Depression is a very common mental health illness characterized by a cluster of signs and symptoms ranging from mood disturbances and sleep or appetite disorders to physical manifestations of the body. The purpose of the present study was to estimate the prevalence of depression and its related factors among Afghan women. A cross-sectional study was conducted among women between July 14, 2021, to August 15, 2021, in Kabul, Mazar-e-Sharif and Samangan provinces (Afghanistan). A total of 664 Afghan women participated in the study (mean age = 28.85 years; SD ± 11.57). In order to assess depression among participants, the 19-item validated Dari version of the Center for Epidemiological Studies–Depression Scale was used. Approximately four-fifths of the sample had depression symptoms (79.1%). Participants with depression symptoms were significantly more likely to (i) be aged over 30 years, (ii) live in rural areas, (iii) have a low-income level, (iv) not have an occupation, (v) have any disease/illness, and (vi) have experienced an event that had mentally affected them in the past month. Considering the high prevalence of depression symptoms among Afghan women, there is a need to integrate mental health services for women in Afghanistan. The use of interventions including regular screening for depression symptoms, and educating women and girls concerning the symptoms of depression for early self-diagnosis are essential.

The analysis of traffic accident data is crucial to address numerous concerns, such as understanding contributing factors in an accident's chain-of-events, identifying hotspots, and informing policy decisions about road safety management. The majority of statistical models employed for analyzing traffic accident data are logically count regression models (commonly Poisson regression) since a count – like the number of accidents – is used as the response. However, features of the observed data frequently do not make the Poisson distribution a tenable assumption. For example, observed data rarely demonstrate an equal mean and variance and often times possess excess zeros. Sometimes, data may have heterogeneous structure consisting of a mixture of populations, rather than a single population. In such data analyses, mixtures-of-Poisson-regression models can be used. In this study, the number of injuries resulting from casualties of traffic accidents registered by the General Directorate of Security (Turkey, 2005–2014) are modeled using a novel mixture distribution with two components: a Poisson and zero-truncated-Poisson distribution. Such a model differs from existing mixture models in literature where the components are either all Poisson distributions or all zero-truncated Poisson distributions. The proposed model is compared with the Poisson regression model via simulation and in the analysis of the traffic data.

Body esteem (BE) is defined as the self-evaluation of one’s own body or appearance. The Body Esteem Scale for Adolescents and Adults (BESAA)consists of three subscales: BE-appearance, BE-weight, and BE-attribution. Though initially developed for adolescents and adults, the use of the scale has recently increased in health-related research on children. This study aimed to assess the validity and reliability of the Turkish version of the BESAA for children. The participants in the study were 4th grade children (aged 9–10 years) in Ankara, Turkey. The validity of the scale was evaluated through exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Internal consistency and test-retest reliability were assessed using Cronbach’s alpha and Spearman’s rho correlation coefficient, respectively. The Turkish version of the BESAA for children includes BE-weight, BE-appearance, and BE-attribution subscales. The scale demonstrated good model fit statistics (chi-square/df = 3.41, P < 0.001) and good internal consistency for BE-weight (α = 0.85), BE-appearance (α = 0.76), and BE-attribution (α = 0.69). According to our findings, test-retest reliability of the three subscales was in the moderate/acceptable range for children (r = 0.57–0.68, P < 0.01). The Turkish version of the BESAA can be used to measure BE in terms of appearance, weight, and attribution in children.

To investigate the association between VNTR polymorphisms of DRD4, DAT1 and 5-HTT genes and obesity. Peripheral blood samples of 234 obese (BMI ≥ 30) and 148 healthy individuals (BMI ≤ 25) were objected to PCR to detect the VNTR of the 2nd intron of 5-HTT, 3rd exon of DRD4 and 3'UTR of DAT1 genes. The association between obesity and genotype distributions of 5-HTT, DAT1 and DRD4 genes and between obesity and distributions of allele frequencies were tested by Chi Square (χ(2)) test and were not found statistically significant. BMI values for genotype of obese and morbidly obese (BMI > 40) individuals were analyzed by Kruskal-Wallis and not found statistically significant differences between BMI values for the most frequent genotypes of 5-HTT, DAT1 and DRD4 genes. As a conclusion, there was no association between 5-HTT, DAT1 and DRD4 genes VNTR polymorphisms and obesity.

Amaç:Bu araştırmanın amacı, çocuklarda sağlıklı yiyecek seçimine dair öz-yeterlik düzeyinin belirlenmesini sağlayacak “Çocuklar için Sağlıklı Yeme Öz-YeterlikÖlçeği’ni Türkçeye uyarlamak, geçerlik ve güvenirliğini belirlemektir. Yöntem:Metodolojik nitelikteki bu çalışmada Çocuklar için Sağlıklı Yeme Öz-Yeterlik Ölçeği’nin Türkçe sürümünü uyarlama, geçerlik ve güvenirlik çalışması yapılmıştır. Ölçeğin dil eşdeğerliği yapılmıştır. Ölçek, Ankara ilinde üç farklı sosyo ekonomik düzeyden seçilen altı okulda 613 öğrenci üzerinden değerlendirilmiştir. Ölçeğin yapı geçerliği açıklayıcı faktör analizi ve doğrulayıcı faktör analizi ile, güvenirliği test tekrar test korelasyonkatsayısı kullanılarak ve iç tutarlığı Cronbach’s alpha katsayısı ile değerlendirilmiştir. Ölçekorjinalinde 8-10 yaş grubu kız çocuklarında geliştirilmiş olup bu çalışmada ilköğretim 4.sınıf öğrencileri üzerinde uygulanmıştır. Bulgular: Ölçek tek boyut 9 maddeden oluşmuştur. Ölçeğin orijinalinde Cronbach's alpha: 0,62’dır. Bu çalışmada, ölçeğin test-tekrar test güvenirliği hem erkek (rho=0.541,p<0.01) hem de kız (rho=0,553,p<0,01) çocukları için kabul edilebilir düzeydedir. Ölçek her iki cinsiyet grubu için de iyi bir iç tutarlılığa sahiptir (erkek çocuklar için: α=0,677 ve kız çocuklar için: α=0,674). Sonuç:Ölçeğin analiz sonuçları orijinal yapıya uyum sağladığı için ölçeğin Türkçe uyarlamasının geçerli ve güvenilir olduğu söylenebilir.