Entstehung und Aufrechterhaltung von chronischen Schmerzen

Chronic pain has previously been defined as lasting longer than 3 or 6 months. This criterion, however, does not adequately describe the process of pain becoming chronic. Consequently, pain chronicity is not only assessed by pain duration but by consideration of other factors, such as disability or intensity. A number of learning processes affect pain chronicity as they mediate changes in neural networks involved in pain processing. Furthermore, a number of psychosocial risk factors have been identified that affect not only the transition from acute to chronic pain but also the maintenance of chronic pain. The fear-avoidance model takes into account many of these risk factors to explain the development and maintenance of chronic musculoskeletal pain.     

The Interplay of Parental Response to Anger,Adolescent Anger Regulation,and Externalizing and Internalizing Problems: A Longitudinal Study

Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology - Numerous studies have reported substantive correlations between anger socialization, children’s anger regulation, and...     

Problem-solving variability in older spouses: how is it linked to problem-, person-, and couple-characteristics?

Problem-solving does not take place in isolation and often involves social others such as spouses. Using repeated daily life assessments from 98 older spouses (M age = 72 years; M marriage length = 42 years), the present study examined theoretical notions from social-contextual models of coping regarding (a) the origins of problem-solving variability and (b) associations between problem-solving and specific problem-, person-, and couple- characteristics. Multilevel models indicate that the lion's share of variability in everyday problem-solving is located at the level of the problem situation. Importantly, participants reported more proactive emotion regulation and collaborative problem-solving for social than nonsocial problems. We also found person-specific consistencies in problem-solving. That is, older spouses high in Neuroticism reported more problems across the study period as well as less instrumental problem-solving and more passive emotion regulation than older spouses low in Neuroticism. Contrary to expectations, relationship satisfaction was unrelated to problem-solving in the present sample. Results are in line with the stress and coping literature in demonstrating that everyday problem-solving is a dynamic process that has to be viewed in the broader context in which it occurs. Our findings also complement previous laboratory-based work on everyday problem-solving by underscoring the benefits of examining everyday problem-solving as it unfolds in spouses' own environment.     

Daily management of work and family goals in employed parents

This study uses one-week time-sampling information from 104 employed parents with pre-school children to examine the association between daily workloads, control strategies, and goal progress. In addition, it examines relationships between work- and family-goal progress and important stress indices such as positive/negative affect and cortisol levels. Multilevel models indicate that family-specific control strategies fostered daily family-goal progress whereas work-specific control strategies were unrelated to daily work-goal progress. Furthermore, employed parents who successfully pursued their work and family goals as part of their daily life routines reported concurrent higher positive and lower negative affect. Only family-goal progress was associated with reduced cortisol secretion whereas work-goal progress was not. Our findings illustrate the usefulness of examining the dynamic interplay between daily workloads, control strategies, goal progress, and stress in the daily lives of employed parents and suggest that the underlying mechanisms may be domain-specific.     

Treatment specific competence predicts outcome in cognitive therapy for social anxiety disorder

Several studies have demonstrated a positive relationship between competence and outcome in CBT for depression but studies of CBT for anxiety disorders are lacking. The present study explores the relationship between competence and outcome in cognitive therapy (CT) for social anxiety disorder, using hierarchical linear modeling analyses (HLM). Data were drawn from a multicenter randomized controlled trial. Five trained raters evaluated videotapes of two therapy sessions per patient using the Cognitive Therapy Competence Scale for Social Phobia (CTCS-SP). Overall adherence to the treatment manual and patient difficulty were also assessed. Patient outcome was rated by other assessors using the Clinical Global Impression Improvement Scale (CGI-I) and the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS). Results indicated that competence significantly predicted patient outcome on the CGI-I (β = .79) and LSAS (β = .59). Patient difficulty and adherence did not further improve prediction. The findings support the view that competence influences outcome and should be a focus of training programs. Further research is needed to compare different ways of assessing competence and to understand the complex relationships between competence and other therapy factors that are likely to influence outcome.     

Klinisch-psychologische Intervention im Internet

Background

Currently a multitude of Internet-based intervention (IBI) programs exist for various disorders. These programs generally have the potential to reach a wide spectrum of the low threshold population and encourage them to play a more active role in managing individual healthcare. How effective are disorder and problem-specific IBI programs? This review aims to give a systematic overview of controlled evaluation studies available to date and contrast them with the state of research in 2003 (Ott 2003).

Method

References were analyzed in three steps: 1. Research in pertinent international scientific databases using specified keywords (result: more than 1,000 publications since 2003). 2. Selection: exclusion of publications which did not contain empirical evidence of effectiveness (with control group design) (result: 89 studies published between 2003 and 2009 as opposed to 30 up to 2003). 3. Systemization: classification of the analyzed studies based on two dimensions (type of syndrome, function of intervention).

Results

In most of the studies on hand (91.0%) the effectiveness of IBI could be confirmed. Among the methods used cognitive behavioral methods (cognitive, behavioral therapy, CBT) were used almost exclusively. In nearly three quarters of all studies (71.9%), IBI procedures were used for treatment. The remaining studies were on prevention (19.1%) and rehabilitation (9.0%).

Conclusion

Evaluation studies of IBIs are now available, particularly for anxiety disorders, depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, eating disorders including adiposity, substance-related and behavioral medical disorders, psychological problems related to physical illnesses, compulsive gambling and burnout. For each type of disorder, exemplary programs are described. Subsequently the methodical limitations of several of the studies are pointed out.     

A tool for investigating the differential functions of aggressive behavior in the face-to-face and cyber context: Extending the Cyber-Aggression Typology Questionnaire

Aggressive behavior in the face-to-face and cyber contexts is driven by underlying aggression (i.e., functions of aggressive behavior). Common theories of aggression distinguish between reactive (e.g., rage) and proactive (e.g., seeking to achieve power and affiliation) aggression. However, according to the quadripartite violence typology, this distinction conflates aspects of motivational valence with self-regulatory processes. The Cyber-Aggression Typology Questionnaire (CATQ; Runions et al., 2017, Aggress Behav, 43(1), pp. 74–84) overcomes this weakness by identifying four types of cyber-aggression (impulsive-aversive/rage, controlled-aversive/revenge, controlled-appetitive/reward, and impulsive-appetitive/recreation cyber-aggression). However, the CATQ only considers aggression in cyberspace. We extended the CATQ to the face-to-face context by developing a corresponding Face-to-Face Aggression Typology Questionnaire (FATQ). The aim of this study was to investigate factorial and convergent validity and metric measurement invariance between four-factorial cyber and face-to-face aggression. In total, 587 students from six Austrian universities filled out the CATQ, the FATQ, and additional scales during regular university lectures to examine convergent validity. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the four-factor structure of both questionnaires, after excluding inconclusive items from the impulsive-aversive/rage subscale of the FATQ. These items were also removed from the CATQ to obtain two symmetric questionnaires. Metric measurement invariance between the CATQ and the FATQ was confirmed. Convergent validity was largely observed. Our results support an extended four-factor model of aggression. Having two parallel questionnaires, the FATQ and CATQ, enables future studies to investigate commonalities and differences in underlying drivers of aggressive behavior in the cyber and face-to-face contexts.