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141
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Introduction
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January 2015 - December 2016
April 2011 - December 2014
Publications
Publications (141)
Maltreatment by parents can be conceptualized as pathogenic escalations of a disturbed parent-child relationship that have devastating consequences for children's development and mental health. Although parental psychopathology has been shown to be a risk factor both for maltreatment and insecure attachment representations, these factors`joint cont...
In the past decade, millions of children and adolescents have been forced to flee from protracted or newly erupted violent conflicts. Forcibly displaced children are particularly vulnerable for developing mental health problems. However, a timely and systematic review of the current evidence is lacking. We conducted a systematic review of factors c...
An increasing number of orphans in low-and middle-income countries are living in institutional care facilities where they experience poor quality of care and ongoing maltreatment. To prevent maltreatment, we tested the effectiveness and feasibility of the intervention Interaction Competencies with Children-for Caregivers (ICC-C). In a two-arm clust...
Background
Few interventions addressing teacher violence have been evaluated in low-income countries.
Objectives
In Southwestern Uganda we tested the feasibility and effectiveness of the preventative intervention Interaction Competencies with Children – for Teachers (ICC-T) in reducing teachers’ use of violence against students.
Trial design: Two-...
Violent discipline in schools infringes on children's rights and is associated with harmful developmental consequences for students. This calls for effective intervention programs, particularly in countries with high prevalence of violent discipline in schools. This study tested the effectiveness of the preventative intervention Interaction Compete...
Exposure to child maltreatment is associated with various negative outcomes across the life-span. Even though emotional maltreatment is highly prevalent, it is underrepresented in research. Most studies on emotional maltreatment to date focused only on adults and adolescents in retrospective surveys. However, it is important to include the current...
Zusammenfassung: Antisemitismus ist eine historisch tief verankerte Form der Feindseligkeit gegenüber Jüdinnen und Juden, die aktuell wieder mit einer stark zunehmenden Gewaltbereitschaft einhergeht. Die erheblichen psychischen Auswirkungen von Antisemitismus sind vielfältig und werden durch wiederholte, häufig mehrdimensionale Diskriminierung und...
Background
Supportive social connections are a crucial determinant of the mental health and adjustment of youth in conflict-torn regions. Conflict-affected youth face particular risks to their well-being due to high levels of trauma exposure and perpetration of violent acts as members of armed groups and post-conflict discrimination. However, littl...
Background: While cumulative childhood maltreatment (CM) has been linked to psychopatho-logical outcomes, recent studies point to the relevance of the type and timing of exposure. The aim of the current study was to better understand their importance beyond the cumulative burden of CM for psychopathological symptoms in middle childhood. Methods: A...
Background
Violence against children at home and at school is particularly prevalent in Africa and is associated with adverse and persistent health effects on children. The violence prevention intervention Interaction Competencies with Children - for Teachers (ICC-T) is an effective tool to reduce violence against children by fostering teachers’ no...
The precise assessment of childhood adversity is crucial for understanding the impact of aversive events on mental and physical development. However, the plethora of assessment tools currently used in the literature with unknown overlap in childhood adversity types covered hamper comparability and cumulative knowledge generation. In this study, we...
Background: When traumatic events and losses intersect in the form of traumatic loss, these events can trigger both posttraumatic stress disorder and pathological grief.
Objective: This systematic review investigates which characteristics differentiate between the development of the respective disorders or are associated with comorbidity.
Method:...
Background
To bridge the gap in adolescent psychotherapy created by the increasing need for mental health interventions and the limited possibilities of in-person treatment during the pandemic, many health care providers opted to offer online mental health care programs. As a result, the number of mental health apps available in app stores experien...
Purpose
Globally, many children are exposed to violent discipline in multiple settings. Interventions to prevent violent discipline are therefore highly needed. In the present study, the feasibility of the intervention Interaction Competencies with Children – for Parents (ICC-P), an additional module of a school-based intervention for teachers, was...
Background: Persons displaced by conflict often consider returning to their area of origin. Lack of reliable information about conditions in the area of origin makes this decision more difficult. Displaced persons address this by seeking information from other sources, but must then assess the credibility of these sources. Objective: This study exa...
Background: Sexual violence is a public health issue among adolescents globally but remains understudied in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Objective: The present study focused on the association of cumulative exposure to different types of sexual violence with mental and physical health problems and prosocial behaviour.
Method: We conducted a survey with a re...
Although school violence is a serious problem, teacher emotional violence that has short- and long-term detrimental effects on children’s development is often overlooked. Considering the potential negative effects, it is important to determine teacher characteristics associated with teacher emotional violence, especially in societies where the prev...
