Norhayati Ibrahim

Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia | ukm · School of Healthcare Sciences

Background: Stress amidst the COVID-19 pandemic is becoming more prevalent. This paper aimed to describe the validation process of the Malay Perceived Stress Scale modified for COVID-19 (PSS-10-C) amongst Malaysian youths. Methods: The cross-sectional validation study design was employed in this study. In Phase I, the scale was translated into M...

Introduction Resilient ageing is conceptualised as strive towards achieving satisfactory quality of life (QoL) at old age by embracing adaptive and coping mechanisms against adversities regardless of health conditions. Preventive Home Visit (PHV) including various types of home-care interventions were introduced to delay health deterioration and im...

Background This systematic review aims to review research manuscripts during the COVID-19 pandemic that focus on the relationship between self-efficacy, adversity quotient, COVID-19-related stress and academic performance on a range of undergraduate student. Methods The authors will perform comprehensive searches of published studies in electronic...

Due to the increasing importance of caregivers in the treatment outcomes of patients with mental illness, this study aimed to systematically review studies investigating the former’s caregiver burden and determine its prevalence. An open search, without filters, was conducted. Articles were selected from Medline, Scopus, and PubMed from inception t...

Background: Lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) individuals have been found to experience a high prevalence of psychological conditions. The present study aims to examine the relationship between victimisation, depression and suicidal ideation among LGB adults in Malaysia. Methods: This study used a cross-sectional design. We distributed the questio...

This study assessed the burden, psychological distress and quality of life (QoL) of Malaysian family caregivers of outpatients with schizophrenia. Of the caregivers (N = 200), 49.5% reported a high burden of care. Higher psychological distress and burden correlated with lower QoL. Older, divorced/widowed, and lower educational level caregivers indi...

Background Adolescence is a critical period of transition from childhood to adulthood and involves changes in a child’s biological, emotional, and social aspects. An adolescent’s behavior and actions are largely impacted by peer pressure. The Peer Pressure Scale Questionnaire-Revised (PPSQ-r) is a tool for assessing the susceptibility of adolescent...

Background Decriminalizing suicide may decrease overall suicide rates because then individuals who are at risk of suicide would be more willing to seek help from the community and from mental health professionals, therefore enabling early interventions for preventing suicidality. We aimed to examine the suicide trends over the last 20 years in 20 c...

Introduction The number of patients in Malaysia requiring dialysis is expected to rise substantially in the future due to the ageing population and increasing prevalence of diabetes mellitus and hypertension. Hence, more individuals will be expected to adopt the role of caregivers in the future. The upward trend of end-stage renal disease (ESRD) an...

Abstract Background This study examines the 20-year trend of suicide in 46 Muslim-majority countries throughout the world and compares their suicide rates and trends with the global average. Ecological-level associations between the proportion of the Muslim population, the age-standardized suicide rates, male-to-female suicide rate ratio, and the H...

Background: The Malay version of the Yatt Suicide Attitude Scale (YSAS) was found to be reliable and valid for use in the Malaysian context. This study aims to validate and determine the cut-off points of the English version of the YSAS for a wider application by English-speaking researchers and practitioners. Methods: The English version of the YS...

Uncontrolled drug and substance use (DSU) may pose unprecedented threats to nation building and a country’s socioeconomic development. Despite considerable efforts made and resources used to address DSU concerns, Malaysia has seen a significant annual rise in cases of DSU. The bulk of the reported cases originate from youth between the ages of 15 a...

Older adults are vulnerable towards cognitive frailty that can lead to adverse health outcomes and telerehabilitation appears to be a potential platform to reverse cognitive frailty among older adults. The aim of this coping review is to identify the usage of telerehabilitation and its common platform of delivery among older adults with mild cognit...

Background: Suicide is a preventable cause of death. Examining suicide rates and trends are important in shaping national suicide prevention strategies. Therefore, the objectives of this study were to analyze age-standardized suicide trends of Malaysia between 2000 and 2019 using the WHO Global Health Estimates data, and to compare the 2019 rate wi...

