Asian Indians in the United States (US) experience a substantial number of traumas, especially intimate partner violence (IPV), which can contribute to PTSD symptoms and sleep disturbances. PTSD and sleep disturbances following IPV may influence family functioning and relationships over time due to mistrust of others, perceptions of limited social support, additional health consequences, communication problems, detrimental impacts on children and parenting, and isolation. To advance this line of research, the current study examined how daily PTSD symptoms and sleep disturbances following IPV are associated with daily family functioning among US Asian Indians. A convenience sample of 90 US Asian Indians who had experienced IPV in their lifetime (Mage = 31.03 years, 67.78% female; 73.33% with probable PTSD; 55.56% with moderate to severe insomnia symptoms) were recruited via online methods and in-person events. Participants were asked to complete 7 consecutive daily surveys on PTSD, sleep health (i.e., efficiency, duration, quality, nightmare occurrence), and family functioning (daily survey compliance rate = 84.0%). Multilevel models indicated that nights with better sleep quality than average (β = 0.05, p = .043) and days with lower PTSD symptom severity than average (β's = -0.05 to -0.07, ps <.05 across models) were associated with better daily family functioning. After covarying for previous-day family functioning, most effects became non-significant. Findings suggest that targeting PTSD and sleep health may relate to improved family functioning, which can be important components of culturally informed IPV interventions for Asian Indians.
BACKGROUND:The perinatal period represents risk for the development of postpartum obsessive-compulsive symptoms (POCS) but the variables of risk that lead to symptom development are not well understood. The goal of the current study was to evaluate the longitudinal, cross-lagged associations between obsessive beliefs and subsequent postpartum symptom onset, in the context of genetic and personality vulnerability, from early pregnancy to approximately 20 weeks postpartum. The study also tested cognitive specificity, namely whether obsessive beliefs are uniquely predictive of POCS compared to general mood and anxiety symptoms, and conversely, whether cognitive vulnerabilities thematically congruent to mood and anxiety symptoms are predictive of POCS. METHODS:In a prospective study with a community perinatal sample (N = 599), women completed a genetic assay and a test battery of measures assessing personality, stress, symptom functioning and cognitive vulnerability in early pregnancy (Time 1), and symptom and cognitive measures again in the early postpartum period (Time 2), and in the later postpartum period (Time 3). RESULTS:The model fit was acceptable, and the results supported the hypothesized cross-lagged associations between elevated obsessive beliefs about inflated responsibility/threat and subsequent POCS development at each phase of the study. Obsessive beliefs were not associated with the development of mood and anxiety symptoms in the postpartum period, nor were thematically congruent cognitive vulnerabilities for depression and anxiety symptoms predictive of POCS onset. CONCLUSIONS:Obsessive beliefs focusing on inflated responsibility/threat demonstrate specificity and temporal salience in predicting POCS onset longitudinally.
Anxiety disorders are among the most common psychiatric disorders in youth and are associated with impaired academic, social, and developmental outcomes. Despite their public health importance, nationally representative evidence integrating individual, family, and environmental correlates among Korean youth remains limited. Data were obtained from the National Mental Health Survey of Korea-Child & Adolescent 2022, a nationally representative sample of 6275 participants aged 6-17 years. Anxiety disorders were diagnosed using the Korean Kiddie Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia-Computerized Version. Survey-weighted logistic regression models were used to estimate adjusted odds ratios (aORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Stratified analyses by developmental stage (<12 years and ≥12 years) were performed to examine age-specific differences in risk profiles. The prevalence of anxiety disorder was 10.2%. Female sex (aOR=1.36, 95% CI=1.13-1.64), sleep disruption occurring monthly or more often (aOR=1.83, 95% CI=1.44-2.34), infrequent physical activity (aOR=1.51, 95% CI=1.02-2.24), peer victimization (aOR=2.28, 95% CI=1.73-3.00), urban residence (aOR=1.74, 95% CI=1.18-2.56), parental divorce (aOR=2.70, 95% CI=1.64-4.49), and unknown parental marital status (aOR=4.86, 95% CI=2.92-8.11) were associated with higher odds of anxiety disorder, whereas underweight status (aOR=0.34, 95% CI=0.16-0.71) and larger household size (aOR=0.42, 95% CI=0.24-0.75) were inversely associated with anxiety disorder. In age-stratified analyses, sleep disruption, peer victimization, and urban residence were consistently associated with anxiety disorder across both age groups. These findings highlight the importance of individual, interpersonal, social-environmental, and family/household correlates of anxiety disorder among Korean youth and support the need for multilevel prevention strategies.
