Syftet med studien var att undersöka sjuksköterskors och skötares upplevelser av möten med patienter i psykiatrisk öppenvård.   Bakgrund – I psykiatrisk öppenvård möter sjuksköterskor och skötare många olika människor med individuella behov. Sedan tidigare forskning har det framkommit att patienters känsla av trygghet uppkommer genom faktorer som personalens inställning och empati. Relationen mellan personal och patient är viktig för patientens känsla av att bli tagen på allvar samt att bli bekräftad. För personer som lever med psykisk sjukdom är det viktigt med en långsiktig relation som grundar sig i förtroende och öppenhet. En god relation kan byggas om personalen kan befinna sig på patientens nivå och få patienten att känna sig viktig och betydelsefull. En fungerande allians tar tid att utveckla, men den utgör sedan en god grund för ett gott samarbete och har goda effekter på psykisk ohälsa.   Design – Kvalitativ design med fenomenologiskt förhållningssätt användes.   Metod – 8 intervjuer genomfördes med sjuksköterskor och skötare i psykiatrisk öppenvård på tre öppenvårdsmottagningar i norra Sverige under december 2015 – februari 2016 och analys gjordes med kvalitativ innehållsanalys.   Resultat – I psykiatrisk öppenvård ansågs relationen mellan vårdare och patient utgöra en stor grund, och fram för allt att det var en trygg relation. Denna trygghet kunde bland annat skapas genom vårdarnas tillgänglighet till patienterna. Fyra kategorier identifierades; Bemöta patienter, Upplevelser av att göra bedömningar, Upplevelser av att vara i patientens hemmiljö och Upplevelser av att arbeta i öppenvård.   Slutsats – Det arbete som sjuksköterskor och skötare utför genom möten med patienter i psykiatrisk öppenvård är betydelsefullt för så många människor med psykisk ohälsa. Genom att få ta del av vårdarnas upplevelser kan det bidra med ökad förståelse om deras betydelse för patienternas psykiska mående. Men samtidigt deras utsatthet då de kan försättas i problematiska situationer. Resultatet kan på så sätt bidra till att relevanta utbildningar och insatser kan identifieras och förhoppningsvis implementeras i verksamheterna. / The aim of this study was to investigate the nurses and assisted nurse mentals experiences of encounters with patients in psychiatric outpatient care.   Background – In psychiatric outpatient care nurses and assisted nurse mentals meets many different people with individual needs. Since previous research has shown that patients' sense of security generated by factors such as staff attitude and empathy. The relationship between staff and patients is important for the patient's feeling of being taken seriously and to be confirmed. For people living with mental illness, it is important to have a long-term relationship based on trust and transparency. A good relationship can be built if the staff can be at the patient level and make the patient feel important and significant. A working alliance takes time to develop, but it then forms a good basis for a good working relationship and has good effects on mental health.   Design – A qualitative design with a phenomenological approach was used.   Method – 8 interviews were conducted with nurses and assisted nurse mentals in psychiatric outpatient care in three outpatient clinics in northern Sweden during December 2015 - February 2016 and analyzed using qualitative content analysis.   Results – In psychiatric outpatient care the relationship between caregiver and patient was considered as a significant basis, and above all that it was a secure relationship. This security could, among other things be created by carers’ availability to patients. Four categories were identified; Meet patients, Make the right assessments, Be in the patient's home environment and Work in outpatient care.   Conclusion – The work that nurses and assisted nurse mentals carrying through in their meetings with patients in psychiatric outpatient care is important for so many people with mental illness. By getting the benefit of carers’ experiences it may contribute to a better understanding of their importance to the patients’ psychological being. But at the same time their vulnerability as they can be placed in problematic situations. The results can therefore contribute to relevant educations and initiatives can be identified and hopefully implemented in the clinics.

