Y.M. Chan

Symptoms, coping strategies, and timing of presentations in patients with newly diagnosed ovarian cancer.

OBJECTIVE The purpose was to explore whether health education on symptoms of ovarian cancer would aid in early detection, by examining the relationship between symptoms, coping strategies, and timing of presentation in patients with newly diagnosed ovarian cancer. METHODS Eighty women were included. A questionnaire consisting of a series of open questions was designed to collect information on the sequence of events from the onset of symptoms to the diagnosis of ovarian cancer. The Coping Response Inventory (CRI) was used to assess the coping strategies. RESULTS A majority (90.0%) of women with ovarian cancer did have symptoms before the diagnosis. Abdominal pain or discomfort, abdominal distension, a palpable abdominal mass, menstrual, bowel, or urinary symptoms were the commonly reported symptoms. Eight (10.0%) patients were totally asymptomatic prior to the cancer diagnosis. The presence of bowel symptoms was significantly associated with late stage disease. Most of the patients sought medical advice within 2 weeks from the onset of symptoms. There was no association between the presence of any particular symptom(s) and the timing of presentation. There was also no correlation between the coping strategies and stage of disease and timing of presentation. On average, patients with early stage disease saw one more doctor compared to patients with late stage disease before the affirmative diagnosis of ovarian cancer. CONCLUSION Most patients presented early after the onset of symptoms. Health education in this regard may not be useful for early diagnosis of ovarian cancer.

Newspaper reporting of suicides in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Guangzhou: compliance with WHO media guidelines and epidemiological comparisons

Background Media guidelines for suicide reporting are available in many countries. However, to what extent the mass media comply with the guidelines is unknown. Few studies are available that investigate systematically whether the mass media reflect the epidemiological reality of suicide deaths in their articles. Methods Based on the WHO media guidelines, this study investigated the characteristics of newspaper articles of suicides in three Chinese communities, namely Hong Kong, Taiwan and Guangzhou. Epidemiological comparisons were conducted to identify the age and gender differences between the suicide victims as reported in the newspapers and the official records of suicide deaths in all three places. Results The results found that one media characteristic complied with the WHO media guidelines (ie, only about 2% of the articles were printed on the front page), but there were a number of instances of non-compliance (ie, only 4–14% provided sources for help-seeking and 27–90% printed with photos). The epidemiological comparisons revealed an over-representation of younger suicides and an under-representation of late-life suicides in the newspapers of all three places. Furthermore, female suicides were found to be under-reported in Taiwan and Guangzhou newspapers, but not in Hong Kong papers. Conclusion Non-compliant suicide articles are prevalent in the newspapers of these three Chinese settings. The observed media misrepresentations may potentially mislead the public and the policy makers about the actual risk for suicide in some demographic groups.

Newspaper coverage of emergency response and government responsibility in domestic natural disasters: China-US and within-China comparisons

Based on a comparative approach, this article reports content analyses of news articles about a devastating earthquake that occurred in Sichuan province, China, from six Chinese newspapers, indicating that the Chinese media, in reporting the government’s emergency responses, had many similarities with the American medias coverage of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Further comparisons, however, suggest that the claim of a ‘watchdog’ media culture during disasters, as measured by the frequency of media accounts of the government’s responsibilities, is still relatively premature in China. Moreover, party-controlled and market-oriented media in China had different focuses in their coverage of natural disasters. The market-oriented media played an important role in making the Sichuan earthquake more transparent and the authorities more responsible. Provincial media in China may be less regulated by the central government and are in a good position to cover sensitive stories outside their own province. But they will not have a long-term impact without an overall government policy of open information and media deregulation. By contrast, fewer variations in story focus were observed in the American media, and the overall difference is relatively limited.

Testing a Theoretical Model Based on Social Cognitive Theory for Media Influences on Suicidal Ideation: Results from a Panel Study

The influence of media representations of suicides on the subsequent increase of suicide rate has been researched for decades. Yet the underlying psychological mechanism of such media influences on individuals suicidality remains uncertain. Based on the conceptual framework of social cognitive theory, this article discusses the operationalization of media influences on suicidal ideation by using a psychometric approach. It then develops and tests a theoretical model to explain the mechanism of media influences on suicidal ideation. A two-wave panel study with a randomized population sample was carried out in the Hong Kong SAR, China with the results indicating that the proposed operationalization closely fit the data collected and empirically supported the theoretical model. Reciprocal associations between prior suicidal ideation and processes of media influences were also confirmed. The results also tested the factorial invariance across age groups and different pre-existing levels of suicidal ideation. This study reports the first individual-level finding on the theoretical relationship between media influences and suicidal ideation, as well as the first psychometrically validated operationalization of media influences on suicidal ideation.