A serial Mediation Model of Depression and Drinking Motives Underlying Problem Drinking Among Hispanic College Women Following Rape

Problem drinking and depression are common following sexual assault. The current study applied a coping motives model of drinking and examined the association between rape experiences and problem drinking serially mediated by depression symptoms and coping-depression drinking motives among Hispanic college women. A total of 330 college women were classified into a single rape experience (SGL) group (n = 44), a multiple rape experiences (MLT) group (n = 70), and a no sexual assault experience group (n = 221). Participants completed self-report measures online. Serial mediation analyses with multi-categorical predictors found that significantly increased alcohol consumptions in rape survivors compared to individuals with no sexual assault experience were largely explained by the serially connected underlying mechanisms of depression symptoms and coping-depression drinking motives. The prevalence rates of rape experiences in this Hispanic female sample are alarming, suggesting Hispanic college women as a particularly vulnerable group for rape. The current results contribute to a greater understanding of the effects of rape experiences on behavioral and emotional outcomes among young Hispanic women who have been underrepresented in sexual victimization research. The findings emphasize the importance of assessing depression symptoms and coping-depression drinking motives in Hispanic rape survivors to reduce risks for hazardous drinking behavior.

Psychological impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in a Hispanic sample: Testing the buffering role of resilience and perceived social support

The current study examined the effects of specific COVID-19 stressors (i.e., family member's death due to COVID-19, COVID-19 infection, and school/financial stressors) on stress, anxiety, and depression and the potential buffering roles of resilience and perceived social support in the association between COVID-19 stressors and psychological symptoms in a Hispanic university student sample (n = 664). Participants were classified in three stressor groups: those reporting a family member's death due to COVID-19 (15.7%), those reporting their own or a family member's COVID-19 infection but no COVID-19 death (35.5%), and those reporting only school and/or financial stressors due to the pandemic (48.8%). Participants completed self-report measures online. Over 50% of participants with a COVID-19 death or infection in the family reported clinical levels of depression symptoms and over 40% endorsed clinically elevated anxiety symptoms. A series of moderation analyses with multi-categorical predictors found that among relatively highly resilient people, the magnitudes of the impact of COVID-19 infection or death on stress, anxiety, and depression were similar to the effect of a financial/school stressor alone, suggesting the buffering role of resilience. Perceived social support did not play a buffering role in the associations. Family member death due to COVID-19 and COVID-19 infection had significant negative psychological impacts on Hispanic young adults. Internal personal resources such as resilience, rather than external personal resources such as perceived social support, appear to be a critical factor that may help protect Hispanic individuals' mental health from the worst stressors of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Temporal Associations Between Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms and Depression in Response to Online Expressive Writing Interventions in a Hispanic Sample

Some expressive writing (EW) interventions targeting posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) may reduce both PTSS and comorbid depression symptoms. The temporal associations between PTSS and depression symptom levels in response to EW interventions are unknown. This study examined the directionality of PTSS and depression symptom levels from baseline to 1-week, 1-month, and 3-month follow-ups of two online EW interventions in a Hispanic sample with diverse trauma experiences. Participants (n = 70) completed either emotion-focused or fact-focused writing for 3 consecutive days online. A manifest autoregressive model with cross-lagged effects and treatment condition was analyzed. All but one first-order autoregressive path were statistically significant, with later PTSS and depression scores significantly predicted by those scores at preceding time points. The cross-lagged effects findings suggest that earlier PTSS levels influenced later depression levels, but earlier depression did not influence later PTSS, demonstrating a unidirectional temporal association. Severe PTSS may hinder EW treatment gains in depression. Superior outcomes for emotion-focused writing relative to fact-focused writing were also found.

