Mindfulness as a way to cope with COVID‐19‐related stress and anxiety

COVID‐19 brought significant challenges to college students in Spring 2020. Mindfulness‐based interventions might help students cope with COVID‐19‐related stressors in at least three ways: by cultivating attention that is self‐directed rather than reactive to a rapidly changing situation; by teaching the acceptance and regulation of negative thoughts and feelings; and by encouraging individuals to view adverse events non‐judgementally and as opportunities for growth. The purpose of our study was to determine whether Koru Mindfulness (KM), a four‐week, mindfulness‐based group therapy designed for emerging adults, could help students cope with COVID‐19‐related stress and anxiety. Students were assigned to either KM or waitlist at the beginning of the 2020 Spring semester. Assessment of students’ functioning occurred at baseline before the onset of COVID‐19, mid‐semester at the height of the COVID‐19 crisis on campus, and the end of the semester after students had returned home and transitioned to remote learning. After treatment, KM participants reported greater mindfulness and self‐compassion and less stress, anxiety and sleep problems than controls. KM participants also showed superior functioning on performance‐based measures of attention. Most gains were maintained over time. Increased mindfulness mediated the relationship between KM and reductions in stress and anxiety. KM can help students cope with academic and COVID‐19‐related stressors by improving mindfulness.     

Going Beyond the Data: Using Testimonies to Humanize Pedagogy on Black Health

Journal of Medical Humanities - When health professions learners’ primary pedagogical experience of Black people and how they become patients is through statistics, it becomes very easy for...     

Challenges and Potential Solutions to Implementing Phone Coaching in Dialectical Behavior Therapy

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) is an effective treatment for borderline personality disorder (BPD), yet many health care facilities struggle to implement one of the modes of DBT, phone coaching. The aims of this study were to present barriers and reported solutions regarding the implementation of DBT phone coaching. We conducted a sequential mixed methods national program evaluation that included a quantitative self-report survey completed by Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) facilities (N = 59) offering any of the four modes of DBT. Subsequent qualitative interviews using a semistructured interview guide informed by the Promoting Action on Research Implementation in Health Services (PARIHS) were completed with DBT providers and administrators from a subset (n = 16) of these VA sites. Four themes—the lack of tools and policies, compensation for phone coaching, clinician willingness to conduct phone coaching, and consistent program and leadership support—were identified and illustrated in a case study. This study also offered concrete recommendations for those health care organizations, managers, administrators, and clinicians who may be interested in implementing phone coaching at their health care facilities.     

Investigating Predictors of Superior Face Recognition Ability in Police Super‐recognisers

There are large individual differences in the ability to recognise faces. Super‐recognisers are exceptionally good at face memory tasks. In London, a small specialist pool of police officers (also labelled ‘super‐recognisers’ by the Metropolitan Police Service) annually makes 1000's of suspect identifications from closed‐circuit television footage. Some suspects are disguised, have not been encountered recently or are depicted in poor quality images. Across tests measuring familiar face recognition, unfamiliar face memory and unfamiliar face matching, the accuracy of members of this specialist police pool was approximately equal to a group of non‐police super‐recognisers. Both groups were more accurate than matched control members of the public. No reliable relationships were found between the face processing tests and object recognition. Within each group, however, there were large performance variations across tests, and this research has implications for the deployment of police worldwide in operations requiring officers with superior face processing ability. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Barratt Impulsiveness Scale-11 Among a School Sample of Portuguese Male and Female Adolescents

Few personality traits are as socially relevant as impulsivity, but few self-report measures have been specifically developed for adolescents and children. The aim of the present study was to examine the psychometric properties of the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale version 11 (BIS-11) among a mixed-gender sample of 782 Portuguese youth (M = 15.87 years; SD = 1.72), in a school context. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed the expected 6-factor first-order structure, but the 3-factor second-order factorial structure did not present a good fit. Cross-gender measurement invariance was demonstrated only in terms of weak invariance. Nonetheless, the Portuguese adaptation of the BIS-11 demonstrated some generally acceptable psychometric properties of internal consistency, mean inter-item correlation, convergent validity, discriminant validity, and criterion-related validity of statistically significant associations with conduct disorder symptoms, alcohol abuse, drug use, and unprotected sex. The use of the BIS-11 among the male and female youth population is psychometrically justified, and it can be a useful measure to identify impulsive adolescents who are at considerable risk of personal injury and present a potential source of injury to others.     

Decreasing scoring errors on Wechsler Scale Vocabulary, Comprehension, and Similarities subtests: a preliminary study

Studies of graduate students learning to administer the Wechsler scales have generally shown that training is not associated with the development of scoring proficiency. Many studies report on the reduction of aggregated administration and scoring errors, a strategy that does not highlight the reduction of errors on subtests identified as most prone to error. This study evaluated the development of scoring proficiency specifically on the Wechsler (WISC-IV and WAIS-III) Vocabulary, Comprehension, and Similarities subtests during training by comparing a set of 'early test administrations' to 'later test administrations.' Twelve graduate students enrolled in an intelligence-testing course participated in the study. Scoring errors (e.g., incorrect point assignment) were evaluated on the students' actual practice administration test protocols. Errors on all three subtests declined significantly when scoring errors on 'early' sets of Wechsler scales were compared to those made on 'later' sets. However, correcting these subtest scoring errors did not cause significant changes in subtest scaled scores. Implications for clinical instruction and future research are discussed.     

Bottom-Up and Top-Down Processes in Emotion Generation: Common and Distinct Neural Mechanisms

ABSTRACT— Emotions are generally thought to arise through the interaction of bottom-up and top-down processes. However, prior work has not delineated their relative contributions. In a sample of 20 females, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to compare the neural correlates of negative emotions generated by the bottom-up perception of aversive images and by the top-down interpretation of neutral images as aversive. We found that (a) both types of responses activated the amygdala, although bottom-up responses did so more strongly; (b) bottom-up responses activated systems for attending to and encoding perceptual and affective stimulus properties, whereas top-down responses activated prefrontal regions that represent high-level cognitive interpretations; and (c) self-reported affect correlated with activity in the amygdala during bottom-up responding and with activity in the medial prefrontal cortex during top-down responding. These findings provide a neural foundation for emotion theories that posit multiple kinds of appraisal processes and help to clarify mechanisms underlying clinically relevant forms of emotion dysregulation.