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This paper describes the lived experience of maltreatment in parent-child relationships in relation to Chinese children diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)-which emerged from a qualitative study conducted in Hong Kong. Out of a clinical sample of forty-four families, 25 per cent of children reported parental abuse, 21 percent of parents had suffered from child-to-parent maltreatment and 11 percent of families had experienced both. Most of the self-disclosures came out naturally in the three phases of the multiple family groups conducted by the authors. The maltreatment experienced was physical in nature, except for four cases of psychological abuse. Maltreatment was the result of escalating parent-child conflicts, triggered in four circumstances: (i) supervision of homework; (ii) parental demand on their children to do something other than playing; (iii) parent's misunderstanding of the child's acting-out behaviours; and (iv) parent's verbal threat of removing the child from home. The narratives underscore the urgent need to develop a complex social work model in helping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recently enacted Law of the People's Republic of China on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (NSL) is unique in global perspective: it was both drafted by and adopted from a jurisdiction espousing an entirely different type of legal system. In this article, I consider the NSL as a potential socialist legal transplant from the People's Republic of China to its Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong upon its promulgation in June 2020. I consider why, in the criminal law context, the NSL bears certain socialist characteristics and may even be classified as a socialist law. I also consider whether the NSL might be the world's first ever socialist criminal law transplant into a common law jurisdiction, and discuss what this might mean for legal interpretation and comparative law scholarship more generally. While existing comparative law scholarship on legal transplants has focused, where relevant, on transplants into States espousing socialist legal systems or between such systems, rarely have scholars encountered and analysed laws making their way across legal boundaries in the other direction. This article uses the example of the NSL, enacted by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress in Beijing and applied to Hong Kong's common law legal system, to begin to fill the gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using an intersectional approach, this study examines Chinese immigrant mothers' negotiation between career and family and the role of social support. Based on eight individual interviews with Chinese immigrant mothers in Toronto, we found that their employment opportunities were highly limited by the intersection of immigration status and gender. A model is proposed to explain the effect of various factors on the mothers' career decisions. Three core factors—employment difficulties, child-care responsibility and financial need—had a major influence on the mothers' cost-and-benefit analyses when they made their career decisions. Furthermore, the adequacy and effectiveness of the mothers' social and community support were affected by their immigration status. Class differences and the association between career decisions and integration are also discussed. The findings suggest that immigrant mothers experience a unique situation because of the intersectionality of their multiple identities. Researchers and community organisations should recognise the distinct circumstances and needs of this group in order to achieve comprehensive understanding and provide appropriate services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Prolonged delay in seeking medical attention for acute myocardial infarction persists as a global phenomenon, which limits effective disease management. The effects of previous mass-media campaigns and psycho-educations have been minimal. Aims: This study aimed to develop a modeling-based narrative intervention, and to examine its feasibility and preliminary effects on care-seeking behavioral intention in Chinese acute myocardial infarction patients. Methods: The modeling-based narrative intervention was developed by integrating updated research evidence and participants' perspectives. Ten patients were invited to co-design the intervention. The narrative approach was adopted to engage patients in a mental rehearsal of the decision-making process through a virtual acute myocardial infarction attack experience. A pilot randomized controlled trial was adopted to examine the feasibility and preliminary effects of this intervention. Results: A total of 67 participants were randomly allocated to receive either the modeling-based narrative intervention (n=34) or didactic education (n=33). The intervention was feasible and well-accepted by the participants as evidenced by high attendance and participant satisfaction. They considered the intervention as informative and interesting. The majority of the participants in the intervention group expressed that they enjoyed the intervention. Although the preliminary data showed non-significant between-group differences, a more prominent improving trend for acute myocardial infarction knowledge, care-seeking attitudes and beliefs in the intervention group were evident. Conclusions: This study is the first of its kind to adopt a novel narrative approach to optimize care-seeking behaviors among patients with acute myocardial infarction. The preliminary findings showed that this approach was highly feasible and