Although school violence is a serious problem, teacher emotional violence that has short- and long-term detrimental effects on children’s development is often overlooked. Considering the potential negative effects, it is important to determine teacher characteristics associated with teacher emotional violence, especially in societies where the prev...
To prevent an intergenerational cycle of malfunction, it is crucial to understand how mothers' exposure to traumatic war experiences contributes to their children's vulnerability to mental health problems. This study examined the role of maternal psychopathology and mother-child emotional availability (EA) in the association between mothers' trauma...
Background: War-related trauma is associated with varying posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) prevalence rates in refugees. In PTSD development, differential DNA methylation (DNAm) levels associated with trauma exposure might be involved in risk versus resilience processes. Studies investigating DNAm profiles related to trauma exposure and PTSD am...
Purpose
To assess the prevalence of suicidality and associated factors of suicide risk in a sample of Burundian refugee families living in three refugee camps in Tanzania.
Methods
Children (n = 230) and their parents (n = 460) were randomly selected and interviewed about suicidality (suicidal ideation, plans, and attempts) and a range of sociodemo...
The assessment of early childhood adversity (ACE) is crucial for understanding the impact of aversive events on child development. However, the heterogeneity of assessment tools poses challenges to precision and similarity of measures, and hence interchangeability. In this study, we conducted two separate item-level content analyses of in total 34...
Child maltreatment is a pervasive public health problem. Evidence from numerous studies suggests that child maltreatment leads to both short-term and long-term detrimental effects. However, only few studies investigated the differential effects of specific child maltreatment types on mental health. In the current study, we aimed to detect the frequ...
Background
The association between children's exposure to family violence and poor academic outcomes is well-established. Less is known about how exposure to violence in the school context, i.e., by teachers and by peers, affects academic functioning. Moreover, the role of children's mental health problems in this link has hardly been examined.
Ob...
Background
It is unclear whether findings from previous network analyses of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms among children and adolescents are generalizable to youth living in war‐torn settings and whether there are differences in the structure and connectivity of symptoms between children and adolescents. This study examined the netw...
Violence against children (VAC) is one of the most significant, widespread, and preventable threats to human development in our world today. Children represent the future of our society, and as such, understanding and addressing VAC is critical to building cultures and systems that promote a just and sustainable peace. This edited volume aims to pr...
Using a multi‐informant approach, we assessed 914 children (mean age = 12.58 years, standard deviation [SD] = 1.43) and 893 caregivers (98.3 per cent female, mean age = 40.07 years, SD = 11.46) in Tanzania. Results showed that 93.3 per cent (n = 828/893) of caregivers reported using violent discipline, while 91.0 per cent (n = 832/914) of the child...
Violence against children (VAC) is one of the most significant, widespread, and preventable threats to human development in our world today. Children represent the future of our society, and as such, understanding and addressing VAC is critical to building cultures and systems that promote a just and sustainable peace. This edited volume aims to pr...
Youth in conflict-affected regions are exposed to a multitude of traumatic events. These individuals often witness violence; experience it firsthand; and, in some cases, become perpetrators. The interplay of events shapes systematic trauma histories that may have unique implications for youths' mental health. In a cross-sectional study conducted in...
Violence against children is a global problem and has massive negative consequences for individuals and society. In many countries violence in education is socially accepted and widespread. Violence against children has multiple individual and societal causes and maintaining factors. Even in schools, children are frequently exposed to violence, whi...
Gewalt gegen Kinder ist ein globales Problem und hat massive negative individuelle und gesellschaftliche Folgen. In vielen Ländern ist Gewalt in der Erziehung gesellschaftlich akzeptiert und weit verbreitet. Gewalt gegen Kinder hat vielfältige gesellschaftliche und individuelle Ursachen sowie aufrechterhaltende Faktoren. Auch in Schulen sind Kinder...
The COVID-19 pandemic has created opportunities to study resilience in multiple, interrelated societal systems while considering the institutional, community and individual level. We aim to discuss critical, yet underrepresented, issues in resilience discourses which are fundamental to advance theories, concepts and measurement of health system res...
Background
Many orphans in East Africa are living in institutional care facilities where they experience poor quality of care and ongoing maltreatment. We report on the extension of a cluster-randomized controlled trial aiming to replicate and show sustainability of previous found effects and to discover long-term effects of the intervention Intera...
There is increasing evidence for the deleterious impact of emotional violence on children`s well-being and development. This systematic review focused on a) the prevalence and (b) correlates of emotional violence by teachers. A literature search of quantitative and peer-reviewed studies published in English between 1980 and April 2021 was conducted...
Given the lack of validated screening tools for the well-being of children and caregivers in family-based care in low-income settings, the present study aimed to test the psychometric quality of two newly developed tools: Scorecard A as a screener for children's emotional and behavioral problems and Scorecard B as a screener for caregivers' well-be...