Background: Sugar sweetened beverages (SSBs) comprise the largest source of added sugars in US adolescents’ diets. SSB consumption is pervasive in US culture and is a critical risk factor for weight gain and obesity in adolescents. This thesis evaluates multi-level factors that influence adolescent SSB consumption. Methods: The first two aims of this thesis utilized data from the cross sectional, internet based Family Life, Activity, Sun, Health and Eating (FLASHE) study to: 1) examine availability of SSBs in multiple settings (home, school, neighborhood) and adolescent SSB consumption, 2) examine the associations between perceptions of parenting practices and adolescent SSB consumption. The third aim used focus group discussions to understand adolescents’ perceptions about SSBs. Results: We found that SSB availability in the home was an important predictor of adolescent SSB consumption, regardless of SSB availability in other settings. Also, parenting practices that facilitate adolescent SSB consumption are associated with higher adolescent SSB consumption, but discussing/negotiating SSB behaviors is not associated with adolescent SSB consumption. Adolescents’ described their attitudes, reinforcements, knowledge, and sources of influence around SSBs which are multifactorial and complex. Conclusions: This thesis identified potential targets for addressing adolescent SSB consumption through availability of SSBs at home, parenting practices, and adolescent perceptions around SSBs. These are important modifiable factors in the adolescents’ sociocultural environment that should be targeted in future dietary interventions to influence adolescent SBB consumption.

Parental involvement is a combination of commitment and active participation from parents to the school and to the student. Parental involvement defines the family’s role as educator and the crucial importance of family involvement to students’ success in schools. Some researchers and practitioners consider positive parental involvement the most prominent predictor of student success. Parents can increase children’s academic success through involvement with schools and communities. Parental involvement improves student morale, attitudes, and academic achievement across all subject areas. The purpose of this study was to examine the views of parents, students, teachers, and administrators concerning parental involvement in four high schools in a rural East Tennessee county. The study also attempted to determine if the views of these parents, students, teachers, and administrators are consistent with published reports on parent involvement. Data were collected from administrators, students, parents, and teachers through an open-ended interview format designed by the researcher. The findings from this study offer a number of recommendations regarding how high schools can develop partnership programs that involve families in ways that go beyond their participating as audience or witness to their children’s schooling to their participating as partners with the school in promoting teen’s learning. Participants desired effective home/school communications as well as a home environment that encouraged learning activities and suggested effective ways volunteers could be used at the high school level. Major recommendations include high schools forging connections with all families and providing options to increase their involvement at school as well as at home; establishing formal parent support organizations; developing partnerships that strengthen school-family relationships through authentic dialogue, collaboration, and mutual respect between families and educators; increasing opportunities for home/school communication; and creating a learning community where school personnel, students, parents, and community members view themselves as stakeholders.

The emergence of covid-19 has been declared as an international public health emergency in January 2020 by the World Health Organization and has affected millions of people across the world ever since. Public health interventions focused on controlling person-to-person infections to mitigate the number of infections and possible severe or fatal health effects. The absence of meaningful connections and social interactions with others can have an indirect adverse impact on psychological health outcomes. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the consequences of the current pandemic, and its associated measures, on human social well-being and sustainability. A meta-analytical approach based on original results of scientific research published in peer-reviewed journals and written in English has been used. The findings reveal no consistent findings regarding the level of loneliness whereas the level of social support remained stable or even increased over time. For the levels of violence within the home environment (domestic violence, child abuse and intimate partner violence) both an increase and decrease have been reported, indicating a possible impact of covid-19 pandemic on the tension within the family. The pandemic has complicated the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals and thus slowed down society's attempts to achieve sustainability at an international level. The results of this study provide policy makers and professionals with knowledge on the social consequences of the covid-19 pandemic to protect human health and well-being in line with the sustainability goals.

The home is an important factor for participation in and completion of treatment for substance abuse and addiction. The purpose of this study was to investigate how the home's physical and social elements may affect a client's opportunity to maintain sobriety from the perspective of treatment staff. Therefore the staff's experience of influence before the client's discharge was also investigated. The study was conducted through eight qualitative interviews with staff at a treatment home. The results showed that the home’s physical and social environment, along with social relationships, may have both positive and negative effects on maintained sobriety. The results showed that staff work preparatory before client discharge. The staff's experienced influence was shown to vary, but a wish existed to upscale the amount of communication between treatment staff and the placing authority. The results can thus contribute with knowledge to substance abuse treatments. / Hemmet är en viktig faktor för deltagande i och fullbordande av behandling för missbruk och beroende enligt Socialstyrelsen. Syftet med föreliggande studie var att undersöka behandlande personals perspektiv på hur hemmiljöns fysiska och sociala beståndsdelar kan inverka på klientens möjlighet att bibehålla nykterhet. Därför undersöktes också personalens upplevda inflytande inför klientens utskrivning. Studien genomfördes med åtta kvalitativa intervjuer med personal vid ett behandlingshem. Resultatet visade att hemmets fysiska och sociala miljö, såväl som sociala relationer, kan inverka både positivt och negativt på bibehållen nykterhet. Utöver det visade resultatet att behandlande personal arbetar förberedande inför klientens utskrivning. Personalens upplevda inflytande visade sig variera, men önskan fanns att öka kommunikationen mellan behandlande personal och placerande aktörer. Studiens resultat kan därmed bidra med kunskap till missbruksbehandling.

