Akib Ul Huque's research while affiliated with University of Dhaka and other places

Research suggest that the social competence of children and adolescents is related to the quality of their lifespan development. The present study was carried out to adapt the Social Competence with Peers Questionnaire-Pupil (SCPQ-PU) to use it in research on and training for Bangladeshi youth. Standard procedure for the cultural adaptation of scale was followed and final version of Bangla SCPQ-PU had good reliability (i.e. Cronbach’s alpha, Guttman split-half coefficients) and validity (i.e. content and criterion validity) evidence. This short self-report measure is expected to be useful for researchers and practitioners who work with the child and adolescents of Bangladesh.

Background Bangladesh, like other low-resource countries, faces a shortage of a trained mental health workforce to meet its population's mental health needs adequately. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has further aggravated this. Mental health first aid (MHFA) is an internationally recognized training program that has been operating in Bangladesh since 2015. It offers a potential way to reduce the mental health treatment gap and skills shortage by training laypeople to help support individuals with mental health issues. The present study evaluated the effectiveness of MHFA training in Bangladesh. Methods An online modified Delphi study was conducted consisting of two rounds of a self-administered survey and a consensus workshop. A five-step logic framework was used to develop questionnaire statements (n=111) that consisted of 'general,' 'I,' and 'social impact' statements around the seven MHFA aims. The statements were constructed in English and adapted in Bangla. The expert panel consisted of 20 participants trained in the MHFA program. Participants anonymously stated their opinion on 111 round-1 statements and then on 27 low agreement statements in round-2. The consensus workshop facilitated a group discussion where participants explained their views on the low consensus items. ResultsThe consensus ranged from 61.5% (Aim 3: Promote recovery of good mental health) to 100% (Aim 7: To improve own health and well-being) with an overall consensus of 83.8%. 'Social impact' items produced the most (50%) disagreements. Participants' comments reflected 12 themes of MHFA's effectiveness in fostering and promoting mental health individually and socially. There were nine themes of disagreement reflecting individual, sociocultural, and political barriers to the implementation of MHFA in Bangladesh. Participants made recommendations for the MHFA and mental health initiatives in Bangladesh to increase mental health awareness, acceptance, and support in society.ConclusionMHFA training offers Bangladesh and other low-and-middle-income countries a potential solution to tackle mental health burden at individual and societal levels and the additional challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic poses to mental health.

Hudson’s parental‐child attachment scale (PCAS) is a popular instrument to assess the quality of parental child attachment ‐ the emotional bond that influences the social and emotional development of a child. The present study adapted this scale for using with Bangla speaking parents and their children. This study was conducted with 100 children and their parents (either father or mother). The internal consistency of the parental‐child attachment scale was computed by Cronbach’s alpha which was 0.888 for youth items and 0.816 for parent items. The split‐half reliability co‐efficient of the scale was 0.787 for youth items and 0.779 for parent items. So the preliminary reliability and content validity of the scale has been established. Dhaka Univ. J. Biol. Sci. 26(2): 117-123, 2017 (July)