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EXPLORING THE IMPACT THAT SOCIAL MEDIA HAS ON THE LIVED EXPERIENCES OF MOTHERS WHO HAVE GONE THROUGH POSTPARTUM DEPRESSION
No full textThe purpose of this study is to explore the impact of social media on the lived experiences of mothers who have gone through postpartum depression. Through a qualitative research study approach, this study involves conducting in-depth-interviews with mothers who have experienced postpartum depression and the impact social media usage has on their lived experiences. Findings of the study revealed that there are both positive and negative impacts of social media with mothers who have gone through postpartum depression. The mothers who participated indicated that social media gave them a sense of validation, connection and support. However, they also indicated that social media has negatively impacted them as a result of comparison, isolation, and unrealistic expectations. The significance of the study is to provide social workers with more knowledge of mothers who have suffered postpartum depression, and their lived experiences related to the impact of social media. This study helps explore and understand how social media platforms shape the lived experiences of mothers who have undergone postpartum depression. The findings of this study is to shed light on the potential strategies that can help postpartum mothers, and their families, deal with postpartum depression
The Association of Binge Drinking and College Graduation among U.S. Hispanic/Latino Adults
Get PDF[ABSTRACT ONLY; NO FULL TEXT] Alcohol misuse remains a significant public health concern among college students, yet research on its impact among Hispanic/Latino populations remains limited. Guided by the Stress-Coping model, this study examined the association between binge drinking and educational attainment among U.S Hispanic/Latino adults. Data were drawn from the 2023 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), a nationally representative survey. The analytic sample included 56,705 adults aged 18 and older. Key variables included past 30-day binge drinking, college graduation status, ethnicity, sex at birth, household income, age group, and perceived mental health concerns. Binary logistic regression models assessed the association between binge drinking and college graduation, adjusting for covariates. Interaction terms tested the moderating role of perceived mental health. Binge drinking was not significantly associated with educational attainment in the fully adjusted model. However, Hispanic/Latino ethnicity, low income, and younger age were associated with lower odds of college graduation, while females and those with perceived mental health concerns had higher odds. A significant interaction was found. Among individuals with perceived mental health concerns, binge drinking was associated with higher odds of college graduation. These findings suggest that stress-related coping mechanisms may influence educational outcomes differently across subgroups. Future research should examine casual pathways and culturally tailored interventions that address both substance use and mental health among Hispanic/Latino students. Addressing these factors may contribute to improving academic success and reducing educational disparities in this growing and underrepresented population
Panorama City Resiliency Plan: Business Environment
Get PDF[ABSTRACT ONLY; NO FULL TEXT] Panorama City is the ancestral home of the Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians. Prior to the establishment of Spanish, Mexican, and American governments, Panorama City was a rich tribal area known as Wiqanga. Later, settlers used the land for cattle ranching, citrus groves, wheat fields, and dairy farms. Post World War II marked a significant turning point for Panorama City; the agricultural community was developed into the first planned community in the San Fernando Valley. First coined as the "The Heart of the Valley", industrialist Henry J. Kaiser and home builder Fritz Burns saw Panorama City as an opportunity to develop a suburban community by marketing homes for World War II veterans. Panorama City quickly transformed into a residential community with significant industrial and retail projects, especially General Motor's Fisher Body plant and the Panorama City Medical Center. The General Motor's Plant ultimately closed in 1992 and was rebuilt as The Plant shopping center in 1998. Today, Panorama City is home to a working-class community and offers relatively affordable housing for over 70,000 residents. Panorama City has many shopping opportunities including the Panorama City Mall, The Plaza Del Valle, The Plant and The Indoor Swap meet. For the past several decades, Panorama City has had sizeable Latino and Filipino communities which are an integral part of this neighborhood's social fabric. Resilience is the capacity of Panorama City's individuals, communities, institutions, businesses and systems to survive, adapt, and grow regardless of chronic stresses and acute shocks experienced. Creating cities that are more resilient to disasters requires strong planning efforts that show how long-term resilience planning can be used to strengthen the community. Resiliency is important because it helps create an organization that is empowered and has the capabilities to recover after a disaster threatens the stability of the community. To contribute to Panorama City's resilience, we analyzed indicators such as community networks, housing, crime safety, traffic safety, business environment, pedestrian safety, transportation, parks, air quality, energy usage, and urban heat island effect. Panorama City's business environment presents potential for growth as well as challenges. Job opportunities focused on industries such as construction, health care, and retail trade foster skill development and economic stability. Although Panorama City bears high unemployment rates when compared to Pacoima, North Hills, and Arleta, the advantages created through new employment opportunities promotes future economic resilience. By addressing skill gaps and offering support to local businesses, Panorama City strengthens its interconnectedness. The Master of Urban Planning Spring senior cohort at California State University, Northridge obtained community feedback from Panorama City residents through a series of public meetings and surveys. The first meeting took place on October 19, 2024, this meeting introduced to residents a general profile centered around the history and current conditions of Panorama City, noting down concerns