None too happy
Sad as a Matter of Choice? Emotion-Regulation Goals in Depression
Yael Millgram et al.
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Research on deficits in emotion regulation has devoted considerable attention to emotion-regulation strategies. We propose that deficits in emotion regulation may also be related to emotion-regulation goals. We tested this possibility by assessing the direction in which depressed people chose to regulate their emotions (i.e., toward happiness, toward sadness). In three studies, clinically depressed participants were more likely than nondepressed participants to use emotion-regulation strategies in a direction that was likely to maintain or increase their level of sadness. This pattern was found when using the regulation strategies of situation selection (Studies 1 and 2) and cognitive reappraisal (Study 3). The findings demonstrate that maladaptive emotion regulation may be linked not only to the means people use to regulate their emotions, but also to the ends toward which those means are directed.
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Crosby Hipes, Jeffrey Lucas & Meredith Kleykamp
Armed Forces & Society, July 2015, Pages 477-495
Abstract:
This article describes an experimental study that investigates the status- and stigma-related consequences of military service and of experiences in war resulting in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In the study, participants interacted with fictitious partners whom they believed were real in four conditions: a control condition, a condition in which the “partner” was in the military, a condition in which the “partner” was a war veteran who had been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, and a condition in which the partner was a military veteran with PTSD who had been deployed. Results support predictions that military experience would advantage partners with respect to influence over participants, but that PTSD would be disadvantaging. Previous contact with veterans moderated this relationship, mitigating the loss of influence associated with PTSD. A prediction that PTSD would significantly increase social distance was not supported.
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Suicide Attempts in the US Army During the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, 2004 to 2009
Robert Ursano et al.
JAMA Psychiatry, forthcoming
Objective: To identify risk factors for suicide attempts among active-duty members of the regular Army from January 1, 2004, through December 31, 2009.
Design, Setting, and Participants: This longitudinal, retrospective cohort study, as part of the Army Study to Assess Risk and Resilience in Servicemembers (STARRS), used individual-level person-month records from Army and Department of Defense administrative data systems to examine sociodemographic, service-related, and mental health predictors of medically documented suicide attempts among active-duty regular Army soldiers from January 1, 2004, through December 31, 2009. We analyzed data from 9791 suicide attempters and an equal-probability sample of 183 826 control person-months using a discrete-time survival framework. Data analysis was performed from February 3 through November 12, 2014.
Results: Enlisted soldiers accounted for 98.6% of all suicide attempts (9650 attempters; overall rate, 377.0 [95% CI, 369.7-384.7] per 100 000 person-years). In multivariate models, suicide attempts among enlisted soldiers were predicted (data reported as odds ratio [95% CI]) by female sex (2.4 [2.3-2.5]), entering Army service at 25 years or older (1.6 [1.5-1.8]), current age of 29 years or younger (<21 years, 5.6 [5.1-6.2]; 21-24 years, 2.9 [2.6-3.2]; 25-29 years, 1.6 [1.5-1.8]), white race (black, 0.7 [0.6-0.7]; Hispanic, 0.7 [0.7-0.8]; Asian, 0.7 [0.6-0.8]), an educational level of less than high school (2.0 [2.0-2.1]), being in the first 4 years of service (1-2 years, 2.4 [2.2-2.6]; 3-4 years, 1.5 [1.4-1.6]), having never (2.8 [2.6-3.0]) or previously (2.6 [2.4-2.8]) been deployed, and a mental health diagnosis during the previous month (18.2 [17.4-19.1]). Attempts among officers (overall rate, 27.9 per 100 000 person-years) were predicted by female sex (2.8 [2.0-4.1]), entering Army service at 25 years or older (2.0 [1.3-3.1]), current age of 40 years or older (0.5 [0.3-0.8]), and a mental health diagnosis during the previous month (90.2 [59.5-136.7]). Discrete-time hazard models indicated risk among enlisted soldiers was highest in the second month of service (102.7 per 100 000 person-months) and declined substantially as length of service increased (mean during the second year of service, 56.0 per 100 000 person-years; after 4 years of service, 29.4 per 100 000 person-months), whereas risk among officers remained stable (overall mean, 6.1 per 100 000 person-months).