accepted by patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The technical and procedural issues underlying social workers' practice dominate much of the discourse in social science, while relatively less attention is directed towards understanding the 'self' or person of the social worker. This study draws attention to social workers' personhood by examining possible relationships between their professional practices and their personal experiences, such as those that they might emulate from their family of origin. Within a qualitative paradigm, in-depth, repeated interviews were conducted with twenty Chinese social workers based in Hong Kong. Thematic analysis was employed, alongside member checks. Participants' personal experiences were found to be associated with their motivation to work with certain clients, in the way they practise, as well as the intervention goals they pursue. Their experiences challenge the appropriateness of the technical–rational model and the dualist view of the personal–professional relationship. Findings suggest that social work practitioners not only should be concerned with making use of formal knowledge, but also encouraged to critically and reflectively examine personal knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The strength-based approach argues that promoting adolescents' developmental assets would contribute to their well-being. This study investigated meaning in life (MIL) as one of such developmental assets. Based on the annual assessment of 3,328 Hong Kong Chinese adolescents from Grade 7 to Grade 12, we found that MIL at Grade 7 predicted heightened hedonic well-being and reduced risk behaviour at Grade 12; slower decrease in MIL from Grade 7 to Grade 11 predicted heightened hedonic well-being and reduced risk behaviour at Grade 12 with the initial level of outcomes controlled. Findings highlight the importance of MIL as a developmental asset fostering adolescent well-being. Implications of the findings for advancing theory of MIL and social work practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: there is little evidence to suggest that older people today are living in better health than their predecessors did at the same age. Only a few studies have evaluated whether there are birth cohort effects on frailty, an indicator of health in older people, encompassing physical, functional and mental health dimensions. Objectives: this study examined longitudinal trajectories of frailty among Chinese older people in Hong Kong. Methods: this study utilised data from the 18 Elderly Health Centres of the Department of Health comprising a total of 417,949 observations from 94,550 community-dwelling Chinese people aged ≥65 years in one early birth cohort (1901-23) and four later birth cohorts (1924-29, 1930-35, 1936-41, 1942-47) collected between 2001 and 2012, to examine trajectories of the frailty index and how birth cohorts may have contributed to the trends using an age-period-cohort analysis. Results: more recent cohorts had higher levels of frailty than did earlier cohorts at the same age, controlling for period, gender, marital status, educational levels, socioeconomic status, lifestyle and social factors. Older age, being female, widow-hood, lower education and smoking were associated with higher levels of frailty. Conclusion: more recent cohorts had higher levels of frailty than did earlier cohorts. Frailty interventions, coupled with early detection, should be developed to combat the increasing rates of frailty in Hong Kong Chinese. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the data collected from 432 single-mother families experiencing economic disadvantage in Hong Kong, the relationships among family functioning (mutuality, communication and harmony), filial piety and psycho-social competence (spirituality, resilience and positive future outlook) of adolescents were examined. Results showed that filial piety mediated the influence of family functioning to adolescent psycho-social competence in Chinese single-mother families experiencing economic disadvantage. The pioneer study underscores the importance of promoting family cohesion, communication and harmony which would contribute to adolescent positive development through adolescent filial piety. Implications of the findings for the development of the Chinese resilience model and social work practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The subjective experiences of Chinese children in Hong Kong with attention-deficit/hyper-activity disorder (ADHD) are underexplored. This article reports the results of a qualitative study that aims to understand the subjective experiences of children with ADHD in Hong Kong, taken from among a clinical sample of Chinese families with children struggling with ADHD who have participated in cross-disciplinary research of multiple family groups (MFG). The participating children revealed the subjective experiences of their struggle with the disorder in response to their parents' concern at a "press conference," one of the MFG activities, which underscored the importance of developing a new social work model to meet the multiple psychosocial service needs of these families. The article concludes with the discussion of the implications for the new model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are largely preventable via behaviour change and healthy lifestyle, which may be best established during childhood. This study sought insights into Chinese new immigrant mothers' perceptions about adult-onset NCDs prevention during childhood. Twenty-three semi-structured interviews were carried out with new immigrant mothers from mainland China who had at least