Background Drug abuse is detrimental, and excessive drug usage is a worldwide problem. Drug usage typically begins during adolescence. Factors for drug abuse include a variety of protective and risk factors. Hence, this systematic review aimed to determine the risk and protective factors of drug abuse among adolescents worldwide. Methods Preferred...

Objective In this study, we aim to assess general psychological health, associated factors, and the potential of coping strategies as a mediator for middle-aged and older Malaysian adults during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods A total of 535 individuals aged 52 years and above from the previous cohort and interventional studies in Peninsular Malays...

Background There has been mixed findings on whether a healthcare workers’ religious beliefs contribute positively or negatively to their attitudes towards suicidal patients. Aims This study aims to explore qualitatively the influence of religious/spiritual beliefs on healthcare workers’ attitudes towards suicide and suicidal patients in the cultur...

Aim: The goal is to explore available evidence and provide greater clarity to what is described as psychosocial intervention to improve cognitive function among older population with MCI as well as identifying areas for future research. Methods: An electronic literature search of PubMed, Cochrane, Ebscohost, Medline, Scopus, and gray resource was c...

We examined whether burnout, depression, anxiety, stress, lifetime suicidal ideation, self-efficacy in preventing suicide and demographic factors predicted the understanding of and willingness to help suicidal patients among hospital healthcare workers. A total of 368 healthcare workers from the major surgical and medical departments in a general h...

Background: Cognitive frailty (CF) is identified as one of the main precursors of dementia. Multidomain intervention has been found to delay or prevent the onset of CF. Objective: The aim of our present study is to determine the effectiveness of a comprehensive, multidomain intervention on CF; to evaluate its cost effectiveness and the factors i...

The surge prevalence of suicidal behavior among Malaysian attracts attention for prevention and intervention. More recent plates measure suicide behavior per se and predict the tendency of future suicide behavior. However, in Malaysia, such scales were understudied and cause a massive lack of scales and instruments to measure suicidal behavior amon...

Background There is a need to understand the psychological characteristics of suicide attempters to prevent future suicide attempts. This study aims to examine potential differences between individuals who have attempted suicide and those who have not done so, on several risk and protective measures. Method Participants were 11,806 undergraduate s...

BACKGROUND Older adults are vulnerable towards cognitive frailty that can lead to adverse health outcomes such as cognitive frailty, falls, disabilities, hospitalizations and increased morbidity. With advancement of healthcare technology, there is a potential to manage and reverse cognitive frailty among older adults using a multi-domain interventi...

Background: The effect of circadian disruption on the bio-psychological clock system has been widely studied. However, the mechanism and the association of circadian rhythm disruption with mental health and physiological responses are still unclear. Therefore, this study was conducted to investigate the effects of circadian rhythm disruption on men...

Background Although the suicide rate in China has decreased over the past 20 years, there have been reports that the younger age group has been experiencing an increased incidence of completed suicide. Given that undergraduate groups are at higher risks of suicidality, it is important to monitor and screen for risk factors for suicidal ideation and...

Background: This article aims to review research manuscripts in the past 5 years that focus on the effects of debt on depression, anxiety, stress, or suicide ideation in Asian countries. Methods: A search for literature based on the PRISMA guidelines was conducted on Medline, PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, and ScienceDirect, resulting in nine manu...

The article presents reliability statistics data in relation to the development of emotional instability and behavioral difficulties scale for youths in a Malaysia context. The data were obtained from youths participants in Kuala Lumpur and Klang Valley, Selangor, Malaysia. The data has four different subscales in describing emotional instability a...

This study evaluated the effectiveness of a depression literacy program on depression literacy, mental health stigma, and help-seeking attitude among adolescents with a monthly household income of RM3900 a month or less (B40) in Malaysia. The program included a lecture, mental awareness activities, and a short video on depression. Residents from a...

This is a preliminary study to examine the factor structure, reliability, and validity of an obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) screening tool for use in the Malaysian setting. A total of 199 Malaysian adults were recruited for this study. After cleaning and normalizing the data, 190 samples were left to be analyzed. Principle component analysis u...

Background Mental illness rates among young people is high, yet the frequency of help-seeking is low, especially among those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Understanding factors influencing help-seeking, such as mental illness beliefs, stigma and literacy among B40 individuals is important, but past studies are sparse. Hence, we aimed to exa...

