Social psychological correlates of mental illness and mental health.

If there is ever to be a single comprehensive theory and/or research program concerned with the etiology of mental illness, the widely diversified empirical and theoretical findings will have to be meaningfully integrated. The present paper critically reviews theories and research from the environmental-demographic level and the interpersonal level. The large number of phenotypical relationships reported have led only to vaguely formulated and speculative interpretations suggesting the need for a reformulation which will suggest genotypes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Time perception and conflict arousal in schizophrenia.

The hypothesis that schizophrenics would exhibit greater distortion in estimation of duration time for stimuli relevant to their major conflicts than for other stimuli was investigated. 3 groups, each with 16 Ss who were homogeneous with respect to experiencing primary conflicts with either aggression, sex, or dependency, were formed. A factorial Latin square design was used in which Ss estimated stimuli durations following the tachistoscopic presentation at 4 exposure times of 4 pictorial stimuli, 1 of which represented their major conflict area. Results demonstrated that greatest distortions occurred for conflict pictures at the .001 level. Distortion elicitation of the aggression stimulus was greater than other stimuli at .001 for the combined schizophrenics, an effect not found with normal control Ss. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Linkages between spouses' psychological distress and marital conflict in the home.

To elucidate the processes that underlie the established association between psychopathology and marital functioning, researchers have given attention to how symptomatic individuals manage their interpersonal contexts, particularly during the handling of disagreements. In the current study, the authors evaluate the role of marital conflict strategies in relation to wives' and husbands' psychological distress levels. A sample of 100 community-based couples completed assessments of psychological distress and diaries describing marital conflict that occurred at home during a 15-day reporting period. Findings from multilevel modeling of dyadic data revealed associations between both spouses' psychological distress and multiple behavioral and emotional conflict expressions in the home. Psychological symptoms uniquely predicted the occurrence of certain conflict expressions, even when accounting for global negative marital sentiments. The findings encourage subsequent consideration of marital conflict expressions and resolution strategies when studying processes involved in the marriage-psychological adjustment link. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Components measurable in manifestations of mental conflict.

3 operational approaches to conflict measurement, emanating from the dynamic calculus theory, are described. Conflict measurement, as investigated here, intercorrelates 24 varied behavioral manifestations commonly considered signs of conflict. To check on generalizability, this is done for 3 distinct foci of conflict. The intercorrelations among the conflict manifestations are subjected to simple structure factor resolution, and it is shown that there is a high degree of similarity of loading pattern among the 8 factors which proved to be present in each of the 3 experiments. The interpretations offered for these factors fit some definitions of ego defenses as given by psychoanalysts, but, additionally, there are systematic modes of response to conflict transcending psychoanalytic concepts. Relations to social-psychological criteria will follow. (32 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Evidence-based treatments and delivery of psychological services: Shifting our emphases to increase impact.

Evidence-based psychological treatments (EBTs) have made enormous gains in the range of techniques that are available and the scope of problems to which they can be applied. Debates about the advances focus on issues related to applicability of the evidence to clinical work, limits of highly controlled studies, and decision making in clinical practice. Less often discussed is arguably the more salient issue, namely, that most people in need of psychological treatment do not receive services, whether evidence based or not. This article discusses EBTs as currently studied in relation to an overarching goal of our interventions, namely, to reduce the burden of mental illness and the full range of social, emotional, and behavioral problems leading to impairment. The diversity of clients, the range of settings in which treatments must be delivered, and the models of delivery ought to receive greater attention in developing evidence-based interventions. In the context of treatment of children and adolescents, this article discusses service needs and how EBTs can better align with these needs to exert broad impact. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychological distance and emotional experience: What you see is what you get.

Recent research suggests that perceiving negative emotion-eliciting scenes approaching intensifies the associated felt emotion, while perceiving emotion-eliciting scenes receding weakens the associated felt emotion (Muhlberger, Neumann, Wieser, & Pauli, 2008). In the present studies, we sought to extend these findings by examining the effects of imagining rather than perceiving such changes to negative emotion-eliciting scenes. Across three studies, we found that negative scenes generally elicited less negative responses and lower levels of arousal when imagined moving away from participants and shrinking, and more negative responses and higher levels of arousal when imagined moving toward participants and growing, as compared to the responses elicited by negative scenes when imagined unchanged. Patterns in responses to neutral scenes undergoing the same imagined transformations were similar on ratings of emotional arousal, but differed on valence—generally eliciting greater positivity when imagined moving toward participants and growing, and less positivity when imagined moving away from participants and shrinking. Moreover, for these effects to emerge, participants reported it necessary to explicitly imagine scenes moving closer or farther. These findings have implications for emotion regulation, and suggest that imagined spatial distance plays a role in mental representations of emotionally salient events. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Siblings' differential experiences of marital conflict and differences in psychological adjustment.