one child aged 14 years or younger living in Hong Kong. Interviews were audio taped, transcribed and analysed using a Grounded Theory approach. The present study identified three major themes: perceived causes of adult NCDs, beliefs about NCDs prevention and everyday health information practices. Unhealthy lifestyle, contaminated food and environment pollution were perceived as the primary causes of adult NCDs. Less than half of the participants recognized that parents had responsibility for helping children establish healthy behaviours from an early age to prevent diseases in later life. Most participants expressed helplessness about chronic diseases prevention due to lack of knowledge of prevention, being perceived as beyond individual control. Many participants experienced barriers to seeking health information, the most common sources of health information being interpersonal conversation and television. Participants' everyday information practice was passive and generally lacked awareness regarding early prevention of adult-onset NCDs. Updated understanding of this issue has notable implications for future health promotion interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the factor structure of the Chinese version of the Meaning in Life Questionnaire (C-MLQ) in a sample of Hong Kong Chinese caregivers of patients with chronic illness (N = 223). Confirmatory factor analysis was performed to examine the factor structure. Findings confirm that, identical to the original version, C-MLQ showed the same two-factor structure: Presence and Search. Correlation between Presence and Search was found to be positive and moderate (r = .47). This study establishes empirically the same factor structure as the original version of MLQ among caregivers in Hong Kong. The relationship between Presence and Meaning is discussed in the contexts of Chinese culture and caregiving. Results suggest caregivers' continuing need for meaning in life. Medical social workers may help caregivers to integrate their caregiving experience with their sense of meaning in life and search for meaning in life to sustain their caregiving role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigated the significance of auditory discrimination and the use of phonological and orthographic codes during the course of reading development in Chinese students who are deaf or hard of hearing (D/HH). In this study, the reading behaviors of D/HH students in 2 tasks—a task on auditory perception of onset rime and a synonym decision task—were compared with those of their chronological age–matched and reading level (RL)–matched controls. Cross-group comparison of the performances of participants in the task on auditory perception suggests that poor auditory discrimination ability may be a possible cause of reading problems for D/HH students. In addition, results of the synonym decision task reveal that D/HH students with poor reading ability demonstrate a significantly greater preference for orthographic rather than phonological information, when compared with the D/HH students with good reading ability and their RL-matched controls. Implications for future studies and educational planning are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

BackgroundAntihypertensive drug discontinuation imposes a substantial health services burden but few studies have addressed the factors associated with their discontinuation in Chinese patients. This study evaluated the association between age, gender, and drug classes with antihypertensive discontinuation.MethodsFrom clinical databases, we included all adult patients prescribed an antihypertensive medication during January 2004 to June 2007 in one large territory of Hong Kong. We studied the factors associated with drug discontinuation within 180 days after the first prescription date by multivariable regression analysis.ResultsFrom 93,286 eligible patients, 13.2% discontinued their antihypertensive prescriptions. Younger (<50 years; adjusted odds ratio (aOR) = 0.63 for patients aged 50–59 years; 0.52 for patients aged 60–69 years; 0.70 for those aged ≥70 years; all P < 0.001) and male patients (aOR = 1.05, P = 0.027) were more likely to have drug discontinuation. When compared with thiazide diuretics, patients prescribed β-blockers were more likely (aOR = 1.67, P < 0.001) and patients prescribed calcium channel blocker (CCB) (aOR = 0.76, P < 0.001) and combination therapy (aOR = 0.73, P < 0.001) were less likely to have drug discontinuation. Stratified analyses in different age and gender groups reported similar results; except that only elderly male patients (aOR = 1.12, P = 0.002) and younger patients (aOR = 2.43 for patients aged <50 years, P < 0.001) prescribed β-blocker were more likely to have drug discontinuation.ConclusionsDiscontinuation of antihypertensive drug treatment in ethnic Chinese is more likely to occur in younger, male patients, or those prescribed β-blockers. These data suggest that more meticulous monitoring of patient adherence is required in patients with these characteristics.American Journal of Hypertension 2009; doi:10.1038/ajh.2009.67American Journal of Hypertension 2009; 22, 7, 802–810. doi:10.1038/ajh.2009.67 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concludes that venous thromboembolism is not as common in Chinese as in Caucasians. Indication that majority of deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary embolism (PE) were not associated with surgery so routine thromboprophylaxis may not be required; Patients and methods; Patient demographics; Incidence and mortality; Annual overall and age-specific incidences of DVT and PE in Hong Kong, China from 2000 to 2001.