Anxiety sensitivity (AS), Intolerance of Uncertainty (IU), and Experiential Avoidance (EA) have been conceptualized as key transdiagnostic processes underlying anxiety pathology. However, little work has been done to examine whether AS, IU, and EA are adequately distinct from one another in relation to concerns about jangle fallacies - whether two or more measures with different labels may actually assess the same construct. The present study used data from 300 treatment-seeking individuals with a primary diagnosis of one of five anxiety-related disorders-panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, or posttraumatic stress disorder-to examine the nature of shared variance among these variables. First, Pearson product-moment correlations were computed using total scores from pretreatment values for the ASI-3, IUS-27, and BEAQ. Second, these associations were re-examined accounting for general anxiety and depressive symptoms by calculating partial correlations. Third, to test whether the five scales represented distinct but correlated latent constructs, we conducted a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) at the item level, and subsequently an exploratory factor analysis (EFA). Fourth, in exploratory analyses, we examined unique prediction of anxiety for each of these measures and employed a recently-recommended strategy for assessing extrinsic convergent validity. Overall, our analyses indicated that these constructs are distinguishable from each other and general measures of anxiety and depression, yet their underlying structure is more fine-grained than reflected by total scores from these measures. Despite successful differentiation at a subfactor level, exploratory analysis revealed extrinsic convergent validity issues.
BACKGROUND:Emotion regulation difficulties have been implicated as a risk factor for anxiety disorders in youth, but prospective studies disentangling within-person from between-person effects are needed to substantiate such a claim. We therefore tested the bidirectional, within-person relations between emotion regulation and symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder, specific phobia, and social anxiety from 1st grade to late adolescence. METHODS:Participants were 911 children and adolescents from the Trondheim Early Secure Study, a Norwegian birth cohort sample assessed biennially from ages 6 to 18. Emotion regulation was reported by parents and teachers. Anxiety symptoms were assessed using structured diagnostic interviews. Results from Random Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Models (RI-CLPM) were contrasted with those from ordinary Cross-lagged Panel Models (CLPM). Age and sex differences were examined. RESULTS:According to CLPM, lower emotion regulation, as reported by both parents and teachers and across ages and sexes, predicted a higher number of anxiety symptoms two years later, and vice versa. However, according to RI-CLPM, apart from two paths in the model of parent-reported emotion regulation with specific phobia, no prospective within-person associations were found. CONCLUSIONS:Prospective relations between emotion regulation and anxiety may primarily be due to common factors linking the two, as these associations are no longer significant when time-invariant confounding is accounted for and within- and between-person effects are disentangled. Our results do not support the hypothesis that poor emotion regulation increases the risk of developing anxiety disorder symptoms.
Complex posttraumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) typically occurs following long-term, repeated trauma and involves two distinct symptom clusters: posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and disturbances in self-organization (DSO). CPTSD is widely comorbid with depression, but the mechanism of mutual influence at the within-person level remains unclear. De facto unattended children in China are children whose parents are deceased, missing, imprisoned, or severely disabled/chronically ill, or who have one such parent while the other is likewise unable to provide care, leaving them without effective guardianship. These children widely suffer from CPTSD and depressive symptoms. This study collected 4-wave data from 250 de facto unattended children over 2 years and conducted a random intercept cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM) to explore the longitudinal relationship between depressive symptoms, PTSD, and DSO symptoms. Results indicated that all measures of PTSD, DSO, and depressive symptoms exhibit adequate longitudinal measurement invariance. Depressive symptoms were significantly longitudinally associated with both PTSD and DSO symptoms, with a stronger association with DSO. Additionally, DSO symptoms were also significantly longitudinally associated with depressive symptoms from T2 to T4. Our study suggests that depression may predict the development of CPTSD among children. Furthermore, DSO, especially the affective dysregulation dimension, may contribute to maintaining comorbidity. Clinically, prioritizing depressive symptoms and DSO may improve the effectiveness of interventions for comorbid depression and CPTSD.