The present study examined whether siblings experience marital conflict differently and whether such differences, if present, were associated with differences in their adjustment. Self-report data about marital conflict, children's depressed mood, behavioral conduct, and externalizing problems were obtained from 122 sibling pairs (mean ages = 10 and 12 years) and their parents. Results indicated that siblings were significantly different in exposure to and appraisals of marital conflict. Differences in siblings' exposure to marital conflict were significantly correlated with differences in their depressed mood, behavioral conduct, and externalizing problems. Differences in siblings' feelings of self-blame for marital conflict were significantly correlated with differences in their depressed mood and behavioral conduct. Children who experienced more marital conflict than their siblings had more adjustment problems than their siblings. These results highlight the importance of studying siblings' unique experiences of marital conflict to better understand its impact on children's adjustment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relationship between reported and observed dominance and conflict among parents of schizophrenics.

The results of well-controlled studies indicate no significant differences among the mothers of schizophrenics and those of controls in the amount of reported dominance. However, several equally well-controlled studies demonstrate that the parents of schizophrenics behave in a more conflictual manner toward each other than is true of the parents of controls. The subjects for this study were 35 sets of Caucasian parents: 11 were parents of hospitalized poor premorbid schizophrenics, 12 were parents of hospitalized good premorbid schizophrenics, and 12 were parents of hospitalized tubercular patients (controls). The parents were asked individually whether they agreed or disagreed with the dominance and conflict items from the Parental Attitude Research Instrument. They were then asked to resolve, individually then jointly, 12 hypothetical child-rearing problems. The parental dialogues were all tape-recorded and later scored for dominance and conflict. The results suggest that parents in general are not reliable judges of dominant behavior, but appear to be better estimators of conflictual behavior. The latter finding is especially marked for the parents of controls. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Rat prefrontal dopamine and cognitive control: Impaired and enhanced conflict performance.

It has been proposed that the cognitive dysfunction observed in patients with schizophrenia reflects a failure in cognitive control, in particular an inability to use task-relevant information to guide behavior. Using a prefrontal-dependent task designed to reflect aspects of cue and response conflict seen in human cognitive paradigms, we examined the influence of prefrontal dopamine receptor manipulation on the contextual control of response conflict. Rats were trained on two biconditional discrimination tasks, one auditory and one visual, in two discriminably different contexts. At test, audiovisual compounds of these training stimuli were presented, in extinction, in each of the training contexts. These compounds were formed in such a way that the individual elements previously dictated different responses during training, termed incongruent trials. Studies have shown that rats use contextual information to disambiguate the conflicting information provided by incongruent compounds, responding in manner that is appropriate to the stimulus element that was trained in the test context. Direct infusion of the D1 receptor agonist SKF-38393 into the prelimbic cortex was found to modulate incongruent trial performance in a manner that was dependent upon baseline performance: animals in the low baseline group demonstrated improved incongruent performance following infusion of SKF-38393 into the prelimbic cortex. In contrast, high performers showed a reduction in accuracy during incongruent compounds. This paradigm provides a reliable framework for assessing the efficacy of preclinical agents in treating the cognitive impairments seen in frontal-related disorders such as schizophrenia. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mental illness stigma as a mediator of differences in Caucasian and South Asian college students' attitudes toward psychological counseling.