Conclusions and Relevance: Our results represent, to our knowledge, the most comprehensive accounting to date of suicide attempts in the Army. The findings reveal unique risk profiles for enlisted soldiers and officers and highlight the importance of research and prevention focused on enlisted soldiers in their first Army tour.
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Is the Suicide Rate a Random Walk?
Bijou Yang et al.
Psychological Reports, June 2015, Pages 983-985
Abstract:
The yearly suicide rates for the period 1933–2010 and the daily suicide numbers for 1990 and 1991 were examined for whether the distribution of difference scores (from year to year and from day to day) fitted a normal distribution, a characteristic of stochastic processes that follow a random walk. If the suicide rate were a random walk, then any disturbance to the suicide rate would have a permanent effect and national suicide prevention efforts would likely fail. The distribution of difference scores from day to day (but not the difference scores from year to year) fitted a normal distribution and, therefore, were consistent with a random walk.
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Psychopathic personality traits, intelligence, and economic success
Cashen Boccio & Kevin Beaver
Journal of Forensic Psychiatry & Psychology, July/August 2015, Pages 551-569
Abstract:
A wealth of research has revealed that psychopathy and psychopathic personality traits are associated with criminal involvement. Comparatively less research, however, has examined whether psychopathic personality traits influence economic outcomes in adulthood. The current study addresses this gap in the literature by analyzing data drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. The results of the analyses indicate that psychopathic personality traits are negatively related to a number of economic outcomes, including household income and employment history measures. Individuals with high levels of psychopathic personality traits were found to have lower household incomes and to be fired more frequently than individuals with lower levels of psychopathic personality traits. Unexpectedly, psychopathic personality traits were also found to be negatively associated with household debt. There was also some evidence that the effect of psychopathic personality traits was moderated by intelligence in the prediction of household income. We discuss what these findings mean for the psychopathy and economics literatures.
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Economic downturns and suicide mortality in the USA, 1980–2010: Observational study
Sam Harper et al.
International Journal of Epidemiology, forthcoming
Background: Several studies have suggested strong associations between economic downturns and suicide mortality, but are at risk of bias due to unmeasured confounding. The rationale for our study was to provide more robust evidence by using a quasi- experimental design.
Methods: We analysed 955 561 suicides occurring in the USA from 1980 to 2010 and used a broad index of economic activity in each US state to measure economic conditions. We used a quasi-experimental, fixed-effects design and we also assessed whether the effects were heterogeneous by demographic group and during periods of official recession.
Results: After accounting for secular trends, seasonality and unmeasured fixed characteristics of states, we found that an economic downturn similar in magnitude to the 2007 Great Recession increased suicide mortality by 0.14 deaths per 100 000 population [95% confidence interval (CI) 0.00, 0.28] or around 350 deaths. Effects were stronger for men (0.28, 95% CI 0.07, 0.49) than women and for those with less than 12 years of education (1.22 95% CI 0.83, 1.60) compared with more than 12 years of education. The overall effect did not differ for recessionary (0.11, 95% CI −0.02, 0.25) vs non- recessionary periods (0.15, 95% CI 0.01, 0.29). The main study limitation is the potential for misclassified death certificates and we cannot definitively rule out unmeasured confounding.
Conclusions: We found limited evidence of a strong, population-wide detrimental effect of economic downturns on suicide mortality. The overall effect hides considerable heterogeneity by gender, socioeconomic position and time period.
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Word-finding impairment in veterans of the 1991 Persian Gulf War
Kristin Moffett et al.