This is the first study to examine within and between session changes in interpretation biases as mechanisms of change in individual cognitive-behavioral therapy for social anxiety disorder (SAD). Twenty-eight patients completed multiple interpretation bias assessments, measured using both strategic (sentence completion, self-report) and automatic (grammatical decision) tasks and weekly measures of SAD symptoms. Preregistered Bayesian analyses results yielded strong evidence for bidirectional, time-lagged, weekly associations between changes in positive and negative interpretation biases and symptom reduction over the course of CBT. The effect of interpretations on subsequent symptoms were more consistent than the effect of symptoms on interpretations, suggesting an important unidirectional and potentially causal link. Increases in earlier, strategic positive biases and decreases in later, negative strategic biases were most consistently associated with symptom reduction. Together, these findings provide strong support for cognitive models that highlight the importance of interpretation biases as mechanisms of change in treatment of SAD.
Self-regulation shift theory (SRST) provides a novel nonlinear dynamical systems (NDS)-based theory of the posttraumatic psychological adaptation process. SRST has two central tenets: (1) coping self-efficacy and posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) dynamically coevolve, such that changes in one are reflected in changes in the other, and (2) that this coevolution leads to critical transitions in psychological state for a subset of trauma survivors, namely either a self-determination violation marked by coping self-efficacy dropping below some threshold and a corresponding rapid PTSS increase and/or a self-determination resurgence marked by coping self-efficacy rising above some threshold and a corresponding rapid PTSS decrease. While existing evidence generally supports these tenets of SRST, SRST has yet to be robustly evaluated using NDS-based analytic approaches. This study therefore evaluated SRST’s two central tenets using six weeks of ecological momentary assessment data from 81 recent hurricane survivors. Specifically, coping self-efficacy and PTSS velocities were first estimated via functional data analysis. Generalized additive modelling was then used to evaluate dynamic coevolution, finding coping self-efficacy and PTSS velocities coevolved for 93-97% of participants. Moreover, inspection of gradient plots suggested approximately 6% of survivors exhibited abrupt psychological transitions consistent with SRST’s self determination violation and an additional 6% exhibited transitions consistent with SRST’s self-determination resurgence. Results provide preliminary support for SRST’s tenets and suggests that interventions targeting either PTSS or CSE may generate cascading benefits across the psychological system. It also adds to the growing body of literature suggesting NDS-based approaches can offer considerable insight into posttraumatic psychological processes.
OBJECTIVE:This study aims to compare treatment outcomes of manualized cognitive behavioral therapy (MAN-CBT) with CBT treatment-as-usual (TAU-CBT) in patients with social anxiety disorder across two separate investigations. It was examined whether treatment effects differ between conditions after the total number of sessions, and whether manualized therapies would show better outcomes with equivalent dose of sessions. METHODS:All patients underwent CBT at the same outpatient treatment center. This secondary analysis utilizes data from two randomized controlled trials for the manualized CBT groups, while the TAU-CBT groups comprised existing routine-care data not derived from a prior study. Propensity score matching was applied, resulting in subsamples (n = 148; n = 64) with equal proportions of MAN-CBT and TAU-CBT. Social anxiety symptoms and general psychopathology were assessed as outcomes and analyzed using multilevel modeling. RESULTS:After the total number of sessions, patients in both investigations showed significant reduction in all outcomes (MAN-CBT: d = 0.93-1.99; TAU-CBT d = 0.89-1.44), with no differences between conditions (except for the SPAI in Investigation 2 in favor of MAN-CBT). Overall, TAU-CBT groups had a higher overall therapy dose. With an equivalent therapy dose the MAN-CBT conditions yielded significantly better outcomes than the TAU-CBT groups across all but two outcomes. CONCLUSIONS:Findings indicate manualized CBT treatments require a lower therapy dose than TAU-CBT for comparable effects. Therapy manuals for social anxiety could therefore offer an opportunity to help patients improve faster and may help increase available treatment capacity in the public healthcare system.