Previous research has established that Asian Americans use mental health services less frequently and hold poorer attitudes toward psychological counseling than Caucasians. The authors directly tested whether stigmatizing beliefs regarding mental illness might explain such differential attitudes toward counseling in a South Asian and Caucasian student sample. Using mediation analyses, the authors examined 2 aspects of stigma posited to affect help-seeking attitudes: personal stigmatizing views and perceptions of the public's stigmatizing views directed toward persons with mental illness. First, the authors found that Caucasian (n = 74) college students revealed more positive attitudes toward counseling than did South Asian (n = 54) students. Second, in terms of mediation, increased personal stigma, but not perceived stigma, expressed by South Asians partially mediated and accounted for 32% of the observed difference in attitudes toward counseling services. These findings support a long-standing conjecture in the literature regarding the increased significance of stigma processes on disparities in majority-minority help-seeking attitudes. They also suggest that efforts to reduce disparities in attitudes toward counseling for South Asian students specifically should incorporate interventions to reduce the increased stigma expressed by this community, particularly related to a desire for social distance from persons with a mental illness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Stress, coping and psychological illness: A cross-cultural study.

This cross-cultural research study aimed to explore the relationship of stress and coping with psychological illness or symptoms among university students in Canada and India. The predictor variables were stress (hassles and life experience), 8 ways of coping (Folkman & Lazarus, 1988), and selected personal-social variables, namely, locus of control, self-esteem, and social support. The criterion variables were 9 psychological symptoms of the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI; Derogatis & Spencer, 1982). The results revealed that the Indian students reported more psychological symptoms compared to the Canadian students. Stepwise multiple-regression analyses also revealed considerable differences between the 2 samples with respect to the contribution of predictor variables in accounting for variance in the BSI scales. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Expressed emotion in families: Its significance for mental illness.

Reviews the book, Expressed emotion in families: Its significance for mental illness by Julian Leff and Christine Vaughn (1985). The authors, Leff & Vaughn, along with George Brown, the originator of the "expressed emotion" concept provide an opportunity to observe their minds at work. In presenting the origins and clinical, theoretical, and research developments focused on the initial observations that high levels of expressed emotions in the families of schizophrenic patients can be debilitating, the volume not only provides a wealth of significant information about schizophrenia and how research ideas are formulated, tested, refined, and retested but also provides significant insights into the thought processes--the intuitions, doubts, and confidences--of the researchers every step of the way. The book is a landmark study of the role of emotional attitudes and their expression by family members in the course and outcome of schizophrenia. From its British origins, the research has sparked heuristic cross-cultural replication and innovations. While the book should be essential reading for every family psychologist and psychotherapist, its main audience will probably be researchers interested in family processes and schizophrenia. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

One role or two?: The function of psychological separation in role conflict.

Student athletes vary in how much they view their academic and athletic role identities as separate from and interfering with each other. The authors investigated the relation of these perceptions to psychological well-being in 200 intercollegiate athletes. Measures included role separation, interference, identity, and well-being. Correlations indicated that interference related negatively to well-being, whereas viewing the roles as distinct related positively to well-being. Regression analyses of demographic and role identity variables also showed a positive association between role separation and well-being, and a significant Separation×Interference interaction. Specifically, role interference was negatively related to well-being for those who viewed the two roles as distinct but unrelated for those who did not. The buffering effects of role separation are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

New Jersey vignettes: Fifty years of state psychological services.

"New Jersey State Psychological Services began on October 1, 1910, when J. E. Wallace Wallin left… Vineland… to open a Psychological Laboratory at the New Jersey Village for Epileptics… near Princeton… . Edgar A. Doll became New Jersey's first State Chief Psychologist, 1919-23." Psychological services expanded greatly by the end of the postwar decade. Internships in clinical psychological services and research have been available since the early 20s. At present there are over 100 state psychology positions in correctional centers, mental hospitals, and training schools. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interparental conflict, negative parenting, and children's adjustment: Bridging links between parents' depression and children's psychological distress.

Pathways linking parental depressive symptoms, adult relationship insecurity, interparental conflict, negative parenting, and children's psychological adjustment (internalizing symptoms and externalizing problems) were assessed using a 3-wave longitudinal research design. Two-parent families (N = 352) with 11- to 13-year-old children (179 boys, 173 girls) participated in the study. Maternal and paternal depressive symptoms were associated with insecurity in adult close relationships assessed 12 months later, which was concurrently related to heightened levels of interparental conflict. Controlling for children's initial symptom levels, interparental conflict was related to child appraisals of father and mother rejection assessed an additional 12 months later, which were related to children's internalizing symptoms and externalizing problems, respectively. Results are discussed with regard to the implications for understanding the complex interplay between adult depressive symptoms, attributions in close adult relationships, interparental conflict, negative parenting, and children's psychological adjustment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The essence of conscious conflict: Subjective effects of sustaining incompatible intentions.

