Articles: health.
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Journal of gerontology · Mar 1988
Comparative StudyThe relationships of coping responses to physical health status and life satisfaction among older women.
This study examined a model specifying the causal links between the physical, functional, and subjective components of physical health status and life satisfaction among older women, and assessed the effects of three coping responses (direct-action, positive-cognitive, and passive-cognitive coping) at each point in the process. Based on interview data with 281 older women, a series of regression analyses indicated that, before the inclusion of the coping variables, physical conditions directly contributed to functional impairment, and both indirectly lowered life satisfaction through their direct negative effects on subjective health assessments. Further analyses indicated that positive-cognitive coping buffered the effects of physical conditions at each point in the model, that passive-cognitive coping generally had deleterious effects on health status, although it prevented negative health assessments from lowering life satisfaction, and that direct-action coping had little effect. These findings emphasize the importance of a multidimensional conceptualization of physical health status in understanding its relationship with life satisfaction as well as the specific functions of coping at different points in the process for older women.
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Aust N Z J Obstet Gynaecol · Feb 1988
Maternal mortality in Bahrain with special reference to sickle cell disease.
The maternal mortality in Bahrain during the 10-year period, 1977-1986, was 33.9 per 100,000 livebirths; the second 5-year period showed a significant reduction (26.9) compared to the first 5-year period (42.3). Haemorrhage, pulmonary embolism, hypertensive diseases of pregnancy and infection were the main causes of maternal mortality. ⋯ Avoidable factors were present in 38% of the cases, the majority being due to the failure of the patients to seek medical care or follow medical advice. Health education, premarital counselling and family planning were identified as significant factors in reducing the maternal mortality rate.
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World Health Stat Q · Jan 1988
The global impact of noncommunicable diseases: estimates and projections.
With the aging of populations in developing countries there is both a demographic and an epidemiological transition which affects the impact of chronic degenerative diseases on the health status of the populations. Demographic transition takes place in countries where there are effective programmes of disease control which allow for survival during the early years of childhood and adolescence. This results in an increase in life expectancy which places larger proportions of the population in the age range (60 years and older) in which chronic degenerative diseases become the major determinants of health status. ⋯ The major differences are seen to be in the proportions of deaths expected from such diseases as cancer, diabetes, heart disease, stroke and cirrhosis; but not in the distribution of age at death which is the better measure of disease impact. Demographic analyses, computing indirect estimates of mortality, also demonstrate that there are currently more chronic disease deaths in developing than developed countries and that as expectation of life increases in developing countries the global chronic disease burden will be greatly concentrated in the developing countries. Analyses of risk-factor reduction by feasible intervention strategies, e.g. smoking cessation campaigns, treatment of high blood pressure, using relationships between risk factors and diseases established in longitudinal studies carried out in developed countries, point out that the effect of risk-factor control in long-living populations can be hidden by the dependency of risk factors and various related causes of death, e.g. smoking has an impact on lung cancer, ischaemic heart disease and emphysema, but at different ages.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)