The influence of movement on negative and positive emotional responses to animals

Two studies were conducted to explore whether the addition of animal movement would influence the intensity of emotional reactions towards that animal. Both studies compared self-reported emotional reactions with still images and videos for six animal categories (snakes, spiders, rodents, hoofed animals, animals with flippers, and turtles). In Study 1, participants reported fear and disgust to the animal stimuli, which were averaged into a single negative emotion rating. In Study 2, participants reported either fear and disgust or joy and affection to the animal stimuli, which were averaged into either a single negative or positive emotion rating. Upon combining the reported emotions from the two studies, movement was found to increase negative emotion reported to snakes and spiders and decrease negative emotion reported to rodents, hoofed animals, and animals with flippers. Results from Study 2 indicated that movement increased reported positive emotions to all six animal categories. Our findings suggest that animal movement is an important component of emotional reactions to animals.

Beliefs about mental illness in a Spanish-speaking Latin American sample

The US Hispanic population is large and rapidly growing, with serious healthcare disparities. Alarmingly, 67% of Hispanic adults with a mental illness go untreated. Attempts to increase treatment rates have had limited success, likely partly due to stigma beliefs. There is an urgent need to develop and utilize a Spanish language stigma assessment tool. The current study is the first to do so, translating the Beliefs Toward Mental Illness (BTMI; Hirai et al., 2018) scale into Spanish (S-BTMI). Our psychometric findings with English-Spanish bilingual Latinx undergraduate students suggest that the S-BTMI can be a reliable measure of mental illness stigma. The BTMI's 4-factor solution was confirmed by the S-BTMI. Language invariance tests for the S-BTMI and BTMI demonstrated metric invariance and partial scalar invariance. The S-BTMI's factors produced strong internal consistency and two-week test-retest reliability. A previous Latinx sample's BTMI scores were similar to the current S-BTMI scores, except for greater endorsement of incurability beliefs for the Spanish version. Average stigma levels were fairly low in the current sample. Use of the BTMI-S can improve our understanding of stigma, and its relationships to language, culture, acculturation, and treatment-seeking in Latinx communities.

Equine-assisted therapy for anxiety and posttraumatic stress symptoms

We tested the efficacy of the Equine Partnering Naturally(©) approach to equine-assisted therapy for treating anxiety and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. Participants were 16 volunteers who had experienced a Criterion A traumatic event, such as a rape or serious accident, and had current PTSD symptoms above 31 on the PTSD Checklist (PCL-S; Weathers, Litz, Herman, Huska, & Keane, ). Participants engaged in tasks with horses for 6 weekly 2-hour sessions. Immediately following the final session, participants reported significantly reduced posttraumatic stress symptoms, d = 1.21, less severe emotional responses to trauma, d = 0.60, less generalized anxiety, d = 1.01, and fewer symptoms of depression, d = 0.54. As well, participants significantly increased mindfulness strategies, d = 1.28, and decreased alcohol use, d = 0.58. There was no significant effect of the treatment on physical health, proactive coping, self-efficacy, social support, or life satisfaction. Thus, we found evidence that the Equine Partnering Naturally(©) approach to equine-assisted therapy may be an effective treatment for anxiety and posttraumatic stress symptoms. Future research should include larger groups, random assignment, and longer term follow-up.

Memory for positive, negative and neutral events in younger and older adults: Does emotion influence binding in event memory?

When remembering an event, it is important to remember both the features of the event (e.g., a person and an action) and the connections among features (e.g., who performed which action). Emotion often enhances memory for stimulus features, but the relationship between emotion and the binding of features in memory is unclear. Younger and older adults attempted to remember events in which a person performed a negative, positive or neutral action. Memory for the action was enhanced by emotion, but emotion did not enhance the ability of participants to remember which person performed which action. Older adults were more likely than younger adults to make binding errors in which they incorrectly remembered a familiar actor performing a familiar action that had actually been performed by someone else, and this age-related associative deficit was found for both neutral and emotional actions. Emotion not only increased correct recognition of old events for older and younger adults but also increased false recognition of events in which a familiar actor performed a familiar action that had been performed by someone else. Thus, although emotion may enhance memory for the features of an event, it does not increase the accuracy of remembering who performed which action.