Behovet av palliativ vård kommer öka, och fler väljer att få tillbringa sista tiden i livet i hemmets välbekanta miljö. Hemmet inger ofta en trygghet för patienten men kan vara utmanande för sjuksköterskor. Sjuksköterskor har ett ansvar gällande bedömning, prioritering, samordning, teamsamverkan samt att arbeta utifrån lagar och författningar för att säkerställa en patientsäker vård. I den palliativa vården ska sjuksköterskor arbeta utifrån en helhetssyn och främja delaktighet för att kunna möta patienten och anhörigas behov i de olika dimensionerna. Vården i hemmet blir mer och mer avancerad vilket ställer höga krav på sjuksköterskors kompetens. Därför var studiens syfte att beskriva sjuksköterskors upplevelser av den palliativa vården i hemmet. Metoden som valts för att svara an på syftet är en integrerande sammanställning av kvalitativ forskning som är inspirerad av metasyntes, för att få en ökad kunskap om det valda fenomenet. I resultatet inkluderades 11 artiklar som kvalitetsgranskades. Resultatet presenteras i tre huvudteman: Sjuksköterskors upplevelser av hemmets betydelse för vårdandet, Sjuksköterskors upplevelser av relationernas betydelse, Teamets betydelse och utmaningar för sjuksköterskor. Åtta underteman skapades som beskriver sjuksköterskors olika perspektiv på den palliativa vården i hemmet. I diskussionen problematiseras de framträdande fynden vilka var upplevelsen av att ha patientens hem som arbetsplats, vikten av kommunikation och relationer till patienter och anhöriga samt innebörden av kunskap och stöd för sjuksköterskor. Resultatet belyser den komplexitet som sjuksköterskor upplever av att arbeta med palliativ vård i hemmet. / The need for palliative care will increase, and more people choose to spend the last time in their lives in the familiar environment of home. The home often provides security for the patient but can be challenging for nurses. Nurses have a responsibility regarding assessment, prioritization, coordination, teamwork and working based on laws and constitutions to grant patient-friendly care. In palliative care, nurses must work based on a holistic view and participation in order to be able to meet the needs of the patient and relatives in the various dimensions. Care in the home is becoming more and more advanced, which places high demands on nurses' competence. Therefore, the purpose of the study was to describe nurses' experiences of palliative care in the home. The method chosen to answer the purpose is an integrated compilation of qualitative research that is inspired by metasynthesis, in order to gain an increased knowledge of the chosen phenomenon. The result included 11 articles that were quality reviewed. The results are presented in three main themes: Nurses' experiences of the importance of the home for care, Nurses' experiences of the importance of relationships, The importance of the team and challenges for nurses. Eight subthemes were created that describe nurses' different perspectives on palliative care at home. In the discussion, the salient findings are problematized, which were the experience of having the patient's home as a workplace, the importance of communication and relationships with patients and relatives, and the meaning of knowledge and support for nurses. The result highlights the complexity that nurses experience from working with palliative care at home.

Smart home is a topic that emerged in the 90s to improve the quality of human life. The evolutions of ambient intelligence, recent technology advancements, internet, and smart devices have had a large impact in smart home environment. In the traditional smart home environment, devices are connected physically in the environment and there are interoperability issues between the devices, because the environment is heterogeneous and the devices do not allow to communicate with the outside world such as the internet.In this master thesis we propose a conceptual design of a platform for better home entertainment experience. Smart phone, smart TV and a personal computer are the most important devices in this platform design. The platform provides a high degree of interaction and integration among devices within the environment. The proposed platform model helps software architects and engineers to have an early involvement in the design process. We proposed the platform to be implemented with the help of hybrid cloud computing model. Our suggested platform design is able to overcome the deficiencies of the previous models and approaches in this domain. We conducted direct interviews with seven computer science teachers at Malmö University for the evaluation of our platform design. The results show that the platform design can be physically implemented with the specified devices, the clouds are better than the traditional approaches and hybrid cloud model is more acceptable in terms of security and economy. We encourage software architects, developers and project supervisors to adopt this proposed platform model in physical smart home environment.