they had regarding their neighborhood. The second and third meetings occurred on February 25, 2025 and April 5, 2025 respectively. In the second meeting, residents ranked which indicators were of most importance to them, leading to the development of recommendations that were then ranked based on priority in the third community meeting. Throughout this process, two different surveys were put out electronically accessible through a QR code that were made available in English and Spanish. These surveys served as a separate tool to help gauge how residents felt about their community and contributed to the development of the final recommendations. The recommendation for the business environment of Panorama City is to build business development centers to connect local business with potential resident employees. By doing so, economic resilience is strengthened as local job opportunities are filled and unemployment is reduced. To measure success, short-term tracking of the number of local businesses and residents utilizing the center's services, such as job placements, training program enrollments, and business consultations helps understand the usefulness of the center within the community. Long-term success may be monitored through increases in local employment rates, business growth and retention, and the number of new businesses represented in the development center
Exploring the Impact of Environmental indicators on Public Health, Socioeconomic mobility, and Poverty
Get PDF[ABSTRACT ONLY; NO FULL TEXT] As global economies face ongoing sustainability and development challenges, understanding the connection between public health, social mobility, and poverty is essential in shaping societal and economic growth. This research focuses on three main objectives to better understand the patterns and relationships that influence development across 40 countries. First, we analyze the relationship between education, employment, and social mobility. Second, we assess the impact of environmental changes on public health outcomes. Lastly, we investigate the impact of essential services, including electricity, clean water, and sanitation, in reducing poverty. To address these objectives, we analyzed data from the World Bank dataset covering the years 2021 to 2023. We used a combination of methods, including time series analysis, hypothesis testing, and neural networks. We capture trends, evaluate statistical relationships and generate predictive insights. For instance, we analyze how adult literacy rates correlate with unemployment, explore whether access to clean drinking water affects poverty levels, and predict trade activity using neural networks, trained on education, inflation, and inequality indicators. This study offers a comprehensive perspective of how factors like education, the environment, and basic infrastructure play a role in a country's development. By applying statistical and machine learning techniques, this research identifies key drivers of inequality and progress across countries. This study highlights critical factors that influence poverty, social mobility and public health. These findings are valuable for policymakers, organizations, and researchers working to promote equitable growth, healthier, more sustainable communities
Last crusade: medievalism in modern Brazilian conservatism
Get PDF[ABSTRACT ONLY; NO FULL TEXT] Despite popular perceptions of a backward and barbaric medieval era, some remember the period differently--as the peak of European civilization, when an unequal social hierarchy ensured church power and cultural vitality. Medievalist scholars analyze how politicians, scholars, and the media have invoked images of the Middle Ages--or medievalisms. Brazilian Integralism in the 1930s, the TFP and the rebellion against Vatican II in the 1960s, and the Brazilian New Right and Jair Bolsonaro's 2018 campaign all incorporated medievalisms as their political tools and ideological basis. Their medievalisms-through language, performance, imagery, social media posts, and memes-reveal their propaganda and goals to replicate medieval society. Studying the medievalisms of modern Brazilian political history uncovers how far-right movements in Brazil and around the globe are often built on anti-modernism and medieval fantasy, envisioning a return to a hierarchical, church-dominated society
Defense Mechanism
Get PDF[ABSTRACT ONLY; NO FULL TEXT] This collection of three short stories explores themes of loss, grief, alienation, and the ways individuals attempt to process or obscure their pain. Each story engages with these ideas through distinct narrative structures and stylistic choices, creating a progression of perspectives on emotional isolation and personal reckoning.The first story examines grief and the impulse to suppress it, both internally and externally. Told in fragmented, numbered sections, it employs poetic language and dark humor as coping mechanisms, mirroring the protagonist's attempt to downplay their emotions. The structure eschews strict chronology, with tangential asides that reflect the nonlinear way memory and grief unfold. At times, the narrative verges into prose poetry, emphasizing the tension between raw emotion and the need for control.The second story shifts to a more linear, conventional structure, exploring alienation, loneliness, and revenge within the context of family estrangement. Here, the protagonist's isolation is sharply defined by direct action and consequence, in contrast to the first story's introspective dissonance. While stylistically restrained compared to the other pieces, this story continues the collection's thematic exploration of emotional detachment and the difficulty of connection.The final story returns to a fragmented format, but with a structure designed to disorient the reader. The numbered sections jump unpredictably in time and space, reflecting the dissociation of a narrator grappling with drug use, grief, and a destabilized sense of self. Poetic language and moments of pseudo-surrealism create an immersive experience of disconnection, drawing the reader into the narrator's fractured reality.Taken together, these three stories form a meditation on loss and alienation, experimenting with language and form to reflect the emotional landscapes they depict. Through shifting narrative structures-moving from fragmentation to coherence and back again-the collection explores the ways grief manifests, the roles humor and detachment play in survival, and the disorienting effects of isolation. By engaging with poetic and experimental techniques, as well as traditional storytelling, the collection seeks to immerse the reader in the complex, often nonlinear experience of navigating personal loss