To describe our clinical experience of using combination of fluorescent iodized emulsion, indocyanine green & lipiodol, and hook-wire in pre-operative CT localization of patients with subsolid lung lesions prior to video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS). A retrospective review between June 2018 and July 2019 of consecutive Chinese patients whom underwent VATS for subsolid lung lesions with pre-operative CT localization done with combination of fluorescent iodized emulsion and hook-wire technique in a tertiary hospital (Tuen Mun Hospital, Hong Kong SAR). The duration and complications related to the localization procedure were recorded The clinical records, operative findings and pathology reports were retrieved from the hospital electronic clinical management system. Combination fluorescent iodized emulsion with hook-wire enabled accurate localization and resection of all subsolid lung lesions in VATS. No major complications were reported. Combination of fluorescent iodized emulsion and hook-wire placement under CT guidance is a simple, safe and cost- effective procedure that enabled accurate localization and resection of subsolid nodule in VATS. VATS has been the mainstay for indeterminate pulmonary nodules for diagnostic and/or curative purpose. The main problem that surgeons may encounter during operation is the difficulty in locating the target lesion particularly for subsolid lesions. Many pre-operative localization methods have been developed in this regard. With the novel technique that we described, we were able to overcome disadvantages of most described methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

: BACKGROUND Previous studies examining experiences of infertility focused mainly on the aspect of loss but neglected the possible gains realized through surviving the experience of infertility. The success rate of IVF remains relatively low, and we used the strengths perspective to examine adjustment after unsuccessful treatment. This study aims to provide an in-depth description of the gains perceived by Chinese men and women and how they re-constructed their lives after unsuccessful IVF treatment. : METHODS Four couples and another six women who experienced unsuccessful IVF treatment were recruited from an assisted reproduction clinic. Data were collected through in-depth interviews, using a grounded theory constructivist approach. : RESULTS Of the 10 women and 4 men interviewed, 9 remained childless, 3 had adopted a child and 2 had conceived naturally. They reported gains on a personal level, interpersonal level and transpersonal level through surviving the experience of infertility. All, regardless of the eventual outcome, reported at least one form of personal gain: in personality or knowledge gain. Interpersonal gains were perceived in relationships with their spouses, children, parents, friends, colleagues and fellow IVF service users. More than half of them reported spiritual growth and a change in identity through integrating their experiences and offering help to others. : CONCLUSION Despite the small sample size, this study makes a significant contribution by suggesting that while negative feelings provoked by the failure to conceive should be acknowledged, people in this situation should also be enabled to consolidate their negative experiences of IVF constructively, helping them to move on with their lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

No studies have specifically reported the association of lung adenocarcinoma with environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) exposure among nonsmoking males. The objective of this study was to examine the exposure-response relation between ETS exposure and lung cancer among nonsmoking males. In particular, the association with adenocarcinoma of the lung was studied. This is a population-based, case-referent study in Hong Kong during 2004–2006. A total of 132 Chinese male nonsmokers with newly diagnosed primary lung cancer and 536 nonsmoking community referents were interviewed about ETS exposures from the household and/or workplace, including ever ETS exposure, sources of exposure, number of smoking cohabitants/coworkers, and smoker-years. Univariate logistic regression analyses showed a weak association between all lung cancers and ever ETS exposure from the household and/or workplace (odds ratio (OR) = 1.11, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.74, 1.67), but an increased risk was restricted to adenocarcinoma (OR = 1.68, 95% CI: 1.00, 2.38). After adjustment for family cancer history and other confounders, excess risk (OR = 1.62, 95% CI: 0.91, 2.88) still persisted for adenocarcinoma, although it was no longer statistically significant. Exposure-response relations for adenocarcinoma were found with increasing levels of all ETS indices when exposures from the household and workplaces were combined. The consistent exposure-response relations between ETS exposures and adenocarcinoma suggested a probable causal link, which would have to be confirmed by future larger studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]