interventions targeting both discipline and parental well-being to enhance children’s mental health.
Knowledge is constructed through questioning. In line with this, Nigerian feminist author Buchi Emechet a questions the traditional methods of stereotyping the role of motherhood, which overtly demonstrates how deliberately political it is to confine a woman merely within her role as a mother, even if she possesses every possible potential to construct her own multifaceted ‘self’ as an independent entity in the mainstream of society. Nnu Ego, the female protagonist of The Joys of Motherhood, is deserted by her first husband for her inability to produce a child and her second husband, too, though she produces several children by him, objectifies her by disregarding her individual human 'self.' She exhausts herself for educating her children and ultimately dies unheard and unattended. But the traditional patriarchal paradigm defines her success and failure in terms of her children’s success and failure, and thus in general, it hinders women in general from developing their agency and transforms them into 'Other.' This qualitative research will address the research question—how does patriarchal politics work behind the process of transforming a mother into an ‘Other’? This paper will borrow the theoretical framework from the Marxist feminist theorists, such as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and the Afro-American feminist bell hooks.
Abstract Violence against children (VAC) is a complex social problem, and this edited volume offers important insights for how researchers, practitioners, and policymakers can continue to advance work on the prevention and response to VAC in all of its forms. Specifically, researchers should employ a diverse conceptualization of violence, considering the co-occurring and compounding effects of violence on the lives of children. Researchers should also continue to forward longitudinal and process-oriented work, as well as mixed-methods work focusing on trajectories of both risk and resilience. This will further advance well-contextualized and holistic understandings of children’s flourishing. Practitioners should regularly engage in multisystemic and multisectoral partnerships to support comprehensive models of care, with the prevention of violence as a critical goal of these efforts. Similarly, policymakers should consider how to support integrated networks that address children’s holistic needs.
Laura E. Miller-Graff, Scott L. Moeschberger, Catherine A. Maloney
Background Anthropometric assessment remains the cornerstone of the identification and classification of pediatric undernutrition, whereas the role of laboratory biomarkers is less well established. Objective To evaluate serum copeptin in children with undernutrition and to compare its discriminatory performance with that of serum albumin. Methods This single-center cross-sectional case-control study included children aged 1 month to 18 years with undernutrition and healthy controls recruited from the same clinical setting. Serum copeptin concentrations were measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Receiver operating characteristic analysis and multivariable logistic regression were performed. Age-stratified and sensitivity analyses were also conducted. Results A total of 98 children were included: 44 with undernutrition and 54 healthy controls. Serum copeptin concentrations were significantly higher and serum albumin concentrations were significantly lower in children with undernutrition than in healthy controls (both p < 0.001). In ROC analysis, copeptin yielded an area under the curve of 0.729 (95% CI 0.622–0.835), whereas albumin yielded an area under the curve of 0.726 (95% CI 0.618–0.833), with no significant difference between the two ROC curves (DeLong p = 0.977). In multivariable analysis adjusted for age and sex, both copeptin and albumin remained independently associated with undernutrition. A combined copeptin–albumin model showed higher discrimination within the study sample. Conclusion Serum copeptin is elevated in children with undernutrition. Although it does not outperform albumin as a standalone biomarker, it may provide complementary information when interpreted alongside albumin.
