Juliet Ifeoma Nwufo

Suicide remains a critical global mental health challenge, disproportionately affecting low- and middle-income countries where access to formal mental health services is limited. In such contexts, including sub-Saharan Africa, individuals in crisis often turn first to faith leaders. Clergy frequently encounter suicidal crises and serve as initial points of contact, yet there is little empirical evidence on their comfort or competence in responding to such crises. Our study examined clergy’s self-reported comfort and competence in handling suicidal crises, thereby addressing a critical gap in understanding clergy’s readiness for frontline suicide prevention in Nigeria. Participants were 253 Catholic clergy (all Black men; ages 27–72, M = 44.58, SD = 9.95) who completed a questionnaire form during monthly recollections and annual retreats for priests in eight Nigerian dioceses between June and October 2024. All participants reported having intervened in cases of suicidal thoughts or attempts. An ordinal logistic regression was applied for the data analysis. Findings indicated that roughly 40% felt comfortable or very comfortable and about 50% felt competent or very competent during the interventions. Findings showed that clergy who felt more comfortable were 2.34 times more likely to feel competent, after adjusting for age, years of experience in priestly work, additional academic qualification, annual number of individuals with suicidal thoughts requesting assistance, annual number of individuals with a suicide attempt requesting assistance, and annual number of suicide-related funerals. Results highlight the need for mandatory, structured suicide prevention training to strengthen clergy capacity in Nigeria and other low- and middle-income countries.

Objectives: Internet addiction is a behavioral addiction characterized by excessive and compulsive use of the internet. The risk of internet addiction among adolescents has risen recently due to an increase in technological advancement and globalization. However, previous studies have focused on the precipitating factors triggering the internet addiction without looking at the exogenous factors and boundary conditions, such as family functioning, that can either sustain or weaken such behavior. Thus, the present study aimed to examine the moderating role of family functioning in the relationship between personality traits and internet addiction among adolescents. Methods: This study is a cross-sectional study consisting of 3150 adolescent students in the grade/class level of JSS1-SS3 who were assessed with standardized measures of the Big-Five Personality Inventory, Internet Addictive Test, and Family APGAR Index. Pearson correlation was used to explore the bivariate relationships between the demographic variable and other variables of interest, while Hayes regression-based PROCESS macro for SPSS was used to test the Hypotheses. Results: (1) Openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, and neuroticism positively correlated with internet addiction, whereas agreeableness was negatively associated with internet addiction. (2) Positive family functioning correlated negatively with internet addiction. (3) Positive family functioning moderated the relationships of extraversion and agreeableness with internet addiction but not on openness to experience, conscientiousness, and neuroticism with internet addiction. Conclusions: Positive family functioning correlated negatively with internet addiction among adolescents, suggesting that improving family functioning would be a valuable tactic for reducing adolescents’ susceptibility to personality-related internet addiction.

Background: As a global phenomenon, suicide has generated a lot of concern. Scholars from various fields have conducted extensive research on the prevalence, causes, factors, and/or management or possible solutions to suicidal ideation. Despite the research efforts, suicidal cases worldwide still yell for more empirical attention. No doubt that some of the extant literature have specifically evidenced the causal links and factors in suicidal ideation. Yet, none had focused on the moderating roles of coping and resilience in an academic population. We therefore, examined the moderating roles of coping and resilience in the relationship between academic stress and suicidal ideation.Method: We used a cross-sectional design to sample 505 participants (329 males and 176 females) from three southern Nigerian universities. Participants who willingly indicated their participatory consent were administered a paper self-report questionnaire containing the Lakaev Academic Stress Response Scale (LASRS), Scale for Suicidal Ideation (SSI), Brief COPE (B-COPE), and Resilience Scale (RS-14). Hierarchical regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses of the study.Academic stress (r = 0.17; p.001) was found to be positively associated with suicidal ideation, whereas resilience (r = −.22; p.001) was found to be negatively associated with suicidal ideation. Suicidal ideation had no significant correlation with adaptive coping style, but it did have a significant correlation with maladaptive coping (r = .15; p.001). The regression-based PROCESS macro showed that academic stress was a significant predictor of coping [ΔR² = .03, F (1, 502) = 16.18,p = .01]. Academic stress was positively associated with suicidal ideation at low or moderate levels of adaptive coping styles. At high levels of adaptive coping styles, the association between academic stress and suicidal ideation was not significant. However, resilience negatively predicted suicidal ideation [R = .29, (R² = .08), F(1, 499) = 19.94,p = .00] with academic stress showing a positive association with suicidal ideation at low and moderate levels of resilience, but for those with high resilience, academic stress was not associated with suicidal ideation.In sum, suicidal ideation is heightened by increased academic stress, with greater resilience ameliorating the tendency of academic stress resulting in suicidal ideation. Also, adopting maladaptive ways of coping promotes suicidal ideation among students, with resilience and adaptive coping strategies moderating the relationship between academic stress and suicidal ideation. It is therefore recommended that educational administrators, policy makers, lecturers, teachers, and tutors incorporate courses, teachings, and sessions that foster as well as inculcate resilience and efficient coping skills in pupils and students.

Adolescents’ dating violence is a public health concern due to its damaging consequences on the wellbeing of individuals involved and the possible risk of progression into adulthood. Previous studies have established links between substance use and exposure to media violence on adolescents’ dating violence, but little is known about the dispositions of adolescents toward the act, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. The present study examined the contributions of substance abuse and media violence exposure in acceptance of dating violence among adolescents (N = 378). They consisted of 240 males and 138 female students with an average age of 16.25 years (SD = 1.48; age range = 16–18 years. They completed the following questionnaire measures of the variables: Psychoactive Substance Use Questionnaire, Adjusted Content-based Media Scale, and Acceptance of Dating Violence Scale. Results of hierarchical multiple regressions showed that adolescents’ use of substances positively predicted acceptance of dating violence. Acceptance of dating violence was also predicted by adolescents’ exposure to media violence. Since increased favorable attitudes toward dating violence may predict actual perpetration of dating violence, the findings suggest that interventions aimed at preventing substance abuse and exposure to violence in the media may be helpful in amelioration of the problem of dating violence among youths.