BACKGROUND:Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is among the most common and impairing disorders in childhood and adolescence, with emotion regulation (ER) difficulties proposed as a key mechanism in its onset and maintenance. While both behavioral and physiological aspects of ER have been investigated, findings remain fragmented and partly inconsistent. METHODS:We conducted a systematic review of studies published between 2000 and 2025 examining ER in children and adolescents (mean age ≤ 18). Thirty-seven studies (14 clinical, 23 community) met inclusion criteria. Where sufficient and comparable data were available, random-effects meta-analyses were conducted. RESULTS:ER difficulties emerged as a robust feature of both clinically diagnosed SAD and dimensionally assessed social anxiety (SA). Meta-analyses revealed large group differences indicating greater use of maladaptive ER strategies (g = 0.90) and moderately reduced use of adaptive strategies (g = -0.61) in children with SAD compared to healthy controls. In community samples, maladaptive ER strategies prospectively predicted increases in SA symptoms, with evidence for bidirectional associations over time. Narrative and meta-analytic synthesis on physiological data indicated that higher SA was associated with attenuated physiological stress reactivity (r = -.17), alongside reduced parasympathetic flexibility and impaired recovery, particularly in older children and adolescents. CONCLUSIONS:ER difficulties represent a core characteristic of both clinically diagnosed SAD and subclinical SA in youth. Rather than uniform hyper- or hypo-arousal, findings point to inflexible and context-insensitive regulation patterns. These patterns may function both as early vulnerability markers and as maintaining factors in SA. Interventions that explicitly target regulatory flexibility across contexts may therefore hold promise for prevention and treatment.
Selective mutism (SM) is an anxiety disorder marked by persistent failure to speak in certain social settings, often leading to social and academic difficulties. While SM is strongly linked to social anxiety and poorer social skills, its underlying social-cognitive mechanisms remain understudied. This study investigated attention to faces and emotion recognition in young children with SM (n = 37, mean age = 5.6 years) versus typically developing controls (n = 46, mean age = 5.8 years). Emotion recognition was measured with the NEPSY-II Affect Recognition subtest, and eye-tracking assessed attentional processing of negative (angry, fearful) and neutral faces. Results revealed that children in both groups attended more to negative than neutral faces, indicating a comparable bias towards threat, with SM showing less differentiation in subsequent avoidance between emotional and neutral expressions. In line with this, children with SM exhibited a longer looking time to faces, including longer total fixation duration, delayed disengagement, and more frequent initial orientation to facial stimuli, regardless of emotional expression. Facial emotion recognition was also impaired in children with SM. These findings suggest children with SM may have atypical social cognition, characterized by difficulties in facial emotion recognition and prolonged attention to faces, which may reflect compensatory efforts to process emotional information or a freezing-like response to social stimuli. Such mechanisms may contribute to difficulties in social interaction and communication. Future research should further investigate the mechanisms underlying these difficulties and their developmental trajectory in relation to SM.
OBJECTIVE:The Inhibitory Retrieval model of exposure therapy emphasizes expectancy change as a core mechanism of treatment. Evidence suggests important roles for both positive and negative affect during exposure therapy. The current study assesses the extent to which positive and negative affect moderate expectancy change during exposure therapy. METHOD:N = 77 adults with either social anxiety disorder or panic disorder completed a nine-session exposure therapy protocol: n = 41 were randomized to exposure therapy based on principles of extinction learning (Inhibitory Retrieval condition), during which they rated expectancy of an aversive outcome before and after each exposure; and n = 36 participants were randomized to exposure focused on fear reduction (Habituation condition), during which they rated subjective experiences of fear before and after each exposure. The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (past month) was collected at baseline, mid-treatment and post-treatment. RESULTS:In the Inhibitory Retrieval condition, positive and negative affect each moderated the relationship between pre- and post-expectancy. Specifically, individuals with low positive affect relative to their own mean (p = .029) or high negative affect relative to other individuals (p < .001) reduced expectancies less when pre-expectancy was high. In the Habituation condition, neither positive nor negative affect moderated the relationship between pre- and post-exposure fear. CONCLUSIONS:Affect moderates expectancy change during exposure therapy modeled using Inhibitory Retrieval, such that higher negative affect and lower positive affect are associated with less expectancy change. Considering the historical emphasis on reducing negative affect, models of exposure therapy may additionally incorporate strategies to increase positive affect to maximize expectancy change.
Although disgust proneness has been implicated in the development of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), studies to date have failed to identify the core symptom of disgust proneness that may be most strongly associated with OCD and its treatment. Accordingly, we used network analysis to examine which symptoms are most central to disgust proneness and the extent to which such symptoms predicted OCD symptoms before and after treatment. Adolescent participants (N = 434) in a residential treatment program for severe OCD, anxiety, and mood disorders completed pre- and post-treatment measures of OCD, disgust proneness, and general mood symptoms. Network analysis was used to identify the most central symptoms (nodes) and associations between symptoms (edges) of disgust proneness. The results revealed that the most central indicator in the pre- and post-treatment network were symptoms of ‘animal-reminder disgust’ (i.e., seeing blood in meat at the grocery store) that remind humans of their own mortality and bodily vulnerability. However, the pre- and post-treatment networks did not significantly differ (i.e., no network invariance). Accounting for OCD diagnostic status, animal-reminder disgust symptoms that were central in the network accounted for significant variance in OCD and general mood symptoms at pre- and post-treatment. These findings suggest that aversion towards animal-reminder cues are central symptoms of disgust proneness that may have predictive validity. The implications of these findings for conceptualizing theoretical and treatment models of disgust proneness in OCD are discussed.
