Intrusive and avoidant ideation among females pursuing infertility treatment

Abstract

It was shown that infertility and its treatment constitute a stressful experience for women, reflected particularly in disturbing intrusive ideation about the stress source. Infertility patients reported levels of intrusive ideation significantly higher than routine gynecologic patients and not significantly different from levels of psychiatric outpatients being treated for stress reactions to traumatic events. Intrusive ideation also predicted the degree of self-reported infertility-specific distress and dysfunction, further clarifying the key role of such ideation in the experience. Finally, as hypothesized, the frustration level of the treatment experience (as indexed by the number of infertility treatment methods attempted) predicted avoidant ideation. Implications for managing the psychological distress and disruption associated with the infertility treatment experience were discussed.     

Religiosity and social desirability: A response to Eysenck (1999)

Recent studies have shown that delusion-like experiences (DLEs) are common among general populations. This study investigates whether the prevalence of these experiences are linked to the embracing of New Age thought. Logistic regression analyses were performed using data derived from a large community sample of young adults (N = 3777). Belief in a spiritual or higher power other than God was found to be significantly associated with endorsement of 16 of 19 items from Peters et al. (1999b Peters, ER, Joseph, SA and Garety, PA. 1999b. Measurement of delusional ideation in the normal population: Introducing the PDI (Peters et al. Delusions Inventory). Schizophrenia Bulletin, 25(3): 553–576. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) Delusional Inventory following adjustment for a range of potential confounders, while belief in God was associated with endorsement of four items. A New Age conception of the divine appears to be strongly associated with a wide range of DLEs. Further research is needed to determine a causal link between New Age philosophy and DLEs (e.g. thought disturbance, suspiciousness, and delusions of grandeur).     

Social-Cognitive Functioning and Schizotypal Characteristics

The authors examined the relationship between social cognition and a feature of schizotypal personality referred to as magical ideation, defined broadly as the presence and intensity of illogical beliefs about causality and the nature of reality. The measures of social cognition used in this study were the Character Intention Task (CIT) and the adult version of the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test. Regression analyses indicated that understanding of character intentions, as measured by CIT scores, and ability to identify emotions on the Eyes test were related to non-realistic beliefs. Principal components analysis of the Magical Ideation Scale generated 3 factors: Occult Beliefs, Non-Realism, and New Age Ideas. Results indicated that impaired understanding of character intentions and ability to identify emotions on the Eyes test were related to non-realistic beliefs. Understanding the cognitive impairments associated with schizotypal characteristics can facilitate development of more targeted therapeutic interventions.     

The Interplay Among Risk Factors for Suicidal Ideation and Suicide: The Role of Depression, Poor Health, and Loved Ones' Messages of Support and Criticism

When individuals who receive social support are in poor physical or mental health and are criticized or made to feel unwanted, they may perceive themselves as a burden. Poor physical health and depression were hypothesized to exacerbate the harmful effects on suicidal ideation of receiving critical negative messages and of receiving social support. These hypotheses were tested using secondary analyses of data from a sample of 533 unemployed married individuals who were assessed shortly after job loss, and 6 months later. The results of our analyses supported the hypotheses and demonstrated that for participants with poor health or high level of depressive symptoms an increase in critical messages and social support (from Time 1 to Time 2) predicted increased suicidal ideation. This relationship was not observed for non- depressed participants in good health. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for suicide prevention.     

Reactions to ambiguous stimuli among paranoid personalities

The psychological literature on paranoia and paranoid schizophrenia is extensive, particularly in the area of perceptual and cognitive processing. However, there has been a relative neglect of paranoid personality. The present study investigates whether paranoid personalities differed from controls in their responses to ambiguous or incomplete stimuli. Paranoid personalities (PP), other personality controls (OP), and normal subjects (NR) were exposed to blurred pictures of zoo animals which became progressively clearer. Subjects were asked to identify the content of such pictures from a list provided and to rate their confidence in their respective identifications. The PPs were unique in suspecting that correct answers were not provided by the experimenters. The confidence levels of the PPs also decreased significantly during the course of the experiment, whereas the OP and NR subjects' levels did not. The PP group made significantly earlier attempts at identifying the ambiguous slides and were significantly more accurate in doing so compared to the NR group. Neither group differed significantly from the OR controls on these two measures. The significance of the results are discussed.     

Validity and reactivity of a system of self-monitoring suicide ideation

The present study describes the rationale and validation of a self-monitoring approach for suicide ideation. A sample of 49 severely ideating 18- to 24-year-old college students volunteering for a treatment study for chronic ideators served as subjects. A three-item self-monitoring scale designed to assess the strength, duration, and level of control relative to suicide ideation was designed and utilized. Positive correlations with previously validated measures of suicide ideation support the validity of the use of self-monitoring. In addition, positive relationships with measures of depression and hopelessness provide evidence of concurrent validity. There was no evidence that self-monitoring and concomitant increased attention to ideation increased suicidality. In fact, decreases were noted in measures of suicide ideation following a 2-week period of self-monitoring. Together these findings support the addition of self-monitoring to the list of dependent measures for addressing suicidal behavior.     