Background: High rates of maltreatment and low caregiving quality in institutional care settings have been identified in various low-and middle-income countries. Many studies have focused on children living in institutions. Objective: This study investigates the prevalence of maltreatment, caregiver-specific, orphanage-context factors, and their re...
Executive functioning (EF) may be important for refugee youth's long-term adjustment. The current study examined associations between factors on different ecological levels (individual, family, community) and inhibitory control (IC), working memory (WM), cognitive flexibility (CF), and selective attention (SA) among 226 Burundian youth aged between...
Context
Although teacher violence at schools is a serious problem in Haiti, there is a lack of systematic evidence on the effectiveness of school-based interventions in reducing teacher violence in this low-income country.
Objective
To test the effectiveness of the preventative intervention Interaction Competencies with Children for Teachers (ICC-...
Background
Violence has severe and long-lasting negative consequences for children’s and adolescents’ well-being and psychosocial functioning, thereby also hampering communities’ and societies’ economic growth. Positive attitudes towards violence and the lack of access to alternative non-violent strategies are likely to contribute to the high level...
Children and adolescents' mental health risk and resilience arise from a complex interplay of factors on several socio-ecological levels. However, little is known about the factors that shape the mental health of refugee youth living in refugee camps close to ongoing conflict. We conducted a cross-sectional study with a representative sample of 217...
Background:
The detrimental impact of child maltreatment on children and adolescents' academic achievement and later socioeconomic wellbeing is well known. However, it is still unclear (1) whether maltreatment is actually linked to youth's long- and short-term memory deficits and (2) whether potential impairments are due to maltreatment per se or...
Populations in war-torn regions are exposed to a wide array of traumatic events that can cause an enormous psychological burden. Individual characteristics influence the likelihood of being exposed to certain events, pointing to systematic interindividual differences in trauma exposure. However, there is a dearth of studies examining potential patt...
The need for intervention strategies aiming to reduce teachers’ use of violent discipline methods has been expressed repeatedly, especially for countries where this practice is socially and legally accepted. Nevertheless, initial targets for interventions are not clearly identified, as factors contributing to teachers’ use of violence are still und...
Parental violence poses a considerable, yet mitigable risk for the mental health and well-being of refugee children living in resource-poor refugee camps. However, little is known about potential risk factors for parental violence in these settings. Using an ecological systems perspective and a multi-informant approach, we investigated ontogenic (p...
Background
Child maltreatment poses high risks to the mental health and cognitive functioning of children not only in childhood but also in later life. However, it remains unclear whether child maltreatment is directly associated with impaired cognitive functioning or whether this link is mediated by mental health problems. Our study aimed at exami...
School victimization has been negatively associated with children's social status. However, previous studies have primarily focused on peer victimization, leaving a significant knowledge gap regarding violence by teachers. We hypothesized that, when almost all children experience violence by teachers, not only the experience of violence, but also o...
1) Background: Teachers' personal and strenuous working conditions reflect the realities of the teaching vocation that may result in increased stress levels and associated negative consequences , such as negative emotions. It is also well-known that teacher stress contributes to more violence against students. However, little is known about persona...
Background: In humanitarian emergencies with few specialist resources for mental health care, it is a practical and ethical necessity to allocate available resources to interventions that target youth most in need of support and address contextually relevant factors of influence. Based on the findings of an extensive epidemiological observational s...
Clinical practice guidelines, such as those focusing on traumatic stress treatment, can play an important role in promoting inclusion and equity. Based on a review of 14 international trauma treatment guidance documents that explicitly mentioned children, we reflect on two areas in which these guidelines can become more inclusive and equitable; a)...
Background:
Sexual violence against minors is a global phenomenon with wide-ranging negative consequences. Global reports suggest that it is a particularly serious issue in East African countries, although research on prevalence and characteristics of violence in these countries is scarce.
Objective:
The aim of this study was to assess sexual vi...
Background: Child maltreatment poses high risks to the mental health and cognitive functioning of children not only in childhood but also in later life. However, it remains unclear whether child maltreatment is directly associated with impaired cognitive functioning or whether this link is mediated by mental health problems. Our study aimed at exam...
Objective: There is an often-hypothesized link between war exposure and social capital. Empirical studies testing this linkage, however, show mixed results. One potential influential factor that might explain these mixed results is impaired mental health, which includes a number of symptoms and behaviors that are associated with impaired social int...
Background
Teacher violence toward students is a common public health risk associated with various negative outcomes. Though previous studies examined the prevalence of teacher violence toward students and its association with negative outcomes, little is known about the association between teacher violence and school performance, and the mediating...
