Specific and differential prediction of health anxiety by disgust sensitivity and propensity

Current models of health anxiety suggest that fear resulting from false alarms to perceived threats to one's health results in the development of hypochondriasis and related disorders. Disgust has been proposed as an affective response that may function as an etiological and maintenance mechanism in health anxiety. Moreover, the way in which an individual perceives the disgust response (disgust sensitivity) may affect health anxiety, separately from their likelihood of experiencing disgust (disgust propensity). The present study utilized multiple hierarchical regression analysis to investigate the degree to which self-reported disgust sensitivity and disgust propensity differentially predict elevated health anxiety in a sample of 620 non-treatment-seeking undergraduates. Further, this effect is tested in comparison to that of anxiety sensitivity, a construct demonstrated to be strongly related to health anxiety. Analyses indicate that disgust sensitivity, rather than disgust propensity, is primarily responsible for this relation. An additional analysis tested the specificity of disgust sensitivity relative to anxiety sensitivity. Disgust sensitivity was no longer significant after including anxiety sensitivity in the model. Suggestions for further evaluation of this relation are provided. These results suggest that although disgust sensitivity may appear related to health anxiety, this relation may be confounded by anxiety sensitivity.     

Assessing Parenting Skills and Attitudes: A Review of the Psychometrics of Parenting Measures

There are many measures that assess parenting skills or practices, such as behavior, beliefs, coping mechanisms, reactions to stress, or discipline. However, little is known about the psychometric quality of these parenting measures. This information is essential for practitioners and researchers to aide in the selection of the most valid and reliable measures to assess parenting behavior or attitudes. This study examined the psychometric quality among parenting measures published from 1985 to 2009. After the initial search 164 measures were identified, but were reduced to 25 measures that supplied some degree of psychometric information, were published in the United States or Canada, and were in English. Measures were compared across numerous categories including respondent type, norming data, administration type, and ten psychometric variables such as internal consistency, content validity, and predictive validity. Out of the 25 measures, seven had no acceptable psychometric properties, seven had only 1–2 acceptable ratings on psychometric properties, six had between 3 and 4 acceptable psychometric ratings, none had between 5 and 6 acceptable ratings, and only five had strong psychometric properties in seven or more of the 10 categories. Likewise, only five measures provided and norming information and 14 measures provided scoring procedures. Implications, limitations, and recommendations for future research are discussed.     

Psychotropic Medication Management Within Residential Treatment Centers: Physician Opinions About Difficulties and Barriers

Research has shown that between 40 and 98 % of youth entering residential treatment are taking at least one psychotropic medication and that psychotropic medication management is often an integral component of treatment in residential settings. To determine physician opinion about the difficulty of managing psychotropic medications for youth in residential treatment and to determine the resources that are used in the process, a survey study was conducted. Overall, physicians indicated that youth involved in residential settings were much more complex than those in traditional outpatient settings, due to multiple mental health diagnoses, polypharmacy, and unknown treatment histories. They also reported that many existing resources are not applicable to youth, particularly those in residential settings, and that they are difficult to read and interpret.     

Optional stopping: No problem for Bayesians

Optional stopping refers to the practice of peeking at data and then, based on the results, deciding whether or not to continue an experiment. In the context of ordinary significance-testing analysis, optional stopping is discouraged, because it necessarily leads to increased type I error rates over nominal values. This article addresses whether optional stopping is problematic for Bayesian inference with Bayes factors. Statisticians who developed Bayesian methods thought not, but this wisdom has been challenged by recent simulation results of Yu, Sprenger, Thomas, and Dougherty (2013) and Sanborn and Hills (2013). In this article, I show through simulation that the interpretation of Bayesian quantities does not depend on the stopping rule. Researchers using Bayesian methods may employ optional stopping in their own research and may provide Bayesian analysis of secondary data regardless of the employed stopping rule. I emphasize here the proper interpretation of Bayesian quantities as measures of subjective belief on theoretical positions, the difference between frequentist and Bayesian interpretations, and the difficulty of using frequentist intuition to conceptualize the Bayesian approach.     

AN EVALUATION OF SELF‐MONITORING TO IMPROVE SWIMMING PERFORMANCE

This study evaluated the effects of self‐monitoring by swimmers to improve their performance and assessed the effects of reactivity to observer presence on their performance. Seven public high school swim team members self‐monitored their behavior on dry erase boards to increase the number of assigned laps completed at practice. Reactivity to observer presence was assessed as a confederate, recorded the number of laps completed during observer absent conditions. The percentage of assigned laps completed increased during the self‐monitoring phases. The self‐monitoring and feedback phase further increased the percentage of assigned laps completed and increased the participants' mean level of reporting accuracy. The effects from the reactivity assessment were mixed across participants. Further research is needed to examine reactivity effects in sport settings. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Does Symptom Linkage Density Predict Outcomes in Cognitive Therapy for Recurrent Depression?

Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment - Acute-phase cognitive therapy (CT) is an efficacious treatment for major depressive disorder (MDD), but how CT helps patients is incompletely...     

Testing Models of Associations Between Depression and Parenting Self-efficacy in Mothers: A Meta-analytic Review

Numerous cross-sectional studies confirm the long-theorized association between mothers’ depression and lower parenting self-efficacy (PSE) beliefs. However, cross-sectional studies leave unanswered the direction of this association: Does depression predict PSE? Does PSE predict depression? Are both true? Does the strength of the association between depression and PSE, regardless of the direction, generalize across participant characteristics and study design features? How stable is PSE over time? And how effective are interventions at enhancing PSE? To answer these questions, we conducted a meta-analytic review of longitudinal studies. With 35 eligible studies (22,698 participants), we found support for both models: there was a significant pooled effect of both depression on PSE and of PSE on depression, with nearly identical effect sizes (d?=?????0.21 and ??0.22, respectively). The association was stronger in samples with mothers’ younger average age and studies that measured PSE among mothers relative to during pregnancy. We found a medium degree of stability in the index of PSE, d?=?0.60. Finally, the estimated pooled effect size between being in an intervention group versus control group and PSE was 0.505. Overall, we found support for (1) bidirectional associations between depression and PSE in mothers, (2) the stability of PSE over time, and (3) the strength of the relationship between PSE and depression with intervention. These results suggest the importance of continuing to develop, test, and disseminate interventions to enhance PSE. We interpret these findings in the context of both depression and low PSE having serious consequences for child outcomes and maladaptive parenting.

     

Evidence-Based Treatments in Community Mental Health Settings: Use and Congruence With Children’s Primary Diagnosis and Comorbidity

Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology - Many evidence-based treatments (EBTs) have been identified for specific child mental health disorders, but there is limited research on the use of...     

Presence of PTSD is Associated with Clinical and Functional Impact in Veterans with Depression Treated in Community-Based Clinics

Journal of Clinical Psychology in Medical Settings - Providers in non-traditional mental health settings (e.g., primary care, community medical clinics) face challenges involving patients who often...