Relationships between stuttering,depression, and suicidal ideation in young adults: Accounting for gender differences

PurposeThe purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between depressive symptoms and suicidal ideation and living with stuttering while accounting for time, sex, and health-related confounders.MethodThe data for this study come from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, a nationally representative survey study that has followed 13,564 respondents over the course of 14 years. Responses to the question “Do you have a problem with stuttering or stammering?” at two time points were used to establish stuttering and non-stuttering groups. Regression analysis, propensity score matching, and structural equation modeling were used.ResultsCompared to their fluent counterparts, males and females reported significantly elevated symptoms of depression. Although symptoms of depression among males who stutter were stable over time, depressive symptoms among females who stutter increased with age. Compared to males who do not stutter, males who stutter were significantly more likely to report feelings of suicidal ideation. There were no differences in suicidal ideation between females who do and do not stutter.ConclusionsSpeech-language pathologists should be aware of the associations between stuttering and depressive symptoms, as well as the increased risk for suicidal ideation among males who stutter. Clinicians should be knowledgeable about symptoms of depression and suicidal ideation and be familiar with processes to refer as needed.     

Suicidal Ideation and Eating Disorder Symptoms in Adolescents: The Role of Interoceptive Deficits

Eating disorder symptoms and suicidal ideation are relatively common, and often begin to emerge in adolescence. Interoceptive deficits, or the inability to perceive and accurately identify the physiological condition of the body, is an established risk factor for both eating disorders and suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Despite this, longitudinal research examining the temporal dynamics between these variables is scarce, especially within adolescent samples. Using a three-wave longitudinal design, the present study tested bidirectional relationships between interoceptive deficits, eating disorder symptoms, and suicidal ideation to examine whether interoceptive deficits predicted eating disorder symptoms and suicidal ideation over the course of a year among a sample of adolescents. Participants were 436 community adolescents recruited from local middle- and high-schools. Data were collected at baseline, 6-month follow-up, and 12-month follow-up. Study measures assessed current suicidal ideation, eating disorder symptom severity, and interoceptive deficits. Autoregressive cross-lagged modeling was conducted in MPlus. We found baseline eating disorder symptoms significantly predicted suicidal ideation at 6-month follow-up when controlling for baseline suicidal ideation. Baseline interoceptive deficits significantly predicted eating disorder symptoms 6-months later, while 6-month follow-up interoceptive deficits significantly predicted 12-month follow-up suicidal ideation. Our findings highlight the need for early and regular assessment of suicidal ideation and eating disorder symptoms in adolescents. Given that interoceptive deficits was a shared risk factor for both conditions within this sample, these results underscore the need for targeted interventions aimed at improving interoception.     

The Impact of Affective States and Affective Shifts on Creative Ideation and Evaluation

This study aims to examine the impact of affective states and affective shifts on ideation and evaluation of creativity. Affects were induced by a two‐stage imagination procedure of recalling autobiographical experiences. Three periods of divergent thinking were measured to represent the participants’ creative ideation at different times. Creative evaluation was measured by estimating the originality of each response provided by the participants. The results indicate that (a) during the initial period of ideation, groups with positive affect obtain better creative ideation than the groups with neutral or negative affect. (b) The ideation in positive affect groups gradually decreases over time, while the ideation in negative affect groups gradually increases over time. (c) During the evaluation of originality, groups with negative affect have a higher proportion of over‐estimates and a lower proportion of under‐estimates than groups with positive affect. The viewpoints of cognitive tuning theory, which posit that the affective state influences creativity, are supported.     

Cross‐national comparisons of attitudes towards suicide and suicidal persons in university students from 12 countries

This paper reports the results of a comparative investigation of attitudes to suicide and suicidal persons in 5,572 university students from 12 countries. Participants filled out two scales measuring attitudes towards suicide and suicidal persons, a measure of psychological distress together with the questions about suicidal behavior. Results showed that the highest suicide acceptance scores were observed in Austrian, UK, Japanese and Saudi Arabian samples and the lowest scores were noted in Tunisian, Turkish, Iranian and Palestinian samples. While the highest social acceptance scores for a suicidal friend were noted in Turkish, US, Italian and Tunisian samples, the lowest scores were seen in Japanese, Saudi Arabian, Palestinian and Jordanian samples. Compared to participants with a suicidal past, those who were never suicidal displayed more internal barriers against suicidal behavior. Men were more accepting of suicide than women but women were more willing to help an imagined suicidal peer. Participants with accepting attitudes towards suicide but rejecting attitudes towards suicidal persons reported more suicidal behavior and psychological distress, and were more often from high suicide rate countries and samples than their counterparts. They are considered to be caught in a fatal trap in which most predominant feelings of suicidality such as hopelessness or helplessness are likely to occur. We conclude that in some societies such as Japan and Saudi Arabia it might be difficult for suicidal individuals to activate and make use of social support systems.