[The mental health of Russians in "post-pandemic": the empirical studies review]

The article presents review of empirical social medical and sociological studies of mental health of Russians in "post-pandemic" (2022 - first half of 2023). The purpose of the study is to generalize results of corresponding studies. The review covers the articles in national scientific journals indexed in the RSCI, the results of monitoring surveys carried out by both all-Russian research organizations handling analysis of public opinion and by Federal research and educational organizations. The criteria of selection of studies included the study field stage was implemented in January 2022 - June 2023; sociological survey technique was applied; the study object was whole population of the Russian Federation or its subject or a separate social group. it was established, on the basis of all-Russian and regional data, that in mentioned period public mental health of residents of Russia is characterized by wave dynamics. The increasing of anxiety level in beginning of March and in the end of September 2022. The level of depressive symptomatic prevalence still exceeded "pre-pandemic" values. The increased level of anxiety is more typical in the youth and women. The vulnerable groups are also residents of territories bordering on zone of special military operation, members of families of combatants and Ukraine refugees. In conditions of law demand of population for psychological psychiatric care the issue of searching alternative tools of psychological safety of Russian citizen is actualized.

How does problem-solving pedagogy affect creativity? A meta-analysis of empirical studies

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of problem-solving pedagogy on individual students' creativity in different teaching contexts and conditions, and to examine the role of moderating variables that may affect the overall effect size. The study screened 19 relevant studies from the Web of Science for inclusion in the meta-analysis, and extracted 77 effect sizes from these studies that could be used in the meta-analysis. The study first explored the relationship between problem-solving pedagogy and the development of learner creativity, and further analysis focused on moderating variables to investigate the effects of instructional method, grouping method, grade level, problem-solving scaffolding, source of problems, the application of thinking tools, and the application of technology. The results showed that problem-solving pedagogy enhances students' creativity, while at the same time, among the sources of problems, student-discovered problems are most conducive to creativity stimulation, while teacher-determined problems and problems that lead to student discovery are less effective in terms of promoting creativity. Among the grouping methods, heterogeneous grouping can better utilize the creativity cultivation effect of the problem-solving pedagogy than random grouping and homogeneous grouping. Among the different levels of grades, learners in elementary school are better able to gain creativity under the influence of problem-solving pedagogy than learners in middle school, high school, college, and those in on-the-job learning. However, this study did not reveal any significant benefits for creativity enhancement under the four conditions of instructional method, problem-solving scaffolding, thinking tools-assisted, or technology. The results of this study clarify the importance of problem-solving pedagogy for creativity development, and also reveal the actual effects of the various ways of applying problem-solving pedagogy on creativity development as well as the problems that exist, which provides inspiration for how to better utilize problem-solving pedagogy in the future.

Internet of medical things-based real-time digital health service for precision medicine: Empirical studies using MEDBIZ platform

The aim of this study was to introduce the implemented MEDBIZ platform based on the internet of medical things (IoMT) supporting real-time digital health services for precision medicine. In addition, we demonstrated four empirical studies of the digital health ecosystem that could provide real-time healthcare services based on IoMT using real-world data from in-hospital and out-hospital patients. Implemented MEDBIZ platform based on the IoMT devices and big data to provide digital healthcare services to the enterprise and users. The big data platform is consisting of four main components: IoMT, core, analytics, and services. Among the implemented MEDBIZ platform, we performed four clinical trials that designed monitoring services related to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, metabolic syndrome, arrhythmia, and diabetes mellitus. Of the four empirical studies on monitoring services, two had been completed and the rest were still in progress. In the metabolic syndrome monitoring service, two studies were reported. One was reported that intervention components, especially wearable devices and mobile apps, made systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, waist circumference, and glycosylated hemoglobin decrease after 6 months. Another one was presented that increasing high-density lipoprotein cholesterol and triglyceride levels were prevented in participants with the pre-metabolic syndrome. Also, self-care using healthcare devices might help prevent and manage metabolic syndrome. In the arrhythmia monitoring service, during the real-time monitoring of vital signs remotely at the monitoring center, 318 (15.9%) general hikers found abnormal signals, and 296 (93.1%) people were recommended for treatment. We demonstrated the implemented MEDBIZ platform based on IoMT supporting digital healthcare services by acquiring real-world data for getting real-world evidence. And then through this platform, we were developing software as a medical device, digital therapeutics, and digital healthcare services, and contributing to the development of the digital health ecosystem.

