User:Ashwin.rao98/sandbox

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Practice Editing Here (Nov 15th in-class Wiki session work)

 * This is a place to practice clicking the "edit" button and practice adding references (via the citation button).

Task:


 * 1) Find a peer-reviewed journal article on PubMed. Practice inserting your citation in the above space using the "cite" tool
 * 2) Choose one "B-level" medical article on Wikipedia from the following list: https://wp1.openzim.org/#/project/Medicine/articles?quality=B-Class&importance=High-Class
 * 3) Practice editing live on Wikipedia by finding a typo in the text or improving the clarity/readability of a sentence by adjusting a few words in a sentence.

Specific Phobias
This article is about risk factors for specific phobias.

Proposed changes
We propose to change the sentence, “Women are twice as likely to experience specific phobias compared with men.” We will replace this with, “During childhood and adolescence, the incidence of new specific phobias is much higher in females than males. The peak incidence for specific phobias amongst females occurs during reproduction and childrearing, possibly reflecting an evolutionary advantage. There is an additional peak in incidence, reaching nearly 1% per year, during old age in both men and women, possibly reflective of newly occurring physical conditions or adverse life events”.

We would also like to change, “In the USA, the lifetime prevalence rate is 12.5% and a one-year prevalence rate of 9.1%” and replace it with, “An estimated 12.5% of U.S. adults experience specific phobia at some time in their lives and the prevalence is approximately double in females compared to males. An estimated 19.3% of adolescents experience specific phobia, but the difference between males and females is not as pronounced as seen in adults.”

Lastly, we propose to add a new sentence: “There may be significant underreporting of specific phobias as many people do not seek treatment, with some surveys conducted in the US finding that 70% of the population reports having one or more unreasonable fears”.

Rationale for proposed changes
We propose to modify and make additions to the Epidemiology section of the Wikipedia page. The changes are intended to contextualize the statistics provided, and provide further insights into potential interactions between gender and age.

Firstly, we would like to highlight the potential underreporting of specific phobias in the United States, which in our opinion, is a significant area of ambiguity. The importance of this change is to prime readers prior to reviewing the statistics presented later in the Epidemiology section that those presented incidence and prevalence estimates are likely much lower than reported.

We would like to modify the other existing sentences regarding the rates of disorder to provide additional information regarding the interaction of age and gender. There is research to suggest that the incidence rates of specific phobia amongst males and females does not manifest or peak during the same age ranges, suggesting potential interactive effects (and possibly effect modification) of these two covariates. These concepts apply to other prevalence estimates of disorder as well, which was further supported by the literature. We are recommending these changes because they will allow our readers to more fully understand the numbers by making these differential rates explicit and clear. This will help ensure that users of the article do not apply incorrect incidence estimates to the wrong populations.

Critique of sources
The article written by Eaton et al. is a review article and therefore a secondary source of information which incorporates large amounts of data from many studies. It was published in 2018 and therefore supports the current body of evidence. In the realm of anxiety disorders, phobic disorders are less researched; this paper specifically focuses on specific phobias, and therefore, is within the scope of our Wikipedia article. The epidemiological aspects of this review concentrate on population-based data, focusing on the prevalence, incidence, and natural history of specific phobias. This will supplement the present Wikipedia article’s Epidemiology section, which is currently lacking in this type of information. Furthermore, the article posed less of a geographic bias as articles presented information from countries throughout the world rather than limiting data to only North American or developed nations, providing a more holistic picture of the epidemiology of social phobias.

However, because this is a narrative review, the authors’ process of gathering evidence is likely not as rigorous as what one would expect from a systematic review or meta-analysis. The authors state that a systematic process was utilized to select papers, however there is a lack of clarity in how selection was done. Although the authors’ paper selection process was not explicitly shared, narrative reviews typically involve articles being selectively chosen by the authors. Additionally, the strength (or weakness) of papers that the authors included was not assessed or shared. Lastly, this narrative review may also introduce inherent biases of the authors, such as personal experience or conventional wisdom to guide recommendations.

Our second reference is a website published by the National Institute of Mental Health. The website does not provide any information regarding authorship, publication date, or date last updated, which reduces our ability to verify whether or not any conflicts of interest are present, nor whether the information is up-to-date or not. Furthermore, because the website is not peer-reviewed, there is a possibility that the information provided may be biased in alignment with institutional positions or perspectives. Furthermore, while the citations for the website were included, many of them are at least older than 5 years old. Thus, the data provided may be out of date.

What to post on the Wikipedia article talk page (part of assignment 3)

 * This will also be covered on Nov 15th in class. Your group should use the below template to share an outline of your proposed improvements (including your new wording and citations). Article talk pages are not places to share your assignment answers. The Wikipedia community will be more interested in viewing your exact article improvement suggestions including where you plan to improve the article (which section), what wording you suggest, and the exact citation (Note: all citations must meet WP:MEDRS)
 * You will not be able to paste citations directly from your sandbox to talk pages (unless you are interested in editing/learning Wiki-code in the "source editing" mode). We suggest re-adding your citations on the talk page manually (using the cite button and populating the citation by pasting in the DOI, website, or PMID). You will have to repeat this process yet again when you edit the actual article live.
 * Talk Page Template: CARL Medical Editing Initiative/Fall 2021/Talk Page Template