Background The high number of adolescents and young adults harbouring suicidal ideation, as reported by the Ministry of Health Malaysia, is alarming. This cross-sectional study aims to examine the association between social support and spiritual wellbeing in predicting suicidal ideation among Malaysian adolescents. Methods A total of 176 adolescen...

Introduction Despite suicide rate becoming a growing trend in research locally and globally, there is no standard measuring instrument developed in Malaysia. The aim of this study is to establish the first ever Malay version of suicide screening tool that is suitable and fit with multiracial and complex culture of Malaysia. Methods This study comp...

Instrument Attachment for Plos One. (DOCX)

Yatt Suicide Attitude Scale (YSAS). (DOCX)

The aim of this study is to identify the psychological factors that affect the organization's citizenship behavior (OCB) among volunteers involved in the Kuala Lumpur 2017 Games held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. This quantitative study used online survey methods in collaboration with the Ministry of Youth and Sports. A set of psychometric tests with...

Usaha kerajaan dalam meningkatkan perkembangan sosial dan ekonomi masyarakat luar bandar dengan penubuhan Federal Land Development Authority (FELDA) telah banyak memberi kesan kepada penjanaan kewangan melalui pertanian yang seterusnya berupaya meningkatkan kualiti hidup masyarakat FELDA. Sebahagian besar peneroka tanah rancangan FELDA ini sudah be...

This study explored health-care workers' perception of patients' suicide intention and their understanding of factors leading to particular interpretations. Semistructured face-to-face in-depth interviews were conducted with 32 health-care workers from a general hospital in Klang Valley, Malaysia. Interview data were transcribed verbatim and analyz...

A structured weight management programme at a workplace may help in reducing the prevalence of overweight and obesity. Therefore, this intervention study was to determine the effectiveness of weight loss programmes including face-to-face, online and control group at workplace among employees who are overweight and obese. A total of 108 overweight a...

Introduction: Dyslexia is a neurobiological impairment that primarily affects reading ability. It is commonly known as a reading disorder which is likely to be present at birth and is generally identified at pre-school level. Dyslexia is manifested through difficulties with accurate word recognition and also by poor performance in reading and writ...

Introduction: The rate of suicide ideation everywhere continues to increase, and adolescents are therefore at risk of displaying suicidal behaviour. This study examined the protective role of the reasons for living and coping strategies in reducing suicidal ideation among young adolescents in Malaysia. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was condu...

Background: Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is described as a range of complex neurodevelopmental disorders that can cause issues with thoughts, language, emotions, and interpersonal relationship (American Psychiatric Association, 2018). Multiple components are involved in the treatment process, and to keep the family healthy is one of them. With th...

Introduction: There is a lack of suicide-related training in the nonpsychiatric health professional's basic education. We suggest that a continuing education through a brief gatekeeper suicide training program could be a suitable platform to improve suicide-related knowledge, self-efficacy, and attitudes. This study aimed at examining the effectiv...

Burnout and psychological distress were reported at higher rates among hospital healthcare workers. Despite this, there is a paucity of research examining the associated risk factors among workers across specialties and occupations in Asia. This paper aimed to examine the risk factors associated with burnout and psychological distress among Malaysi...

This review aims to present an overview of current research findings on the possible relationship between phonological awareness and visual-spatial skills among individuals with dyslexia. Narrative review of the relevant articles were obtained through computerized searches of databases such as PubMed, PubMed Central (PMC) and Google Scholar which i...

The phenomenon of adolescents involved with drug abuse is a worrying and very serious issue. The influence of drug-related partners would have a bad effect on other teens, especially teenagers who are at risk. Therefore, this study aims to identify the extent of the level of knowledge of the drug, especially in relation to the differences of attitu...

Securing a job in life of recovering substance users is important as an employment enables them to financially contribute to society, personal life and family members. Before joining the labor workforce, recovering substance users as pontential employees need to ensure that their skills meet the needs of today's job marketplace. The objective of th...

Introduction: This research examined the predicting roles of reasons for living and social support on depression, anxiety and stress in Malaysia. Method: This research was carried out on a sample of 263 participants (age range 12-24 years old), from Klang Valley, Selangor. The survey package comprises demographic information, a measure of reasons f...