Brain and Cognition, August 2015, Pages 65–73
Abstract:
Approximately one quarter of 1991 Persian Gulf War Veterans experience cognitive and physiological sequelae that continue to be unexplained by known medical or psychological conditions. Difficulty coming up with words and names, familiar before the war, is a hallmark of the illness. Three Gulf War Syndrome subtypes have been identified and linked to specific war-time chemical exposures. The most functionally impaired veterans belong to the Gulf War Syndrome 2 (Syndrome 2) group, for which subcortical damage due to toxic nerve gas exposure is the suspected cause. Subcortical damage is often associated with specific complex language impairments, and Syndrome 2 veterans have demonstrated poorer vocabulary relative to controls. 11 Syndrome 1, 16 Syndrome 2, 9 Syndrome 3, and 14 age-matched veteran controls from the Seabees Naval Construction Battalion were compared across three measures of complex language. Additionally, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was collected during a covert category generation task, and whole-brain functional activity was compared between groups. Results demonstrated that Syndrome 2 veterans performed significantly worse on letter and category fluency relative to Syndrome 1 veterans and controls. They also exhibited reduced activity in the thalamus, putamen, and amygdala, and increased activity in the right hippocampus relative to controls. Syndrome 1 and Syndrome 3 groups tended to show similar, although smaller, differences than the Syndrome 2 group. Hence, these results further demonstrate specific impairments in complex language as well as subcortical and hippocampal involvement in Syndrome 2 veterans. Further research is required to determine the extent of language impairments in this population and the significance of altered neurologic activity in the aforementioned brain regions with the purpose of better characterizing the Gulf War Syndromes.
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A Longitudinal Analysis of Changes in Job Control and Mental Health
Rebecca Bentley et al.
American Journal of Epidemiology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Deteriorating job control has been previously shown to predict poor mental health. The impact of improvement in job control on mental health is less well understood, yet it is of policy significance. We used fixed-effects longitudinal regression models to analyze 10 annual waves of data from a large Australian panel survey (2001–2010) to test within-person associations between change in self-reported job control and corresponding change in mental health as measured by the Mental Component Summary score of Short Form 36. We found evidence of a graded relationship; with each quintile increase in job control experienced by an individual, the person's mental health increased. The biggest improvement was a 1.55-point increase in mental health (95% confidence interval: 1.25, 1.84) for people moving from the lowest (worst) quintile of job control to the highest. Separate analyses of each of the component subscales of job control — decision authority and skill discretion — showed results consistent with those of the main analysis; both were significantly associated with mental health in the same direction, with a stronger association for decision authority. We conclude that as people's level of job control increased, so did their mental health, supporting the value of targeting improvements in job control through policy and practice interventions.
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How regional personality affects individuals’ life satisfaction: A case of emotional contagion?
Olga Stavrova
Journal of Research in Personality, October 2015, Pages 1–5
Abstract:
Recent research has shown that life satisfaction is lower in states with a high neuroticism level than in less neurotic states. The present study disentangles the effect of state- and individual-level neuroticism on life satisfaction in a multilevel regression analysis using nationally representative data from 16 German federal states. The results show that controlling for individual-level neuroticism results in a reduction of the effect of state-level neuroticism on individuals’ life satisfaction, although it remains statistically and practically significant. Hence, the ecological correlation between state-level neuroticism and state-level life satisfaction reported in prior research is not a mere reflection of individual-level associations. The process of emotional contagion is proposed as the potential mechanism of the state-level neuroticism effect.
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Ella James et al.
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Memory of a traumatic event becomes consolidated within hours. Intrusive memories can then flash back repeatedly into the mind’s eye and cause distress. We investigated whether reconsolidation — the process during which memories become malleable when recalled—can be blocked using a cognitive task and whether such an approach can reduce these unbidden intrusions. We predicted that reconsolidation of a reactivated visual memory of experimental trauma could be disrupted by engaging in a visuospatial task that would compete for visual working memory resources. We showed that intrusive memories were virtually abolished by playing the computer game Tetris following a memory-reactivation task 24 hr after initial exposure to experimental trauma. Furthermore, both memory reactivation and playing Tetris were required to reduce subsequent intrusions (Experiment 2), consistent with reconsolidation-update mechanisms. A simple, noninvasive cognitive-task procedure administered after emotional memory has already consolidated (i.e., > 24 hours after exposure to experimental trauma) may prevent the recurrence of intrusive memories of those emotional events.
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Psychological Effect of an Analogue Traumatic Event Reduced by Sleep Deprivation
Kate Porcheret et al.
Sleep, July 2015, Pages 1017–1025
Study Objective: To examine the effect of sleep deprivation compared to sleep, immediately after experimental trauma stimuli on the development of intrusive memories to that trauma stimuli.
