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Objective: The WHO and UNICEF recommend home visits to improve health outcomes for mothers and newborns. We evaluated the effect of home visits by community volunteers during pregnancy and postpartum on breastfeeding practices, women´s knowledge about benefits, beliefs and myths of breastfeeding, obstetric and neonatal warning signs, preparation for childbirth and initial care for newborns, and diarrhea and respiratory diseases in children. Design: Community quasi-experimental design. We estimated difference-in-difference models with fixed effects at the community level weighted by propensity score and investigated implementation barriers through focus groups and semi-structured interviews. Setting: Poor rural communities in Mexico; 48 intervention and 29 control. Participants: Baseline and follow-up information were reported from two independent cross-sectional samples of women with babies aged between six and 18 months (baseline: 292 control, 320 intervention, follow-up: 292 control, 294 intervention). Results The intervention increased reports of exclusive breastfeeding in the first six months by 24.4 percentage points (pp) (95% CI 13.4, 35.4), mothers’ knowledge of obstetric warning signs by 23.4 pp (95% CI 9.2, 37.5), and neonatal warning signs by 26.2 pp (95% CI 15.2, 37.2) compared to the control group. A non-linear dose-response relation with the number of home visits was found. Diarrhea and respiratory diseases among children decreased in the intervention vs control group, but were not statistically significant. Conclusions: Home visits should be implemented as a complementary strategy to the provision of prenatal and postnatal care in rural communities due to their potential positive effects on the health of mothers and their children.

The National Center for Juvenile Justice estimated that 54,000 juveniles are held in out-of-home placements daily and indicated that in 2013, over 31 million youth were under juvenile court jurisdiction. Detainment of juveniles often triggers or exacerbates mental health issues. The breadth and depth of the juvenile justice system means that there are several different points at which clinical psychologists and other mental health professionals might serve youth within the system. The most effective intervention approaches tend to rely on cognitive behavioral strategies, behavioral skill development and generalization, and family involvement. For clinicians wishing to enter the juvenile justice field, it is important to understand the goals of the juvenile justice system, how this system was established, and how its structures and processes affect involved youth.

Information processing theory stipulates generally that the human mind functions and makes decisions in a manner similar to a computer: Inputs accrue from the social environment and the emotion reactivity system and are subsequently processed, leading ultimately to behavioral outputs. In the context of media psychology—how media can activate, shape, and sustain habitual patterns of human behavior—information processing theories offer a well‐elaborated framework for explaining how the unidirectional and transactional inputs of the media environment can lead to the emotional, cognitive, and behavioral outputs of the individual. This entry presents an overview of the research underpinning information processing theoretical approaches to understanding development and behavior, and delineates how these approaches can account for the role of media in socialization and social interaction over time.