Wekerle, C., Vakili, N., Stewart, S., & Black, T. (2018)
The utility of Twitter as a tool for increasing reach of research on sexual violence.
Boys’ and young men’s health is on the global research agenda with a partnership between Dr. Christine Wekerle, Associate Professor, Pediatrics at McMaster University and Dr. Mark Kavenagh, Head of Research and Policy, ECPAT International to foster youth resilience in challenging contexts
Read moreRead moreWekerle, C., Goldstein, A., Tanaka, M. & Tonmyr, L. (2017)
Childhood sexual abuse, sexual motives, and sexual risk-taking among male and female youth receiving child welfare services
Male and female adolescents receiving services from the Child Welfare system who reported Childhood Sexual Abuse (CSA) were more likely to endorse motivations for sex associated with coping with negative affect than other youth receiving these services. Sexual motives helped to explain the relationship between CSA and adolescent sexual health risk-taking behaviours.
doi: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2017.01.013
Kehayes, I-L., Hudson, A., Thompson, K., Wekerle, C., Stuart, H., Dobson, K., Krupa, T. & Stewart. S. (2018)
The consequences of alcohol-involved sexual victimization in male and female college students
Collegiates who were sexually victimized by someone who had been consuming alcohol displayed increased anxiety and this relationship was stronger among male victims, in comparison to female victims. These results point to the need for evidence-based policies to prevent secondhand alcohol harms.
Read moreRead moreHudson, A., Wekerle, C., Goldstein, A. L., Ellenbogen, S., Waechter, R., Thompson, K., Stewart, S. H. (2017)
Gender Differences in Emotion-Mediated Pathways from Childhood Sexual Abuse to Problem Drinking in Adolescents in the Child Welfare System
Among child welfare-involved youth, the pathway from CSA to problem drinking was explained in part by anger in males and females. Anxiety also explained the CSA-problem drinking relationship in females.
Read moreRead moreDrawson, A. S., Houlding, C., Braunberger, P., Sawula, E., Wekerle, C., & Mushquash,C. J. (2016)
Violence and Resilience: A Scoping Review of Treatment of Mental Health Problems for Indigenous Youth and their Families
This scoping review provides support for providing culturally adapted mental health treatments (CBT) and services for Indigenous youth to treat mental health concerns and promote resilience.
Read moreRead moreMcTavish, J., Sverdlichenko, I. MacMillan, H., & Wekerle, C. (2019)
Child sexual abuse, disclosure and PTSD: A systematic and critical review
Child sexual abuse (CSA) is a prevalent exposure with potentially serious, negative health consequences, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and its symptomatology.
Read moreRead morePark et al. (2019)
Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms and Coping Motives Mediate the Association Between Childhood Maltreatment and Alcohol Problems.
Childhood maltreatment is associated with increased risk of alcohol misuse. Posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) and coping motives have both been identified, separately, as mediators of the relation between childhood maltreatment and alcohol misuse but have yet to be examined as serial mediators in a high‐risk population. A total of 564 adolescents (53.7% female; M age = 15.9 years, SD = 1.1) in the care of child welfare services completed validated measures of childhood trauma, PTSS, drinking motives, and alcohol misuse across the first two waves (baseline and 6‐month follow‐up) of the Maltreatment and Adolescent Pathways (MAP) longitudinal study. Childhood maltreatment was associated with elevated PTSS, PTSS predicted higher coping motives, and coping motives were associated with higher levels of alcohol misuse, indirect effect (IE) = 0.03; 95% CI [0.00, 0.07]. Single mediator models with PTSS, IE = 0.03; 95% CI [−0.01, 0.05], and coping motives, IE = −0.02, 95% CI [−0.05, 0.03], as mediators were not statistically significant. The results suggest that PTSS and coping motives contribute sequentially to the association between childhood maltreatment and alcohol misuse and could thus both serve as intervention targets to prevent problem drinking in maltreated youth.
Read moreRead moreWekerle, C. & Kavenagh, M. (2020).
Male health: The serious challenges with which boys and young men contend.
Boys’ and young men’s health is on the global research agenda with a partnership between Dr. Christine Wekerle, Associate Professor, Pediatrics at McMaster University and Dr. Mark Kavenagh, Head of Research and Policy, ECPAT International to foster youth resilience in challenging contexts
Read moreRead moreNoella NORONHA, Savanah J. SMITH, Dawn MARTIN HILL, Lori DAVIS HILL, Sara SMITH, Amy GENERAL, Cynthia MCQUEEN, Makaśa LOOKING HORSE, Alexander DROSSOS, Cynthia LOKKER, Nicole M. BILODEAU and Christine WEKERLE (2021)
The Use of Mobile Applications to Support
Indigenous Youth Wellbeing in Canada
In Canada, Indigenous youth have remained resilient despite being confronted with a wide range of structural and systemic risks, such as long-lasting boil water advisories, over-representation in the child welfare system, and injustices related to land treaties. As people of the land, all disruptions to ecological health are a disruption to personal and community holistic health. Land-based activities and cultural continuity strengthen pathways of perseverance for Indigenous youth (Toombs et al., 2016). For youth, cultural self-expression and personal agency are enhanced with digital platforms, which are well-suited to Indigenous people’s strengths in art, music, and oral forms of passing on knowledge. The field of mental health has turned to e-supports such as mobile applications (apps) that can provide easy-to-access intervention, when needed. To date, resilience interventions have received comparatively less attention than the study of resilience factors and processes. It is timely to review the extant literature on mental health apps with Indigenous youth as, currently, Indigenous apps are in early research stages. Critically reviewing work to date, it is argued that an inclusive and expansive concept of resilience, coherent with Indigenous holistic health views, is wellpositioned as a foundation for collaborative resilience app development. To date, few mental health apps have been researched with Indigenous youth, and fewer have been co-constructed with Indigenous youth and their community members. The current literature points to feasibility in terms of readiness or potential usage, and functionality for promoting an integrated cultural and holistic health lens. As this effort may be specific to a particular Indigenous nation’s values, stories, and practices, we highlight the Haudenosaunee conceptual wellness model as one example to guide Indigenous and non-Indigenous science integration, with a current project underway with the JoyPopTM mHealth app for promoting positive mental health and resilience.
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