Contributions of home environment and family socioeconomic status (SES) on the intelligence test performance of 24 exceptional children aged five through seven years were investigated. It was hypothesized that higher SES would enrich the children's environment providing a more stimulating learning experience, and would reflect a positive correlation with measures of the home environment. Additional hypotheses were that both HOME scores and SES scales would show a positive correlation with intelligence test performance. The positive association found between SES and HOME Inventory scores suggests that families with a higher SES have the ability to direct more resources toward their children. However, according to the present study, this does not affect the intelligence test performance of exceptional children.

According to previous research, internalizing and externalizing problems tend to be comorbid or co-occur at different ages in development (Angold, Costello, & Erkanli, 1999). The question that this dissertation addresses is how and why internalizing and externalizing problems, two disorders that represent separate forms of psychopathology, co-occur in children. This is an important question for the developmental psychopathology perspective because an appreciation of the concept of co-occurrence is essential for explaining the development and taxonomy of internalizing and externalizing psychopathology, and for understanding the etiology and course of these symptoms (Achenbach, 1990). Attempts to explain co-occurrence have proposed that co-occurring psychopathology might represent distinct, meaningful syndromes (Angold & Costello, 1992; O’Connor et al., 1998), and in support of this idea, evidence of the existence of pure and co-occurring internalizing and externalizing problems has been found (Keiley et al., 2003). However, no previous study has identified heterogeneous developmental patterns of pure or combined internalizing and externalizing problems within a dynamic framework by taking trajectories of change into account. This dissertation uses data from the NICHD study of Early Child Care to explore the co-occurrence between internalizing and externalizing problems from age 2 to 12 with the use of Latent Class Growth Analysis. The sample included 1232 children (52% male). Different groups of children exhibiting low/normative, pure internalizing, pure externalizing, and co-occurring internalizing and externalizing problems across the 10 year period were identified. The higher risk groups deviated from the low/normative group in terms of antecedents, SES risk, medical risk, difficult temperament, and home environment. Moreover, children who exhibited pure moderate externalizing problems, and children who exhibited chronic externalizing problems, with and without co-occurring internalizing problems, engaged in more risky behaviors and were more likely to have friends who also engaged in risky behaviors. Furthermore, the pure chronic externalizing group and the groups scoring high on internalizing problems, with and without co-occurring externalizing problems, were more asocial with peers. Finally, children exhibiting chronic co-occurring externalizing and internalizing problems were more excluded by peers in comparison to the rest of the sample’s population.

The thesis, titled Palliative Care Provided by Patient's Family in Home Environment, discusses the specific care needs of a terminally ill patient in his/her own home. Caring for an ill person in a home environment is beginning to be a growing trend in home care, but also it is an increasingly common wish of the patients themselves. The family is therefore required to have enough theory and practical knowledge in order to deliver a highly demanding personal care for their close family members. The aim of the thesis is to summarize the current situation of delivering palliative care in home environment in Czech Republic whilst concentrating on the specific needs of the patient and the needs of their family. The objectives of the research were to determine whether family members were introduces to the specifics of palliative care of terminally ill patients; to map their skills in delivering palliative care in home environment and to reveal the most common issues that family members come across in that home environment. The final objective was to map out services in regions of Central Bohemia and Liberec that are accessible to family members whilst caring for a terminally ill patient. The research part of the thesis was completed employing a method of qualitative investigation using semi-structured interviews with patient's family members and nurses providing hospice care in home environment. It emerged from the analytical interviews that the family's knowledge level regarding support for palliative care in home environment is very limited and in hospitals families are only given minimal or no support or information. As a final document for the thesis an informative educational brochure was created based on the results of aforementioned research, primarily targeting patient's family; its core objective is to improve information and collate the specifics of care that would allow the patient a dignified end to their life.