Journal of Clinical Psychology

OBJECTIVE: This study is an investigation of five specific COVID-related stressors and their longitudinal impact on adult depression and anxiety. METHOD: A total of 592 adults comprised the initial sample at Time 1 in April/May 2020. Follow-ups were conducted about a month later, again in March 2021 and then in March 2022. RESULTS: Applied linear mixed effect models showed a significant decrease in mean depression scores and anxiety scores from Time 1 to both Times 3 and 4...

The Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS) is the most used self-report questionnaire to assess deficits in emotion regulation (ER), composed of 6 dimensions and 36 items. Many studies have evaluated its factor structure, not always confirming the original results, and proposed different factor models. A possible way to try to identify the dimensionality of the DERS could be through a meta-analysis with structural equation models (MASEM) of its factor structure. The MASEM indicated that a six-factor model with 32 items (DERS-32) was the most suitable to represent the dimensionality of the DERS (χ2  = 2095...

OBJECTIVE: While previous research indicates that negative religious coping relates with distress, it is unclear if this represents generalized spiritual struggles or a specific vulnerability activated by negative events. Moreover, past research treats coping as a stable phenomenon, although it likely fluctuates. This research simultaneously tested both models longitudinally and examined the relationship between coping and distress. METHODS: The current study is a secondary analysis of longitudinal data collected online over 3 years from 397 participants...

OBJECTIVES: The therapist-facilitative interpersonal skills (FIS) has shown to predict therapy outcomes, demonstrating that high FIS therapists are more effective than low FIS therapists. There is a need for more insight into the variability in strengths and weaknesses in therapist skills. This study investigates whether a revised and extended FIS-scoring leads to more differentiation in measuring therapists' interpersonal skills. Furthermore, we explorative examine whether subgroups of therapists can be distinguished in terms of differences in their interpersonal responses...

OBJECTIVE: Moral transgressions (MTs), events that violate one's moral code, are associated with the moral emotions of guilt and shame. However, there may be different patterns by which people experience guilt and shame that affect distress following MTs. METHOD: Undergraduates (N = 1371) exposed to an MT completed self-report assessments. This study used latent profile analysis (LPA) to examine profiles based on guilt cognitions, internalized shame, and distress in relation to a reported MT...

Understanding and processing life experiences are essential in the treatment of personality disorders to promote personal recovery and psychological wellbeing. In this qualitative case report, drafted in co-creation between the client, clinical psychologist, and art therapist, individual treatment consisted of two psychotherapeutic interventions, "An Empowering Story" and life-story-focused art therapy, in 12 parallel sessions for 24 weeks. Hilda, 68 years of age, had been diagnosed with an unspecified personality disorder and various traits of borderline personality disorder...

BACKGROUND: Despite the pervasiveness of patient-reported emptiness and the high burden it carries, emptiness is poorly understood. In the current study, we used a general inductive approach to examine experiences with emptiness in a diagnostically diverse sample of treatment-seeking patients with severe and acute psychopathology. As a secondary aim, we also examined whether identified themes differed among patients with a primary diagnosis of borderline personality disorder or major depressive disorder...

Complex posttraumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) is a term representing the psychopathological implications of exposure to chronic, inter-personal trauma. These include the main symptoms of PTSD, as well as changes in identity, emotion regulation, and inter-personal relationships. Self-harm and dissociation (i.e., disintegration of mental processes) are also quite common in CPTSD. Considering this complex and often severe clinical picture, mental health professionals often find it difficult to effectively treat CPTSD...

OBJECTIVE: Literature on eating disorder (ED) symptoms of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) group is extremely scarce. This study aimed to understand the mechanisms underlying the associations between insecure attachment and ED symptoms and examine whether these mechanisms differed between White and BIPOC groups. METHOD: The study investigated direct and indirect relationship between attachment anxiety/avoidance and ED symptoms via intolerance of uncertainty (IU) and emotion regulation strategies of suppression and reappraisal...

AIMS: Examine state-level data from the National Survey of Children's Health (NSCH), Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS), and frontier and remote area (FAR) codes. Compare state-level data from the NSCH and YRBSS to state's FAR codes, to explore correlations between youth mental health/suicide and geographic remoteness. METHODS: State-level data from the NSCH, YRBSS and FAR codes were organized into tables. For each variable, states were ranked from 1 to 50 and assigned a numeric value...

