Transdiagnostic group CBT for anxiety disorders: the unified protocol in mental health services

Comorbidity among the anxiety disorders is common and may negatively impact treatment outcome. Potentially, transdiagnostic cognitive-behavioral treatments (CBT) deal more effectively with comorbidity than standard CBT. The present study tested the effectiveness of The Unified Protocol (UP) applied to Mental Health Services. Pre-post-treatment effects were examined for psychiatric outpatients with anxiety disorders receiving UP treatment in groups. Forty-seven patients (mean-age = 34.1 (SD = 9.92), 77% females) with a principal diagnosis of anxiety were included. We found significant and clinically meaningful changes in the primary outcomes Clinical Global Impression Severity Scale (CGI-S; d = 1.36), Hamilton Anxiety Scale (HARS; d = .71), and WHO-5 Well-being Index (WHO-5; d = .54). Also, comorbid depressive symptoms and levels of positive and negative affect changed significantly after treatment. Patients with high levels of comorbidity profited as much as patients with less comorbidity; however, these patients had higher scores after treatment due to higher symptom burden at onset. Patients with comorbid depression profited more from treatment than patients without comorbid depression. The treatment effects found in the present study correspond to treatment effects of other TCBT studies, other UP group studies, and effectiveness studies on standard CBT for outpatients. The results indicate that the UP can be successfully applied to a MHS group setting, demonstrating positive effects on anxiety and depressive symptoms for even highly comorbid cases.     

Intergenerational Continuity in Qualities of the Parent–Child Relationship: Mediating and Moderating Mechanisms

Intergenerational continuity in parenting quality has been demonstrated but the mechanisms underlying this continuity are less understood. This study investigated whether the offspring personality and years of education mediate the continuity in qualities of the parent–child relationship and whether offspring personality moderates this association. The sample comprised 1308 Finnish offspring (G2; 62% female) and their mothers (G1). G1 (Mean age?=?37.7) reported self-perceived qualities of the parent–child relationship in terms of emotional warmth and acceptance towards G2 aged 3–18 years in 1980. Thirty-two years later, once having become parents themselves, G2 (Mean age?=?42.9) self-rated their own qualities of the parent–child relationship towards their children using the same scales. Between these follow-ups, G2 self-rated their personality (consisting of temperament and character traits) using the Temperament and Character Inventory and reported years of education. Results indicated that G2 character traits—Self-directedness and Cooperativeness—partially mediated the intergenerational continuity in self-perceived emotional warmth and explained 16% of this association. No mediating role of G2 temperament traits was found (all ps?>?.240). Character traits accounted for the indirect association better than education in a multiple mediator model. Moreover, no moderating role of either temperament or character traits was found (all ps?≥?.064). Study findings show that warm and accepting qualities of the parent–child relationship in childhood are related to offspring character traits that reflect personality maturity in adulthood, which in turn would predict their own positive parent–child relationship later in life.     

Affect and memory in young children

The state-dependent theory of the relationship between affective states and memory holds that recall will be best when the affective state at recall matches that during learning. Sequential happy, neutral, and sad affective states that were either consistent (e.g., Happy-Happy) or inconsistent (e.g., Sad-Neutral) were experimentally induced in preschool children prior to encoding and then again prior to retrieval (free and cued recall, recognition memory). Facial ratings indicated that the inductions were effective in inducing affect. Nevertheless, emotional states did not influence children's ability to recall items under free or cued conditions, and recognition memory was essentially perfect for all subjects. Thus, there was no evidence for state-dependent learning or for a positive loop between subjects' positive affect at retrieval and memory for positively rated information. Results are discussed in terms of the generally inconsistent findings in the literature on the role of affect in children's memory and factors that may limit affective state-dependent learning in children.This research was supported by Research Grant No. 11776 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to Marion Perlmutter, by Grant BNS 78-01108 from the National Science Foundation to John C. Masters, and by Program Project Grant No. 0527 to the Institute of Child Development. Wayne Duncan is now at the University of Denver, and Christine Todd is now at the University of Illinois, Urbana. Marion Perlmutter is now at the University of Michigan. We would like to thank Keith Elliott and LuAnne Tczap for their work as experimenters; Jule Kogan, Carol Revermann, and Sonya Hernandez for their help in coding data; and Jayne Grady-Reitan for her administrative assistance throughout the study.     