Background: Intensive Outpatient Program Exposure and Response Prevention (IOP EX/RP) is a highly effective intervention for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), especially for those with greater support needs than outpatient therapy but less than residential treatment. However, patients exhibit heterogeneity in their treatment response to IOP EX/RP. This study aimed to characterize distinct patterns of obsessive-compulsive symptom change during IOP EX/RP and to identify clinical predictors of trajectory membership. Methods: We explored weekly obsessive-compulsive symptom trajectories among 566 adults who had a diagnosis of OCD and received IOP EX/RP treatment. The Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS) was conducted at each week to assess patients' OCD symptoms. We conducted latent growth mixture modeling to explore the patterns of OCD symptom change across eight weeks of IOP EX/RP. Demographic characteristics, treatment modality, and psychiatric comorbidity were evaluated as predictors of trajectory membership using multinomial logistic regression. Results: Three distinct symptom trajectories emerged during the eight weeks of IOP, including a slow improvement trajectory (64.3%) characterized by gradual symptom reduction, a rapid improvement trajectory (22.3%) marked by pronounced gains, and a worsening trajectory (13.4%) characterized by symptom worsening over the same treatment window. Anxiety-, mood-, and OCD-related comorbidities significantly predicted less favorable early trajectories. Conclusions: Despite the overall effectiveness of IOP EX/RP, patients follow distinct trajectories of symptom change during eight weeks of IOP EX/RP, evidencing the heterogeneity in affective and behavioral responses to evidence-based treatment. The findings underscore the importance of trajectory-informed monitoring to support personalized and adaptive treatment in intensive OCD care.
The Exposure Continuum Model (ECM; Rubinstein et al., 2026) is a framework for identifying and measuring the exposure component across diverse trauma-centered psychotherapies. We respond to Lowell and Markowitz’s (2026) commentary on the ECM, which raises important concerns about exposure-centrism in PTSD treatment, concerns we share. However, their commentary critiques a claim the ECM does not make: that exposure is the sole mechanism of PTSD recovery or that this component supersedes other therapeutic processes. We clarify what the ECM does and does not claim, address the extended discussion of Interpersonal Psychotherapy, and argue that identifying a component is not equivalent to replacing a therapy’s theory of change. We welcome this debate as part of building shared, empirically testable language for trauma treatment research. The ECM advances this effort by operationalizing two exposure dimensions, Closeness and Standardized Cumulative Dose, which can be empirically tested across treatment modalities.
Introduction: Autobiographical reasoning is the mental process of making sense of life experiences by connecting them to one's sense of self and life story. After a traumatic event, individuals may engage in ruminations and coping strategies but the relations between these processes and autobiographical reasoning remain poorly understood. Furthermore, autobiographical reasoning encompasses several dimensions that may reflect different mental health outcomes. Our objectives are to compare three dimensions of autobiographical reasoning (interpretations, exploratory processing, and meaning-making) between exposed and non-exposed individuals after a traumatic event and to examine their links to (1) ruminations and coping strategies and (2) post-traumatic mental health outcomes. Methods: We analyzed autobiographical reasoning levels in the narratives of 153 individuals (86 exposed and 67 non-exposed) 8-11 months after the November 13, 2015, attacks in Paris and Saint-Denis using a semiautomated approach. We explored the association of each autobiographical reasoning dimension (measured on 4-levels Likert scales) with ruminations (brooding or reflection), four coping strategies, post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS), post-traumatic growth and well-being, measured by self-administered scales. Results: Exposed participants showed greater levels of autobiographical reasoning across all dimensions, with the strongest effect for meaning-making. Among the exposed participants, interpretations were positively related to reflection and adaptive coping, and negatively to brooding. Exploratory processing was positively related to reflection and PTSS, and negatively to well-being. Meaning-making was positively related to adaptive coping and post-traumatic growth. Conclusions: While traumatic events generate intense autobiographical reasoning in those exposed, identifying the different dimensions it encompasses in trauma narratives is critical, as they reveal specific issues, from higher distress and ruminations to higher adaptive coping and growth.