Medical artificial intelligence ethics: A systematic review of empirical studies

Background

Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are transforming medicine and healthcare. Scholars and practitioners have debated the philosophical, ethical, legal, and regulatory implications of medical AI, and empirical research on stakeholders' knowledge, attitude, and practices has started to emerge. This study is a systematic review of published empirical studies of medical AI ethics with the goal of mapping the main approaches, findings, and limitations of scholarship to inform future practice considerations.

Methods

We searched seven databases for published peer-reviewed empirical studies on medical AI ethics and evaluated them in terms of types of technologies studied, geographic locations, stakeholders involved, research methods used, ethical principles studied, and major findings.

Findings

Thirty-six studies were included (published 2013-2022). They typically belonged to one of the three topics: exploratory studies of stakeholder knowledge and attitude toward medical AI, theory-building studies testing hypotheses regarding factors contributing to stakeholders' acceptance of medical AI, and studies identifying and correcting bias in medical AI.

Interpretation

There is a disconnect between high-level ethical principles and guidelines developed by ethicists and empirical research on the topic and a need to embed ethicists in tandem with AI developers, clinicians, patients, and scholars of innovation and technology adoption in studying medical AI ethics.

ESL/EFL Learners' Responses to Teacher Written Feedback: Reviewing a Recent Decade of Empirical Studies

Teacher written feedback (TWF) has long been regarded as a necessary pedagogical tool for improving the writing proficiency of ESL/EFL learners, while student responses to this feedback can often reflect its effectiveness. This paper reviews 64 articles appearing in high-ranking journals during 2010–2021 in terms of research methodology, theoretical framework and main findings. Analysis of these articles reveals few studies adopted any theoretical frameworks to examine learner responses to TWF and suggests a need for longitudinal naturalistic studies adopting mixed methods and some theoretical framework such as sociocultural theory of mind (SCT) to better explain learners' dynamic engagement in response to TWF. The main findings of these previous studies reveal the diverse responses among learners at different language proficiency levels and in various sociocultural contexts. The results of the review indicate that future research could take classroom-based mixed-method research design to investigate learner variables.

Practice-guided public health philosophy

Although highly relevant, philosophical theory and philosophical competences are rarely integrated in empirical public health research. We suggest a variant of applied philosophy that is valuable for the development and improvement of public health research. We call it practice-guided public health philosophy because: (i) research questions derive from public health challenges, i.e. real-life concerns that relate to the prevention of disease or the promotion of health and well-being, (ii) the ultimate test of success lies within an empirical framework aiming to improve public health practices and (iii) philosophers collaborate very closely with different kinds of empirical researchers in the different stages of the research process. Using examples from current public health projects at the National Institute of Public Health at the University of Southern Denmark, we outline three paradigmatic cases of practice-guided public health philosophy: (i) by using philosophy as an idea generator of empirical research, (ii) by using philosophy as a frame of reference for interpreting ethnographic data and (iii) by using philosophy as an explanatory resource for discussing survey and register data.

Factors Affecting the Initial Engagement of Older Adults in the Use of Interactive Technology

Smart environments and the use of interactive technology has the potential to improve the quality of life for the senior community as well as to support the connections among the senior community and the world outside their community. In addition to the increasing number of studies in the field of aging and technologies, research is needed to understand the practical issues of user focus, adoption, and engagement for older adults to accept interactive technologies in their lives. In this study, we use two commercial technological interventions (uDraw and GrandPad) to understand technology-related perceptions and behaviors of older adults. We present five case studies that emerge from empirical observations of initial engagement with technology through research methods such as focus group discussions, in-depth interviews, observations, and diary studies. The contributions of this study are identification of the key factors that influence the initial engagement with interactive technology for older adults.