Effectiveness of Dialectical Behavior Therapy for Treating Eating Disorders

This study evaluated the effectiveness of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) for treating eating disorder episodes and co‐occurring depression symptoms among individuals diagnosed with eating disorders. Separate meta‐analytic procedures for between‐groups and single‐group studies were conducted and yielded large effect sizes, indicating that DBT may be efficacious for decreasing disordered episodes among women diagnosed with eating disorders; medium to large effect sizes were noted for treating depression symptoms. Implications for evidence‐supported practice and study limitations are discussed.     

Does Occupational Stereotyping Still Exist?

We surveyed 113 college students regarding their views of certain occupational stereotypes. Our results indicated that in this population gender was related to the subjects' views of occupations as either male, female, or neutral, and that the father's primary occupation significantly affected the subjects' views of only one occupation—clinical sociologist. The mother's occupation seemed to have no effect.     

Genetic analysis of “Spontaneous” intermale aggression in mice

“Spontaneous” intermale aggression was investigated in seven inbred strains of mice. A positive interstrain correlation and cross-correlation was found for two indices of fighting intensity, ie, accumulated attacking time and number of attacks. The strain aggressiveness level (percent of mice fighting in each strain) does not correlate with the intensity of aggressive behavior. It has been shown by using a genetical analysis performed on C57BL/6 and BALB/c strains, their reciprocal F₁ hybrids, and back-crosses that these indices of intermale aggression are under different genetic control. Aggressive behavior intensity depends on the additive effects of genes. The control of strain aggressiveness level revealed that a high level of aggressiveness was dominant. No reciprocal effects were found. The level of aggressiveness and the intensity of fighting seem to represent different aspects of aggression and may be controlled by different genetic mechanisms.     

Inventing Sex: The Short History of Sex Addiction

This article takes a critical look at the recent history of the concept of sex addiction, an archetypal modern sexual invention. Sex addiction began as a 1980s product of late twentieth-century cultural anxieties and has remained responsive to those tensions, including its most recent iteration, “hypersexual disorder.” Its success as a concept lay with its medicalization, both as a self-help movement in terms of self-diagnosis, and as a rapidly growing industry of therapists on hand to deal with the new disease. The media has always played a role in its history, first with TV, the tabloids, and the case histories of claimed celebrity victims all helping to popularize the concept, and then with the impact of the internet. Though it is essentially mythical, creating a problem that need not exist, sex addiction has to be taken seriously as a phenomenon. Rarely has a socio-psychological discourse taken such a hold on the public imagination—and proven an influential concept in academic circles too. We argue that this strange, short history of social opportunism, diagnostic amorphism, therapeutic self-interest, and popular cultural endorsement is marked by an essential social conservatism—sex addiction has become a convenient term to describe disapproved sex. Sex addiction is a label without explanatory force.     

Salivary Cortisol as a Biomarker in Social Science Research

Cortisol, a neuroendocrine hormone measurable in saliva, responds to internal and external triggers. In providing a peripheral ‘window on the brain’, it has been increasingly incorporated into social psychological studies. Cortisol secretion can be studied in two main ways, examination of acute stress reactivity and examination of the basal circadian patterns. These can inform aspects of acute and chronic stress exposure and relationships with health. Within non‐clinical populations, cortisol effects are largely driven by differences in the perception of threat. For social psychologists, this provides an interesting avenue for the investigation of social factors that mediate perceptions of threat, such as social support, relationship processes, and group dynamics in acute and chronic stress. This paper provides a background to understanding the regulation and function of cortisol, and issues arising in relation to its measurement in saliva. It discusses and makes recommendations on the use of appropriate cortisol measures in the study of both acute and chronic stress. Used and interpreted appropriately, stress reactivity and basal ambulatory measures of salivary cortisol can provide a valuable adjunct to self‐report and observation in social psychological research. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd     

Improving the 'how' and 'what' decisions of elite table tennis players

Training methods in sport usually focus on improving either technical or tactical aspects of performance, ignoring the fact that successful performance requires the athlete to simultaneously decide what movement to perform and how it should be executed. Young elite table tennis players were trained, in a first phase, to improve their forehand and backhand movements and, in a second phase, to make a tactical switch between forehand and backhand movements. Half of the players took part in behavioral training focusing on how to perform the required movements, whereas half received additional video feedback about their technical and tactical performance (decision training). The results indicate that improvements of how decisions (techniques) and what decisions (tactics) can occur as a consequence of combining technical and tactical training. These results were stable in delayed Post-test analyses of competitive matches. It was concluded that a combination of both technical and tactical training is beneficial to elite table tennis performers, particularly during early seasonal training programs.