OBJECTIVE: Little research explores military perspectives on medical disability-related transition. A qualitative study sought to understand transition experiences of United States military Service members found unfit for duty following medical and physical evaluation boards (MEBs and PEBs). METHODS: Confidential telephone interviews were conducted with 25 current and prior Service members. Participants were asked to share their experiences before, during, and after the MEB and PEB processes...

OBJECTIVE: The Mental Health Self-Direction Scale (MHSD) measures the extent to which clients are able to resolve mental problems by themselves. Because this scale had not yet been evaluated, the aims of this paper were (a) to evaluate and improve the MHSD and (b) to explore the sensitivity to change of the improved scale. METHOD: The MHSD was evaluated and improved by means of confirmatory factor analyses of data from one longitudinal and two cross-sectional outpatient sample...

OBJECTIVES: Negative urgency is associated with short-term maintenance of binge eating and purging in unselected samples. The current study used an eating disorder sample to test the hypothesis that negative urgency maintains bulimia nervosa (BN) and purging disorder (PD) at long-term follow-up. It was also hypothesized that baseline differences in negative urgency between BN and PD would remain at follow-up. METHODS: Secondary analyses were conducted on a sample of women who engaged in recurrent self-induced vomiting (n = 68; 52...

People with personality disorders (PDs) are often difficult to reach emotionally in therapy. As music therapy (MT) provides an entry point to emotions and facilitates contact and communication, it is regularly used with this target group. This study presents a case study of a 40-year-old woman diagnosed with a PD not otherwise defined. "Nina" experienced depressive and physical symptoms, including severe anxiety. Previous treatments had failed. In MT, she experienced a sense of safety. Over the course of the treatment, she experimented with making herself heard, learned to listen to herself and recognize her own physical signals, permitted closeness and cooperation, and began setting boundaries and taking initiative...

OBJECTIVES: The present study utilized an intersectional framework to examine if two forms of gendered racism, psychological emasculation and messages about Asian American men being undesirable partners, were associated with Asian American men's nicotine use. We also examined the potential mediating roles of two racial identity statuses, racial conformity and racial immersion. METHODS: A sample of 356 Asian American men living in the United States of America (USA) completed a cross-sectional survey via Qualtrics containing measures assessing the aforementioned constructs of interest...

Persons with dependent personality disorder (DPD) have difficulties describing their inner world, and in realizing their negative ideas about the self, such as being weak, unworthy or powerless are just ideas. As a consequence, they tend to over-rely on others and may lose control over their emotions. Treating these persons can gain benefits from including body-focused techniques as they can promote a) awareness of internal states, b) better emotion regulation, c) the capacity to consider their negative ideas about themselves as not necessarily true, and d) gain power of and agency...

BACKGROUND: Anhedonia and irritability are two prevalent symptoms of major depressive disorder (MDD) that predict greater depression severity and poor outcomes, including suicidality. Although both symptoms have been proposed to result from paradoxical reward processing dysfunctions, the interactions between these symptoms remain unclear. Anhedonia is a multifaceted symptom reflecting impairments in multiple dimensions of reward processing (e.g., pleasure, desire, motivation, and effort) across distinct reward types (e...

OBJECTIVE: China's early encounter with COVID-19 and protracted prevention policies, presents an ideal case to study psychological changes during a prolonged and evolving crisis. This study aims to examine the shifts in mental health symptoms, risk-related perceptions, and associated coping behaviors within two large-scale samples of Chinese respondents, spanning from the pandemic's onset to the relaxation of the zero-COVID policy. Moreover, the study strives to identify protective factors that could potentially mitigate the pandemic's impact...

Treating perpetrators of aggressive behavior, like verbal aggression, intimidation, and bullying behavior resulting in aggressive incidents with others, is difficult. This group is often diagnosed with personality disorders and when legal measures applied, they are more often treated in a forensic setting for their problems. This article presents the case of a 54-year-old man, diagnosed with Borderline personality disorder, narcissistic and antisocial traits, mild depressive symptoms, and loss and grief, who has voluntarily had treatment in a forensic outpatient center to reduce aggression and change destructive patterns in relationships...

OBJECTIVE: The internal (structural) and external validity of a self-report measure of cognitive disengagement syndrome (CDS, formerly sluggish cognitive tempo) relative to a self-report measure of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder-inattention (ADHD-IN) was evaluated with adults from university outpatient psychiatric clinics in Turkey. METHODS: A total of 274 outpatients (75.9% women; ages 18-64 years; Mage  = 31.06; SDage  = 10...