A Preliminary Investigation of the Efficacy of Disgust Exposure Techniques in a Subclinical Population With Blood and Injection Fears

The current study examined whether a traditional exposure-based treatment for blood-injection-injury (BII) phobia would be effective at reducing disgust responses to BII stimuli and whether the addition of modules targeting disgust would provide incremental efficacy. Participants, many of whom reported subclinical BII phobia symptoms, underwent one of two single-session exposure protocols, one targeting fear alone, and the other targeting both fear and disgust. Both treatments consisted of education components (fear-only or fear-disgust) and in vivo exposure (fear-only or fear-disgust). Both the fear-only and the fear-disgust treatment groups significantly decreased fear and avoidance behaviour toward BII stimuli over time. The two groups also experienced similar reductions in disgust responses to BII-related stimuli and global as well as domain-specific disgust sensitivity. The effect sizes indicated that the fear-disgust group evidenced greater reduction in symptoms than did the fear-only group. The implications of the results for models of phobia maintenance and treatment are discussed.

Fear and disgust propensity in spider phobic distress

Three studies examined associations between spider phobic distress and two individual difference characteristics, disgust propensity (sensitivity to disgust elicitation) and fear propensity (sensitivity to fear elicitation). Although the relative contributions of trait anxiety and disgust propensity have been examined, researchers have yet to compare the parallel constructs of disgust and fear propensity. Two studies examined associations cross-sectionally, and a third longitudinal study examined associations of fear and disgust propensity with changes in distress and avoidance over time. In the first cross-sectional study, animal and non-animal fear propensity were independently associated with spider distress and disgust propensity was not. In the other two studies, animal fear propensity and animal disgust propensity were independently related to spider distress and non-animal scores were not. Fear propensity, but not disgust propensity, was predictive of decreased avoidance over time. The results suggest that disgust and fear propensity independently contribute to spider distress vulnerability.

A Preliminary Examination of Thought Suppression, Emotion Regulation, and Coping in a Trauma Exposed Sample

Attempts to modulate negative emotional and cognitive symptoms of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) may be related to psychopathology. Trauma exposed undergraduates, 31 reporting severe PTSD symptoms (PTSD group) and 34 without PTSD symptoms (no-PTSD group), completed measures of PTSD, depression, anxiety, thought control, emotion regulation, and coping. The PTSD group had greater psychopathology and overall modulation strategy use than the no-PTSD group. Thought suppression, emotion suppression, and avoidant coping strategies were positively related to psychopathology, whereas emotion reappraisal and approach coping strategies were either not related or weakly negatively related. Hierarchical multiple regressions with psychopathologic variables as criteria and modulation strategies as predictors indicated significant models in all cases. Generally, thought suppression was the only significant independent predictor of psychopathology.

Emotional Reactions During and After Trauma: A Comparison of Trauma Types

Peri- and posttraumatic emotional responses have been understudied, and furthermore, have rarely been compared among trauma types. The current study compared college students' retrospective self-reports of peri- and posttraumatic responses of fear, shame, guilt, anger, and sadness among four types of traumatic events: sexual assault, physical assault, transportation accident, and illness/injury. Overall emotional responding was generally high for all trauma types, and for those in the sexual assault group, emotion increased sharply from the peri- to posttraumatic time-point. Generally, fear was higher during the trauma compared to after the trauma, whereas the other emotions tended to remain stable or increase posttrauma. The sexual assault group tended to report higher levels of posttrauma emotion than the other trauma type groups.

Cognitive correlates of schizophrenia signs and symptoms: III. Hallucinations and delusions

We examined the cognitive correlates of hallucinations and delusions in 47 schizophrenia spectrum individuals. Hallucinations were significantly negatively correlated with performance on episodic memory tasks, and were not significantly associated with performance on tasks measuring fluency or concentration/attention. Although hallucinations were more strongly associated with performance on verbal than non-verbal memory tasks, the difference was not statistically significant. There was also a trend for hallucinations to be associated with poorer performance on working memory tasks, though this association was eliminated when episodic memory performance was taken into account. Delusions were not significantly associated with any of the cognitive measures.

