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Objective: College students showed a high prevalence of stress, anxiety, and depression, with medical and nursing students experiencing particularly elevated levels of mental health challenges.Optimism significantly influences overall well-being by promoting a healthy lifestyle and cognitive responses. However, the association of optimism with sleep quality, stress, and mental health in college students remains unexplored. This study aimed to (1) explore the associations of optimism with sleep quality, stress, and mental health and (2) ascertain whether sleep quality and stress mediate the association between optimism and mental health among college students. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted using online surveys with students from health science majors at a public university in the northeast United States from September to December 2022. A total of 222 students participated in the study, providing data on sociodemographics, optimism, sleep quality, stress, anxiety, and depression. Parallel and serial mediation models were utilized to examine the potential mediating roles of sleep quality and stress in the association between optimism and mental health. Results: The study found that optimism influences anxiety and depression through both direct and indirect pathways. In line with predictions, the parallel mediation analysis revealed that the impact of optimism on anxiety (ßtotal = -0.598, 95% confident interval [CI]: -0.778 to -0.392) and depression (ßtotal = -0.724, 95% CI: -0.919 to -0.519) was mediated by stress and sleep quality. Furthermore, the serial mediation models revealed that stress and sleep quality co-mediated the relationship betweenoptimism and anxiety (indirect effect [IE] = -0.074, 95% CI: -0.135 to -0.029) or depression (IE = -0.084, 95% CI: -0.142 to -0.036) in a sequential manner. Conclusion: Optimism was negatively correlated with poor sleep quality, stress, anxiety, and depression. Enhanced optimism was linked to high sleep quality and less stress, anxiety, and depression. These insights emphasize the potential for school-based optimism interventions to improve sleep quality, ameliorate stress-related concerns, and alleviate mental health challenges in college students.

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The Concerns of Grieving Caregivers Scale (COGCS) is the first of its kind to explore caregivers' concerns about their own parenting, as well as their relationships with, and specific behaviours of their bereaved child(ren). Using exploratory factor analysis, we evaluate grieving parents' and caregivers' concerns using data collected across clinical populations from two community organizations supporting grieving families (i.e., a children's grief centre and a community hospice). Two identified factors were established: Concerns about Caregiving and Concerns about the Child. The COGCS demonstrates good internal consistency and criterion validity in its application with two distinct clinical samples. The use of this scale could be of value to clinicians supporting bereaved caregivers and their families as they can integrate concern-specific resources into their practice to better support their clients' presenting concerns.

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Objectives: Obesity prevalence among Americans has increased for nearly three decades. We explore the relationship between the rise in obesity and Social Security retirement benefit claiming, a decision impacting nearly all aging Americans. Specifically, we investigate whether obesity can affect individuals' decision to claim benefits early, a choice that has important implications for financial security in retirement, particularly for those with lower socioeconomic status (SES). Method: We use a microsimulation model called MINT6 (Modeling Income in the Near Term, version 6) to demonstrate the potential effects of obesity on subjective life expectancy and claiming behavior. We impute obesity status using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), which describes the distribution of obesity prevalence within the United States by gender, poverty status, and race/ethnicity. Results: We find that the rise in obesity and the consequent incidence of obesity-related diseases may lead some individuals to make claiming decisions that lead to lower monthly and lifetime Social Security retirement benefits. Further, we find that the potential economic impact of this decision is larger for those with lower SES. Discussion: We present a behavioral perspective by addressing the potential effects that obesity can have on individuals' retirement decisions and their resulting Social Security retirement benefits.

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Purpose: This study examined the effects of stimulus type and hearing status on speech recognition and listening effort in children with normal hearing (NH) and children with mild bilateral hearing loss (MBHL) or unilateral hearing loss (UHL). Method: Children (5-12 years of age) with NH (Experiment 1) and children (8-12 years of age) with MBHL, UHL, or NH (Experiment 2) performed consonant identification and word and sentence recognition in background noise. Percentage correct performance and verbal response time (VRT) were assessed (onset time, total duration). Results: In general, speech recognition improved as signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) increased both for children with NH and children with MBHL or UHL. The groups did not differ on measures of VRT. Onset times were longer for incorrect than for correct responses. For correct responses only, there was a general increase in VRT with decreasing SNR. Conclusions: Findings indicate poorer sentence recognition in children with NH and MBHL or UHL as SNR decreases. VRT results suggest that greater effort was expended when processing stimuli that were incorrectly identified. Increasing VRT with decreasing SNR for correct responses also supports greater effort in poorer acoustic conditions. The absence of significant hearing status differences suggests that VRT was not differentially affected by MBHL, UHL, or NH for children in this study.

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