Background: The wars in the Democratic Republic of Congo have left indelible marks on the mental health and functioning of the Congolese civilians that sought refuge in Uganda. Even though it is clear that civilians who are exposed to potentially traumatizing events in war and conflict areas develop trauma-related mental health problems, scholarly...
Background: Despite the existing national and international plans of action to end violent discipline strategies used by teachers in schools, they still prevail in Tanzanian schools. This underlines the need to implement school- based interventions that aim at reducing violent discipline by teachers. In this study, we will evaluate the feasibility...
Die zentralen Bausteine der Diagnostik einer Posttraumatischen Belastungsstörung (PTBS) sind die Erfassung der traumatischen Ereignisse sowie die assoziierten Folgen auf symptomatischer und funktionaler Ebene. Für die Diagnosestellung nach der International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-10) [16] sind die do...
Background:
Despite global efforts to end violence against children in all settings, reports reveal that violence against children is still highly prevalent, especially in low-and middle- income countries. Violence in childhood is associated with a host of negative outcomes, and exposure in one setting can easily spill over to other contexts. For...
Background: Although the family constitutes the prime source of risk and resilience for thewell-being of children growing up in adverse conditions, the mental health of children livingin refugee camps has rarely been investigated in conjunction with their parents’mentalhealth.
Objectives: To examine the prevalence of posttraumatic stress disorder (...
Background Despite the existing national and international plans of action to end violent discipline strategies used by teachers in schools, it still prevails in Tanzanian schools. This underlines the need to implement school-based interventions that aim at reducing violent discipline by teachers. In this study, we will evaluate the feasibility and...
Background Despite the existing national and international plans of action to end violent discipline strategies used by teachers in schools, it still prevails in Tanzanian schools. This underlines the need to implement school-based interventions that aim at reducing violent discipline by teachers. In this study, we will evaluate the feasibility and...
Background:
Globally, the use of violent discipline methods by teachers to manage child behavior is still highly prevalent despite enactment of laws that prohibit school violence. In the case of Uganda there is a dearth of accurate prevalence statistics on school violence and factors associated with the use of violence by teachers.
Objectives:
T...
Stress during pregnancy widely associates with epigenetic changes and psychiatric problems during childhood. Animal studies, however, show that under specific postnatal conditions prenatal stress may have other, less detrimental consequences for the offspring. Here, we studied mental health and epigenome-wide DNA methylation in saliva following int...
Datasheet 2.zip contains the script and data for reproducing some of the analysis of this paper, this includes: Supplementary Text S1 which contains the R script that will reproduce our analysis using Supplementary Data S1–S4; Supplementary Text S2 explains the column names in Supplementary Data S1; Supplementary Data S1 is the result table with be...
Datasheet 1.pdf contains Supplementary Figures and Supplementary Tables.
International concern over refugee militarization has grown greatly in recent years. Despite the growing prominence attached to this issue by scholars and international organizations alike, few have examined refugee recruitment from the perspective of the recruiter. Drawing on the signalling theory, we argue that recruiters will only approach those...
Research has consistently demonstrated that violence and maltreatment are important risk factors for socially
deviant behavior among adolescents. This link has not been systematically examined among adolescents in Sub-
Saharan Africa. In this study, we assessed adolescents’ exposure to violence and maltreatment as well as their
socially deviant beh...
Etwa ein Drittel der in Europa Schutzsuchenden ist minderjährig. Einige der geflüchteten Kinder und Jugendlichen kommen ohne Eltern oder Sorgeberechtigte als unbegleitete Minderjährige in den aufnehmenden Ländern an. Vor und während der Flucht sind viele der Geflüchteten lebensbedrohlichen Situationen ausgesetzt und auch nach der Ankunft im Gastlan...
The majority of refugees has been affected by traumatic stressors. The accumulation of these stressors increases the risk for stress- and trauma-related mental health problems, as the risk for trauma-related disorders increases with the number of experienced traumatic event types. This dose-effect relationship partly explains the high and also vary...
Forced migration is one of the major challenges currently facing the international community. Many refugees have been affected by traumatic experiences at home and during their flight, putting them at a heightened risk of developing trauma‐related disorders. The new version of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD‐11) introduced two sib...
Despite the high risk of maltreatment in institutional care and resulting mental health
problems, interventions that focus on the prevention of violence and abuse are rare
(Hermenau, Goessmann, Rygaard, Landolt, & Hecker, 2017). We addressed this issue
and developed with Interaction Competencies with Children – for Caregivers (ICC-C) a
training wor...
The high global prevalence of school violence underlines the need for prevention. However, there are few scientifically evaluated intervention approaches that aim at preventing violence by teachers. We evaluated the feasibility and efficacy of the preventative intervention Interaction Competencies with Children for Teachers (ICC-T). In a cluster ra...