Background: Standardized instruments are needed for rigorous research, quality clinical practice and informed policy-making. In Mongolia, a confluence of current social, demographic and geographic factors augment the need for reliable means to assess social isolation among older adults. This study aims to identify, translate and validate such a measure. Method: We conducted the study in two phases. We first selected the 18-item Lubben Social Network Scale and followed Brislin’s 6-step model to translate the instrument from English to Mongolian. The second phase involved psychometric testing of the Mongolian version (LSNS-18-M). We recruited 198 Mongolians aged ≥ 55 years from six hospitals in Ulaanbaatar. All participants also completed the SF-12; the 15-item Geriatric Depression Scale; and measures of objective and subjective Social Isolation’ of these, 27 completed a re-test of the LSNS-18-M.Results: The LSNS-18-M showed strong psychometric properties. Cronbach alpha coefficients were high for the overall scale (0.89) and for family (0.85), friend (0.91) and neighbor (0.89) subscales. Infraclass correlation coefficients for the total scale (0.99) and family (0.99), friend (0.98) and neighbor (0.99) subscales were also high in the test-retest subsample. With respect to convergent validity, LSNS-18-M scores were inversely related to Social Disconnectedness (r=-0.55, p<0.001)and Perceived Isolation (r=-0.65, p<0.001) and with the GDS-15 (r=-0.31, p<0.001). Although not related to either subscale of the SF-12, the LSNS-M-18 was inversely associated with self-rated health status (r=-0.27, p<0.01). Mean LSNS-18-M scores successfully differentiated three levels of Social Disconnectedness and three levels of Perceived Isolation, indicating good discriminate validity.Finally, content validity was good. Items on the LSNS-18-M loaded cleanly on the same three factors as the original LSNS-18. Inter-factor correlations ranged from 0.23 to 0.77, all three factors correlated with total LSNS-18-M scores at p<0.001, and together they accounted for the majority of variance in total LSNS-18 scores.Conclusion: The LSNS-18-M has excellent reliability and satisfactory validity and holds significant promise for assessing social isolation among older adults in Mongolia.

WHO informed that across world an average of 565 young people aged 10 to 29 die every day through interpersonal violence. Some studies mentioned that anxiety was most frequently occurred as one of the psychological onsequences among victims of child abuse. Recent research on effects of adverse early life experiences on central nervous system as stress systems (hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis-HPA) has provided a greater understanding of the link between childhood abuse and susceptibility to anxiety disorder. Therefore, this research was done to study anxiety among abused adolescents, some physical parameters and level of cortisol in saliva.Total number of participants were 149 children aged between 11-16 years (number cases were 53, matched control subjects were 96). The Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale (SCAS; Spence, 1997) is a 38-item self-report uestionnaire that assesses multiple symptoms of childhood anxiety isorders based on current diagnostic criteria. All participants were measured the cortisol in the saliva by Cortisol ELISA kit, Sigma, USA. Average age of all subjects in the study was 13.52±1.57 and 102 of all subjects were female and 47 were male. All anxiety symptoms of case group was statistically significance higher (p<0.01) than control group. The average amount of salivary cortisol of case group was (21.3±8.1 ng/ml) statistically significantly lower (p<0.01) than average amount of control group (31.56±16.9 ng/ml). Anxiety was more frequently occurred among abused children and blunted cortisol responses might indicate a level of impaired HPA functioning that could constitute a vulnerability to psychopathology with exposure to anxiety.