Poster presentation at the International Health Sciences Symposium 2017

Understanding attitudes toward suicide, especially among healthcare personnel, is an important step in both suicide prevention and treatment. We document the adaptation process and establish the validity and reliability of the Attitudes Toward Suicide (ATTS) questionnaire among 262 healthcare personnel in 2 major public hospitals in the Klang Valle...

Introduction: Caregivers often experience stressful situations while in the midst of the caregiving process. Thus, various methods of coping have been widely applied and studied in previous researches. The aim of this study was to develop a novel questionnaire to assess the coping strategies employed by those who provide care to patients, and to f...

Suicide is a global phenomenon that has been showing an upward trend in recent years. It is the second leading cause of death among youth. Studies on suicidal ideation warrant greater attention, as it leads to suicide attempts and other health risk behaviors. Thus, the objective of this study was to compare gender differences in suicidal ideation a...

Purpose Diabetes mellitus is prevalent among older adults, and affects their quality of life. Furthermore, the number is growing as the elderly population increases. Thus, this study aims to explore the predictors of quality of life among hospitalized geriatric patients with diabetes mellitus upon discharge in Malaysia. Methods A total of 110 hosp...

Hui Chien Ong,¹ Norhayati Ibrahim,² Suzaily Wahab³ ¹Biomedical Science Programme, ²Health Psychology Programme, Faculty of Health Sciences, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, ³Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, Pusat Perubatan Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Cheras, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Abstract: Nowadays, family members are gradually ta...

Kertas ini membincangkan hasil kajian quasi-eksperimen yang dilakukan untuk menyelidik hubungan di antara trait personaliti dan pemanduan agresif (menyimpang dari kebiasaan) dikalangan pemandu muda Malaysia. Sebanyak 127 pelajar dengan umur purata 22 (68 lelaki dan 59 wanita), dan lesen memandu sah kelas B2 telah direkrut di dalam kajian ini. Sebel...

The prevalence of chronic kidney disease (CKD) have increased and become one of the major public health concerns worldwide including Malaysia. Previous studies on CKD generally focused on patients who were already undergoing dialysis treatment; however, studies investigating the stresses experienced by pre-dialysis CKD patients were limited. This s...

Although illegal (motorcycle) street racing is alarming, little is known about the age, educational and psychological characteristics of these illegal (motorcycle) street racers (mat rempit). Therefore, the aim of this research is to examine the age, educational and selected psychological characteristics of mat rempit in Malaysia. This cross-sectio...

This paper discusses the result of a quasi experimental study aimed to investigate the relationship between personality traits and aggressive (aberrant) driving among young Malaysian drivers. 127 students with mean age of 22 (68 males and 59 females) and valid class B2 driving license were recruited for the study. Before exposure to experimental in...

Graphical abstract Abstract This paper discusses the result of a quasi experimental study aimed to investigate the relationship between personality traits and aggressive (aberrant) driving among young Malaysian drivers. 127 students with mean age of 22 (68 males and 59 females) and valid class B2 driving license were recruited for the study. Before...

The prevalence of motorcycle street racing is increasing in Malaysia and has become a major public concern. As a major focus of the international studies were on illegal car racing overseas, and there are only a limited number of studies address illegal motorcycle street racing. Thus, this study aims to examine the high-risk activities of motorcycl...

This study sets out to gauge the relationship between developmental assets of adolescents and their negative mental health outcomes. Sample size comprised of 346 respondents of disadvantaged (at-risk) youth from suburban areas of Kuala Lumpur by using purposive and snowball sampling techniques. Two instruments were used; General Health Questionnair...

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is commonly associated with various negative health outcomes. The aim of this study was to examine the influence of personality and social support on health-related quality of life in patients with chronic kidney disease. Health-related quality of life (HRQoL) is the quality of life studied in relation to health, and it...

This cross-sectional study examined the influence of illness perception of health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in end stage renal disease (ESRD) patients on either hemodialysis (HD) or continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis (CAPD). The Short Form-36 (SF-36) was used to measure HRQoL which comprised the Physical Component Summary (PCS) and Men...