Introduction: Applying Clinical Psychological Science to Practice

Mental illness is a prevalent and extraordinarily complex phenomenon. Psychologists have developed distinct approaches toward understanding and treating mental illness, rooted in divergent epistemology. This introduction to the Special Issue on Clinical Psychological Science and Practice provides a brief overview of the scientist-practitioner gap, and explores one step (of many) toward bridging this divide. Seven compelling case illustrations featured in this Special Issue apply empirical findings to case formulation, treatment selection, and assessment across complex and varied clinical presentations. This issue thereby demonstrates the feasibility of integrating research and clinical expertise in mental healthcare.

Evaluation of ethical aspects in health technology assessment: more methods than applications?

Health technology assessment (HTA) emerged with the increased need for systematical evaluation of health technologies in the 1970s. From its very beginning, ethics was a constitutive part of HTA, and over the years a wide range of approaches have been suggested to address ethical aspects of health technologies. Despite a vast variety of methodologies in ethics, there is no consensus about the appropriateness of the existing methods. Moreover, while the available methods are many, their applications are few. While methods for addressing ethical issues in HTA have been richly reviewed, their applications are poorly tracked. Hence, a bottom up approach, that is, from practice to theory, may turn out to be as helpful as a top-down review. We need a review of the examples of ethics in HTA so we better can learn how the methods are used in practice, analyze the role of context, and better can assess the merits of the various methods.

Disordered self in the schizophrenia spectrum: a clinical and research perspective

This article explores the phenomenological and empirical rediscovery of anomalous self-experience as a core feature of the schizophrenia spectrum disorders and presents the current status of research in this field. Historically, a disordered self was considered to be a constitutive phenotype of schizophrenia. Although the notion of a disordered self has continued to appear occasionally over the years-mainly in the phenomenologically or psychodynamically oriented literature-this notion was usually considered as a theoretical construct rather than as referring to concretely lived anomalous experiences. Empirical research on the disorders of self-experience in schizophrenia can be traced back to the US-Denmark psychopathological collaboration in the well-known adoption and high-risk studies, which aimed at identifying trait or phenotypic vulnerability features. This research was later followed by clinical work with first-admission schizophrenia patients. We offer clinical descriptions of anomalous self-experience and outline the phenomenological structures of subjectivity that are needed for grasping the nature of these anomalous experiential phenomena. What appears to underlie these experiences is an instability of the first-person perspective that threatens the basic experience of being a self-coinciding, embodied, demarcated, and persisting subject of awareness. We summarize a series of empirical studies targeting self-experience in schizophrenia performed prior to and after the construction of a phenomenologically oriented psychometric instrument for assessing anomalies of self-experience, the Examination of Anomalous Self-Experience (EASE). These empirical studies support the classic clinical intuition that anomalous self-experiences form a central phenotype of schizophrenia. Implications for diagnosis and research are briefly discussed.

Emerging empirical evidence on the ethics of schizophrenia research

Many challenging ethical questions come with the scientific efforts to understand the nature and treatment of schizophrenia. The empirical study of ethical aspects of schizophrenia research has sought to clarify and resolve many of these questions. In this article we provide an overview of the existing data-based literature on schizophrenia research ethics and outline directions for future inquiry. We examine 5 broad categories of inquiry into the ethics of schizophrenia research: (1) Scientific designs (eg, placebo-controlled studies and medication-free intervals, prodromal and high-risk research, and genetics research); (2) informed consent and decision-making capacity, including assessment of decisional abilities, as well as intervention studies; (3) understanding and perceptions of risk and benefit (including the therapeutic misconception); (4) influences on research participation (including voluntarism, altruism, and other motivations); and (5) key participant safeguards, such as protocol review and participant advocates. We discuss how empirical work in each of these areas answers certain questions and raises new ones. Finally, we highlight important gaps in our understanding of ethically relevant aspects of schizophrenia research and offer a specific research agenda for empirical ethics.

Exploring the meaning of everyday life, for those suffering from dementia

Living with dementia means struggling to preserve a sense of self, to retain (and reevaluate) one's values in a new situation, and to search for a new way of life. This study explored the meaning of everyday life as expressed by 11 people suffering from dementia. Data were collected through interviews with people in the early stage of a diagnosed dementia disease. The findings indicate that many people with dementia feel shame, sorrow, and sadness when their life with the disease begins but also indicate prospects of a more manageable life. Since the reaction and adjustment to dementia differs from person to person, professional caregivers need to use a case-specific approach in the provision of care.