Cognitive correlates of schizophrenia signs and symptoms: II. Emotional disturbances

We examined the cognitive and motor correlates of emotional disturbances in 47 schizophrenia spectrum individuals. Neither affective flattening nor anhedonia was significantly associated with tasks measuring working memory or attention/concentration, or with overall performance on tasks measuring fluency or episodic memory. In contrast, as expected, emotional disturbances were associated with patterns of hemispheric lateralization. Affective flattening and anhedonia were both associated with episodic memory laterality and there were similar trends with motor laterality. Anhedonia was also associated with medication motor side effects.

Cognitive correlates of schizophrenia signs and symptoms: I. Verbal communication disturbances

We examined the relations between verbal communication disturbances and several hypothesized etiological factors in 47 schizophrenia spectrum individuals. Both alogia and disturbed discourse coherence were associated with poor planning abilities. Alogia and discourse coherence were differentially associated with performance on tasks measuring fluency, working memory, word finding abilities, and concentration/attention.

Suppression of neutral and trauma targets: implications for posttraumatic stress disorder

Recent findings suggest that thought suppression may lead to increased intrusive thoughts for trauma survivors, paradoxically increasing symptoms. Participants with trauma history, 31 with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and 34 without PTSD, engaged in neutral white bear and trauma suppression tasks. A group difference was found for the trauma task and not for the neutral task. For the trauma task, both groups demonstrated an increase of trauma thoughts during suppression, but the PTSD group continued to report trauma thoughts at a higher level than the no-PTSD group post-suppression. These findings suggest that it is not an individual's general suppression ability, but the content of thoughts suppressed that leads to problems with intrusions for those with PTSD.

A naturalistic examination of positive expectations, time course, and disgust in the origins and reduction of spider and insect distress

We used a naturalistic method to examine the causes of changes in individuals' reactions to, and feelings about, spiders and insects. In this descriptive retrospective study, 50 college students who reported substantial changes in their attitudes toward spiders and/or insects (in the absence of professional treatment) underwent telephone interviews about the change process. We found that individuals frequently describe the role of positive experiences and expectations in positive change and some individuals report sudden changes. Further, descriptions of the important role of disgust in the change process were common. We discuss the implications of our findings for understanding the etiology and treatment of spider and insect distress and make a case for the usefulness of naturalistic methods in expanding scientific knowledge.

Changes in caffeine states enhance return of fear in spider phobia

Treatment of phobias is sometimes followed by a return of fear. Animal and human research has shown that changes in external and internal contexts between the time of treatment and follow-up tests often enhance return of fear. The present study examined whether shifts in caffeine (C) state would enhance return of fear. Participants who were highly afraid of spiders (n = 43) were treated in 1-session exposure-based therapy and tested for follow-up 1 week later. Participants were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 groups and received either placebo (P) or C at treatment and follow-up sessions: CC, PP, CP, and PC. Results demonstrated state-dependent learning. Participants experiencing incongruent drug states during treatment and follow-up (CP and PC) exhibited greater return of fear than those experiencing congruent drug states (CC and PP).

Deaths from varicella in infants

Onset of maternal varicella up to 5 days before delivery is associated with in utero exposure to varicella and may result in severe infection in the newborn 5 to 10 days after delivery. Since up to 31% of these newborns may die, routine administration of varicella-zoster immunoglobulin to these infants is recommended. Little is known, however, about the risk of death in other infants with postnatal infection. Available epidemiologic data indicate an estimated death/case ratio for children less than 1 year of age 4 times that for 1- to 14-year-olds (8 in 100,000 vs. 2 in 100,000). Since the actual ages for the infant deaths were lacking, it has been impossible to know how many deaths were possibly related to maternal varicella contracted within the 5 days before delivery. Using National Center for Health Statistics data, we analyzed 92 deaths due to varicella in children less than 1 year old reported between 1968 and 1978 (median age, 5.5 months). Only five deaths occurred in newborns (ages 8 hours to 19 days). These data indicate that intrauterine infection accounts for few varicella deaths in infants. Since postnatal infection accounts for the observed increased risk of death in this age group, the need for preventing postnatal varicella in all infants merits further study. However, based on the small number of deaths occurring annually and the low relative risk compared to other high risk groups, routine postexposure administration of varicella-zoster immunoglobulin to all children less than 1 year of age does not seem warranted at this time.