Design: Participants were exposed to a film with traumatic content (trauma film). The immediate response to the trauma film was assessed, followed by either total sleep deprivation (sleep deprived group, N = 20) or sleep as usual (sleep group, N = 22). Twelve hours after the film viewing the initial psychological effect of the trauma film was measured and for the subsequent 6 days intrusive emotional memories related to the trauma film were recorded in daily life.
Measurements and results: On the first day after the trauma film, the psychological effect as assessed by the Impact of Event Scale – Revised was lower in the sleep deprived group compared to the sleep group. In addition, the sleep deprived group reported fewer intrusive emotional memories (mean 2.28, standard deviation [SD] 2.91) compared to the sleep group (mean 3.76, SD 3.35). Because habitual sleep/circadian patterns, psychological health, and immediate effect of the trauma film were similar at baseline for participants of both groups, the results cannot be accounted for by pre-existing inequalities between groups.
Conclusions: Our findings suggest that sleep deprivation on one night, rather than sleeping, reduces emotional effect and intrusive memories following exposure to experimental trauma.
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(Dis)connected: An Examination of Interoception in Individuals With Suicidality
Lauren Forrest et al.
Journal of Abnormal Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Sensing one’s internal physiological sensations is a process known as interoception. Several lines of research suggest that poor interoception may facilitate engagement in dangerous self-harm. In 2 studies, we investigated interoceptive abilities in individuals with differing degrees of suicidality. In Study 1, we compared interoception in controls (n = 27) and suicide ideators (n = 35), planners (n = 14), and attempters (n = 30). We found that those with suicidality had worse interoception than controls. Further, attempters reported worse interoception than planners or ideators. In Study 2, we compared interoception in psychiatric outpatients who had (n = 136) or had not (n = 459) attempted suicide. Again, we found that attempters reported worse interoception than nonattempters. In addition, we found that recent attempts were more strongly associated with interoceptive deficits than distant attempts. Together, our findings suggest that interoception is impaired in individuals with suicidality. Furthermore, the extent to which interoception is disturbed may differentiate not only between those who desire suicide from those who attempt suicide, but also between recent and distant suicide attempters. Impaired interoception may be important for engaging in serious self-injury; thus, reestablishing one’s connection to the body may aid in the prevention of suicidal behavior.
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Happiness and Age in European Adults: The Moderating Role of Gross Domestic Product per Capita
Jessica Morgan, Oliver Robinson & Trevor Thompson
Psychology and Aging, forthcoming
Abstract:
Studies of happiness levels across the life span have found support for two rival hypotheses. The positivity effect states that as people get older, they increasingly attend to positive information, which implies that happiness remains stable or increases with age, whereas the U-shaped hypothesis posits a curvilinear shape resulting from a dip during midlife. Both have been presented as potentially universal hypotheses that relate to cognitive and/or biological causes. The current study examined the happiness-age relationship across 29 European nations (N = 46,301) to explore whether it is moderated by national wealth, as indexed by Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita. It was found that eudaimonic and hedonic happiness remained relatively stable across the life span only in the most affluent nations; in poorer nations, there was either a fluctuating or steady age-associated decline. These findings challenge the cultural universality of the happiness-age relationship and suggest that models of how age relates to happiness should include the socioeconomic level of analysis.
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Nature experience reduces rumination and subgenual prefrontal cortex activation
Gregory Bratman et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 14 July 2015, Pages 8567–8572
Abstract:
Urbanization has many benefits, but it also is associated with increased levels of mental illness, including depression. It has been suggested that decreased nature experience may help to explain the link between urbanization and mental illness. This suggestion is supported by a growing body of correlational and experimental evidence, which raises a further question: what mechanism(s) link decreased nature experience to the development of mental illness? One such mechanism might be the impact of nature exposure on rumination, a maladaptive pattern of self-referential thought that is associated with heightened risk for depression and other mental illnesses. We show in healthy participants that a brief nature experience, a 90-min walk in a natural setting, decreases both self-reported rumination and neural activity in the subgenual prefrontal cortex (sgPFC), whereas a 90-min walk in an urban setting has no such effects on self-reported rumination or neural activity. In other studies, the sgPFC has been associated with a self-focused behavioral withdrawal linked to rumination in both depressed and healthy individuals. This study reveals a pathway by which nature experience may improve mental well-being and suggests that accessible natural areas within urban contexts may be a critical resource for mental health in our rapidly urbanizing world.