Conflict constitutes one of the fundamental “tuggings and pullings” of the human experience. Yet, the link between the various kinds of conflict in the nervous system and subjective experience remains unexplained. The authors tested a hypothesis that predicts why both the “hot” conflicts involving self-control and motivation and the “cooler” response conflicts of the laboratory lead to changes in subjective experience. From this standpoint, these changes arise automatically from the activation of incompatible skeletomotor intentions, because the primary function of consciousness is to integrate such intentions for adaptive skeletal muscle output. Accordingly, the authors demonstrated for the first time that merely sustaining incompatible intentions (to move right and left) in a motionless state produces stronger subjective effects than sustaining compatible intentions. The results held equally strongly for two different effector systems involving skeletal muscle: arm movements and finger movements. In contrast, no such effects were found with conflict in a smooth muscle effector system. Together, these findings illuminate aspects of the nature of subjective experience and the role of incompatible intentions in affect and failures of self-control. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Living with a concealable stigmatized identity: The impact of anticipated stigma, centrality, salience, and cultural stigma on psychological distress and health.

The current research provides a framework for understanding how concealable stigmatized identities impact people’s psychological well-being and health. The authors hypothesize that increased anticipated stigma, greater centrality of the stigmatized identity to the self, increased salience of the identity, and possession of a stigma that is more strongly culturally devalued all predict heightened psychological distress. In Study 1, the hypotheses were supported with a sample of 300 participants who possessed 13 different concealable stigmatized identities. Analyses comparing people with an associative stigma to those with a personal stigma showed that people with an associative stigma report less distress and that this difference is fully mediated by decreased anticipated stigma, centrality, and salience. Study 2 sought to replicate the findings of Study 1 with a sample of 235 participants possessing concealable stigmatized identities and to extend the model to predicting health outcomes. Structural equation modeling showed that anticipated stigma and cultural stigma were directly related to self-reported health outcomes. Discussion centers on understanding the implications of intraindividual processes (anticipated stigma, identity centrality, and identity salience) and an external process (cultural devaluation of stigmatized identities) for mental and physical health among people living with a concealable stigmatized identity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Do right-wing authoritarian beliefs originate from psychological conflict?

This article traces right-wing authoritarian beliefs and attitudes back to conflicts occasioned by four general groups of impulses: impulses toward self-preservation, mastery, sexuality, and aggression. It does so by viewing right wing authoritarian beliefs and attitudes as compromise formations resulting from defenses against negative affects aroused by these impulses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of social experience in the production of gastric ulcers in hooded rats placed in a conflict situation.

40 male hooded rats were used in an investigation concerning the relation of social experience to ulcer formation in a long-term approach-avoidance conflict situation. The hypotheses were: "1. Animals placed in the conflict situation alone are less resistant to ulceration than animals tested with other animals present. 2. Animals reared in isolation are less resistant to ulceration than animals reared together. 3. Interaction effects between these 2 sets of conditions exist." The first hypothesis was confirmed at the .01 level; the second and third hypotheses were not confirmed, probably owing to the limitations in the sensitivity of the experimental procedures. 21 references. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychosis as a risk factor for violence to others: A meta-analysis.

The potential association between psychosis and violence to others has long been debated. Past research findings are mixed and appear to depend on numerous potential moderators. As such, the authors conducted a quantitative review (meta-analysis) of research on the association between psychosis and violence. A total of 885 effect sizes (odds ratios) were calculated or estimated from 204 studies on the basis of 166 independent data sets. The central tendency (median) of the effect sizes indicated that psychosis was significantly associated with a 49%–68% increase in the odds of violence. However, there was substantial dispersion among effect sizes. Moderation analyses indicated that the dispersion was attributable in part to methodological factors, such as study design (e.g., community vs. institutional samples), definition and measurement of psychosis (e.g., diagnostic vs. symptom-level measurement, type of symptom), and comparison group (e.g., psychosis compared with externalizing vs. internalizing vs. no mental disorder). The authors discuss these findings in light of potential causal models of the association between psychosis and violence, the role of psychosis in violence risk assessment and management, and recommendations for future research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)