Equitable Integration of Green Spaces in Panorama City
Get PDF[ABSTRACT ONLY; NO FULL TEXT] This research paper examines the connection between green space implementation and gentrification, focusing on how cities can ensure equitable green infrastructure development and what role the community plays in the decision-making process. While green infrastructure offers a multitude of benefits, it can also lead to a phenomenon known as "green gentrification" where efforts to improve upon urban spaces inadvertently lead to increased property values and displacement of low-income, working communities. Panorama City, a rapidly developing and densely populated area and one of several neighborhoods in the Northeast San Fernando Valley undergoing rapid urban development, serves as a key case study. To explore the impact on residents and factors driving unintended displacement from green infrastructure developments, this qualitative study utilizes local expert semi-structured interviews, peer-reviewed articles, and archival research. This research presents a community outreach plan designed to foster collaboration between city planners and residents, aiming for equitable green space integration that benefits all residents while addressing concerns about gentrification and displacement
Roots of Resilience: The Case for Culturally Centered Maternity Homes
Get PDF[ABSTRACT ONLY; NO FULL TEXT] This qualitative study was conducted in North Sacramento, a historically underserved community in California where Black mothers disproportionately experience the intersecting impacts of maternal health disparities and housing instability. The purpose of this study is to examine how systemic barriers such as racial discrimination, lack of affordable housing, and gaps within healthcare and social service systems interact and shape service accessibility and maternal health outcomes. Using archival research and semi-structured expert interviews with leaders at a local community organization and staff from maternity homes across Northern California, this study explores the structural challenges homeless mothers face while identifying sustainable components of community-based maternity care. The findings reveal four key themes: (1) systemic barriers including economic marginalization, structural racism within healthcare and housing systems, and inadequate access to quality social support services create persistent disparities in maternal health and housing stability; (2) culturally sensitive, trauma-informed, and holistic care models are critical to improving outcomes for Black mothers and their babies; (3) community- based organizations are essential for building trusted support networks, connecting mothers to services, and forming the partnerships necessary for comprehensive, coordinated care; (4) long-term sustainability for community-based maternity care depends on intentional investment and strong cross-sector collaboration among healthcare systems, housing providers, and community organizations. These findings suggest that community-rooted approaches are vital to improving maternal health and housing outcomes and offer a foundation for future advocacy and system change strategies aimed at supporting Black mothers in North Sacramento
Arming Colonialism: The Birth of the Second Amendment, Westward Expansion, Land Speculation, and the Suppression of Native Resistance
Get PDF[ABSTRACT ONLY; NO FULL TEXT] The Second Amendment, often viewed as a protection against tyranny, reveals a delusion of grandeur. On December 14, 2012, an unimaginable tragedy occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, an affluent community. A twenty-year-old man first shot and killed his mother before driving to the school and opening fire on twenty-six people, including twenty children, aged six and seven. A decade later, in Uvalde, Texas, another tragedy struck when an eighteen-year-old murdered nineteen children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School. Both of these horrific incidents echo the massacres of Native Americans, including the killing of twenty unarmed natives by the Paxton Boys, vigilantes from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1763. The Paxton Boys encroached on Indigenous lands and had marched on Philadelphia earlier that year with the intent to murder Natives who had relocated to this area for their protection. Similarly, the Gnadenhutten massacre of 1782 saw an American militia round up unarmed Natives and execute ninety-six pacifist, Christianized "Indians." A critical analysis of the Second Amendment's origins finds that its primary function negates secure individual liberty but facilitated westward expansion and the violent suppression of Native resistance. This paper challenges the conventional interpretation of the Second Amendment as a safeguard against tyranny, exposing its deeper roots in racism, colonial conquest, and economic ambition
Waste Stream Analysis and Implementation of Efficient Pick-up Routes Within a Commuter Campus
No full text[ABSTRACT ONLY; NO FULL TEXT] The purpose of this project is to optimize waste hauling schedules at California State University, Northridge (CSUN) in order to save money and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, while ensuring waste service levels meet current standards. Identifying efficient waste hauling schedules and frequencies can help reduce operational costs and track scope 3 emissions to mitigate greenhouse gases. Optimized waste management schedules are an aspect of scope 3 emissions, which are indirect greenhouse gas emissions that occur from activities outside of a company's direct control (EPA, 2024). This is an important measure that different institutions, businesses, and government entities are using to address climate change at different levels. This project implements a mixed-methods approach to analyze quantitative data on campus waste while making observations and gathering qualitative data to understand the scope of waste data being gathered at various campus locations. Building on previous research that has established how major cities can use waste management practices to ensure mitigation of waste streams within their city limits, this project focuses specifically on waste management schedule frequencies in the context of a large, suburban university. The results of this research will help CSUN calculate its current scope 3 emissions while reducing its operational costs and provide a model for other institutions to optimize their waste management