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Gender, Status, and Psychiatric Labels
Amy Kroska et al.
Social Science Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examine a key modified labeling theory proposition — that a psychiatric label increases vulnerability to competence-based criticism and rejection — within task- and collectively oriented dyads comprised of same-sex individuals with equivalent education. Drawing on empirical work that approximates these conditions, we expect the proposition to hold only among men. We also expect education, operationalized with college class standing, to moderate the effects of gender by reducing men’s and increasing women’s criticism and rejection. But, we also expect the effect of education to weaken when men work with a psychiatric patient. As predicted, men reject suggestions from teammates with a psychiatric history more frequently than they reject suggestions from other teammates, while women’s resistance to influence is unaffected by their teammate’s psychiatric status. Men also rate psychiatric patient teammates as less powerful but no lower in status than other teammates, while women’s teammate assessments are unaffected by their teammate’s psychiatric status. Also as predicted, education reduces men’s resistance to influence but only when working with non-psychiatric patients. Education also increases men’s ratings of their teammate’s power, as predicted, but has no effect on women’s resistance or teammate ratings. We discuss the implications of these findings for the modified labeling theory of mental illness and status characteristics theory.
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Sophie Truijens et al.
American Journal of Epidemiology, forthcoming
Abstract:
On July 17, 2014, Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down, a tragedy that shocked the Dutch population. As part of a large longitudinal survey on mental health in pregnant women that had a study inclusion period of 19 months, we were able to evaluate the possible association of that incident with mood changes using pre- and postdisaster data. We compared mean Edinburgh Depression Scale (EDS) scores from a group of women (n = 126 cases) at 32 weeks’ gestation during the first month after the crash with mean scores from a control group (n = 102) with similar characteristics who completed the EDS at 32 weeks’ gestation during the same summer period in 2013. The mean EDS scores of the 126 case women in the first month after the crash were significantly higher than the scores of 102 control women. There were no differences in mean EDS scores between the 2 groups at the first and second trimesters. The present study is among the first in which perinatal mental health before and after the occurrence of a disaster has been investigated, and the results suggest that national disasters might lead to emotional responses.
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Thin Images Reflected in the Water: Narcissism and Girls' Vulnerability to the Thin-Ideal
Sander Thomaes & Constantine Sedikides
Journal of Personality, forthcoming
Objective: The purpose of this research is to test how adolescent girls' narcissistic traits ― characterized by a need to impress others and avoid ego-threat ― influence acute adverse effects of thin-ideal exposure.
Method: Participants (11-15 years; total N = 366; all female) reported their narcissistic traits. Next, in two experiments, they viewed images of either very thin or average-sized models, reported their wishful identification with the models (Experiment 2), and tasted high-calorie foods in an alleged taste test (both experiments).
Results: Narcissism kept girls from wishfully identifying with thin models, which is consistent with the view that narcissistic girls are prone to disengage from thin-ideal exposure. Moreover, narcissism protected vulnerable girls (those who experience low weight-esteem) from inhibiting their food intake, and led other girls (those who consider their appearance relatively unimportant) to increase their food intake. These effects did not generalize to conceptually related traits of self-esteem and perfectionism, and were not found for a low-calorie foods outcome, attesting to the specificity of findings.
Conclusions: These experiments demonstrate the importance of narcissism at reducing girls' thin-ideal vulnerability. Girls high in narcissism disengage self-protectively from threats to their self-images, a strategy that renders at least subsets of them less vulnerable to the thin-ideal.
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Mary Woody et al.
Clinical Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
The current study examined selective attention toward emotional images as a risk factor for major depressive disorder (MDD). Using multiple indices of attention in a dot-probe task (i.e., reaction time [RT] and eye-tracking-based measures) in a retrospective, high-risk design, we found that women with remitted MDD, compared with controls, exhibited greater selective attention toward angry faces across RT and eye-tracking indices and greater attention toward sad faces for RT measures. Second, we followed women with remitted MDD prospectively to determine if the attentional biases retrospectively associated with MDD history would predict MDD recurrence across a 2-year follow-up. We found that women who spent a greater proportion of time looking at angry faces during the dot-probe task at the baseline assessment had a significantly shorter time to MDD onset. Taken together, these findings provide converging retrospective and prospective evidence that selective attention toward angry faces may increase risk for MDD recurrence.
