Introduction Geriatric depression is one of the major public health issues around the world. Geriatric depression is often being misinterpreted as a normal aspect of aging process, but it is indeed a complex psychological problem that would result in significant increases in DALYs. With effective treatments, depressive symptoms and signs can be reduced. Nevertheless, pharmacological intervention is often used as the first-line treatment for geriatric depression. In recent years, different types of non-pharmacological intervention have been getting more attention in terms of theirs effectiveness in treating geriatric depression. Objectives Primary objective is to determine whether two categories of non-pharmacological intervention (physical activity and reminiscence therapy) are effective in relieving depression in elderly that are 60 years old or older. The other objectives are to examine enduring effects of physical activity and reminiscence therapy, and compare the effectiveness of reminiscence therapy and physical activity in alleviating depressive symptoms in elderly compared with no intervention and/or other intervention. Methods Relevant studies published between the year of 2000 and 2013 were searched and identified through several electronic databases, including the Cochrane Library, PubMed, Medline, PsycINFO and Google Scholar, with a combination of keywords. All randomized controlled trials that examine physical activity and reminiscence therapy on elderly that are 60 years old or older, being diagnosed or indicated as suffering from depression were included. The methodological quality of each study was assessed. The outcome measure of this review is the depression symptom level. Main Result A total of 12 randomized controlled trials met the inclusion criteria, in which seven were about physical activity and five of them were about reminiscence therapy. Significant immediate reduction in depressive symptoms was found in five out of seven physical activity studies and in four out of five reminiscence studies. Three and two studies respectively on physical activity and reminiscence therapy had assessed the effect at follow-up and looked at the lasting effect. In two physical activity studies that have assessed the short-term effect beyond the completion of intervention, incongruent findings were found. Only one physical activity study has examined the long-term effect and it reported significant positive result. On the other hand, there were two reminiscence therapy studies assessing the short-term effect on depressive symptoms. These two studies reported significant improvement in depressive symptoms. Since there were few studies reporting the medium and long-term effect of physical activity and reminiscence therapy, no conclusion can be made on their enduring effect of reducing depressive symptoms. Conclusions Physical activity and reminiscence therapy appear to be effective non-pharmacological interventions for relieving depressive symptoms in elderly. They may complement pharmacological intervention and/or may offer alternative treatment option for elderly with depression. However, the mode, intensity, duration, type, format of physical activity and reminiscence therapy on depressive symptoms in elderly remain unclear. Further testing is need before these interventions can be routinely used to alleviate depressive symptoms in elderly with depression. / published_or_final_version / Public Health / Master / Master of Public Health

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Abstract Assigning ages to lions (Panthera leo) requires the use of subjective and objective criteria, and is useful for conservation decision-making in that age distributions can be defined from which demographic profiles can be extracted. We collated all age assignment criteria and found that a constraint of most objective criteria is that they require immobilized or dead specimens to measure. Furthermore, nearly all criteria used lions with assumed ages to construct relationships or narrative descriptions. We show that digital photogrammetry provides digitally-derived measures of shoulder heights similar to that of linearly derived measures. In addition, such shoulder heights did not differ between captive and free ranging lions, or between different regions in Africa. Variation in shoulder height is primarily associated with sex-specific age. Age, using the von Bertalanffy growth curve, explained 92% and 97% of the variation in female and male shoulder height, a skeletal measure not strongly affected by resource availability. Simulations suggest that age assignment is relatively accurate for females and males with shoulder heights up to 70 cm and 95 cm, respectively. Thus for lions younger than two years of age objective criteria gives most precise estimates, while subjective criteria are more suitable for older lions.

The World Health Organization has made global mental health a priority since making it the center of world health day 2001, yet much of the current literature on mental health examines the subject within the context of the U.S. and Western Europe. This research takes a more global approach, shifting the focus to the issue of depression in Ukraine. Specifically this thesis analyzes data to examine the hypotheses that: 1) a statistically significant relationship exists between gender and depression prevalence in Ukraine; 2) women over the age of 50 in Ukraine have a significantly higher chance of suffering from depression than other age groups, unlike trends described in the literature; and 3) there are socio-economic and social factors present in Ukraine, which impact depression prevalence among women. A mixed-methodology, which utilizes analysis of quantitative data from the World Mental Health survey initiative, completed in Ukraine in 2004, and qualitative interview data, was employed to explore these hypotheses. Strong relationships are found between gender and depression and between depression and aging, particularly past the age of 50. Some socio-demographics of significance include low level of education, very inadequate financial resources and being on a pension. The conclusions that result from this analysis, describe an interesting case for assessment of global mental health issues. While the results are perhaps not generalizable far beyond Ukraine the conclusions drawn have interesting implications for how we study global mental health and the characteristics which make a person more or less vulnerable to mental illness. / text

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published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Clinical Psychology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

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In the first part of study, our objective was to determine the effect of CoQ10 supplementation of culture media on preimplantation mouse and human embryo development. CoQ10 supplementation of culture media did not improve mouse or human embryo development in vitro. Since the results appeared to be negative, we decided to move on to research the effect of age on female infertility. In the second part, we investigated the effect of female age and ovarian stimulation protocols on IUI outcome in 411 infertile women. We found that the ongoing/live birth rate per cycle in women ≤ 37 years was significantly higher than in older patients. In the third section, we determined if very young age (≤25 yrs) has an impact on pregnancy outcome in women undergoing IVF-ET. Our results demonstrating lower pregnancy rates in very young patients and egg donors compared to the patients in their early thirties were surprising.