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Katie Burkhouse et al.
Journal of Abnormal Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
The primary aim of the current study was to examine whether physiological reactivity to depression-relevant stimuli, measured via pupil dilation, serves as a biomarker of depression risk among children of depressed mothers. Participants included 47 mother–child dyads. All mothers had a history of major depressive disorder. Pupil dilation was recorded while children viewed angry, happy, and sad faces. Follow-up assessments occurred 6, 12, 18, and 24 months after the initial assessment, during which structured interviews were used to assess for children’s levels of depressive symptoms as well as the onset of depressive diagnoses. Children exhibiting relatively greater pupil dilation to sad faces experienced elevated trajectories of depressive symptoms across the follow-up as well as a shorter time to depression onset. These findings were not observed for children’s pupillary reactivity to angry or happy faces. The current findings suggest that physiological reactivity to sad stimuli, assessed using pupillometry, serves as a potential biomarker of depression risk among children of depressed mothers. Notably, pupillometry is an inexpensive tool that could be administered in clinical settings, such as pediatricians’ offices, to help identify which children of depressed mothers are at highest risk for developing depression themselves.
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Gregory Lewis et al.
Psychophysiology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Decreased heart rate variability (HRV) is associated with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression symptoms, but PTSD's effects on the autonomic stress response and the potential influence of HRV biofeedback in stress relaxation training on improving PTSD symptoms are not well understood. The objective of this study was to examine the impact of a predeployment stress inoculation training (PRESTINT) protocol on physiologic measures of HRV in a large sample of the military population randomly assigned to experimental HRV biofeedback-assisted relaxation training versus a control condition. PRESTINT altered the parasympathetic regulation of cardiac activity, with experimental subjects exhibiting greater HRV, that is, less arousal, during a posttraining combat simulation designed to heighten arousal. Autonomic reactivity was also found to be related to PTSD and self-reported use of mental health services. Future PRESTINT training could be appropriate for efficiently teaching self-help skills to reduce the psychological harm following trauma exposure by increasing the capacity for parasympathetically modulated reactions to stress and providing a coping tool (i.e., relaxation method) for use following a stressful situation.
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Thinking of Attachments Reduces Noradrenergic Stress Response
Richard Bryant & Lilian Chan
Psychoneuroendocrinology, October 2015, Pages 39–45
Abstract:
Although there is much evidence that activating mental representations of attachments figure is beneficial for psychological health and can reduce stress response, no research has directly investigated whether attachment activation can ameliorate hormonal stress response. This study investigated whether activating an attachment figure or a non-attachment figure following administration of a socially evaluated cold pressor test to elicit stress impacted on glucocorticoid and noradrenergic response. Participants (N = 61) provided baseline salivary samples, underwent a cold pressor test, then imagined an attachment or non-attachment figure, and finally provided subsequent saliva samples. Participants who imagined a non-attachment figure had greater noradrenergic response following the stressor than those who imagined an attachment figure. These findings highlight that activating attachment representations can ameliorate the immediate noradrenergic stress response.
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Cindy Ward & Anne Wilson
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Temporal self-appraisal theory suggests that people can regulate current self-view by recalling former selves in ways that flatter present identity. People critique their subjectively distant (but not recent) former selves, creating the illusion of improvement over time. However, this revisionist strategy might not apply to everyone: People with fixed (entity) beliefs may not benefit from critiquing even distant selves. In three studies, we found that implicit theories of change and stability moderate the effects of subjective distance on the remembered self. In all studies, participants rated past selves portrayed as subjectively close or distant (controlling calendar time). Incremental theorists (but not entity theorists) were more critical of their subjectively distant (but not recent) past attributes. We found the same pattern when measuring existing implicit theories (Studies 1, 2) or manipulating them (Study 3). The present research is the first to integrate temporal self-appraisal theory and the implicit theories literature.