Chemosignals found in human body odors (BOs) convey information about a person's emotional state and elicit observable responses in others. While mindfulness typically enhances parasympathetic tone and reduces anxiety, little is known about how BOs modulate these effects. This study investigated how emotional and non-emotional human BOs influence autonomic nervous system activity - heart rate variability (HRV) and electrodermal activity (EDA) - during mindfulness practice in individuals with social anxiety. The role of baseline HRV as a predictor of intervention outcome was explored. Ninety-eight women with social anxiety received two mindfulness sessions over two consecutive days, while allocated to one of four conditions: fear BO, happiness BO, neutral BO, clean air. Due to technical issues, final samples were reduced (n = 69-85 per analysis). Individuals in the fear and happiness BOs conditions, but not those in the neutral BO and clean air conditions, showed HRV reduction during the mindfulness. EDA decreased in all conditions on day 1, but on day 2, only the clean air and neutral BO groups maintained this reduction. Baseline HRV predicted the magnitude of anxiety reduction in the fear BO group; participants with higher initial HRV exhibited greater anxiety reduction. No associations were found for other odor conditions. These results suggest that emotional BOs, particularly fear BO, may enhance mindfulness efficacy by creating a socially salient and ecologically valid context. For socially anxious individuals, practicing mindfulness under a subtle social-emotional challenge may train adaptive regulation. Baseline HRV emerges as a biomarker of such regulatory flexibility and intervention responsiveness.
War zone deployment increases risk for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, but symptom development and course varies across individuals. Thus, identifying modifiable pre-exposure risk and protective factors is critical to improving prevention. Pre-exposure sleep is a modifiable factor known to influence risk for PTSD development, but its relationship to the long-term course of PTSD symptoms remains unclear. In the present study, we examined pre-deployment sleep duration as a predictor of longitudinal PTSD symptom trajectories in 1059 US Army soldiers who deployed to Iraq and were followed prospectively from pre-deployment to > 5 years post-deployment. Participants self-reported sleep duration prior to deployment. PTSD symptom trajectories (asymptomatic, mild, post-deployment worsening, high chronic) were previously established using latent growth mixture modeling based on PTSD Checklist-Civilian Version summary scores obtained at pre-deployment and multiple post-deployment assessments. Multinomial logistic regression was used in the current study to examine associations of pre-deployment sleep duration with odds of membership in the four PTSD trajectory classes after adjusting for relevant covariates. Results indicated that participants with one additional hour of pre-deployment sleep were 1.27 times more likely to belong in the asymptomatic trajectory class than the post-deployment worsening trajectory class (OR=0.79, 95% CI: 0.63-0.98). Effects on high chronic (OR=0.87, 95% CI: 0.75-1.02) and mild (OR=0.91, 95% CI: 0.78-1.06) trajectory class membership were non-significant. Findings suggest an association between pre-deployment sleep duration and post-deployment development and worsening over time of PTSD symptoms, highlighting pre-deployment sleep as a potentially important factor to consider when assessing risk for post-deployment PTSD onset and worsening.
Intrusive thoughts are prevalent across the lifespan and can be particularly distressing during adolescence and young adulthood. Despite their high prevalence, many individuals lack access to effective strategies for managing these thoughts. Brief, accessible, and evidence-based interventions are needed to help individuals cope with intrusive thought-related distress. The present study aimed to pilot the effectiveness of a brief online Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)-based single-session intervention (SSI) that provided psychoeducation on intrusive thoughts and strategies for managing distress arising from negative appraisals in young adults. We recruited individuals aged 18-25 who reported that they experienced distressing thoughts in the last week. Distress associated with intrusive thoughts and hopelessness was measured at pre-intervention, post-intervention, and at two-week follow-up. Within-subject ANOVAs revealed significant reductions in intrusive thoughtrelated distress and hopelessness from pre- to post-intervention across all time points for both groups. The active SSI group had a significant reduction in distress compared to the active control group. There were no other significant interaction effects observed, either when considering hopelessness or at the follow-up time point. These preliminary findings highlight the importance of single-session interventions in helping youth understand and cope with intrusive thoughts. Future research should explore the relative contributions of different intervention components and the long-term effects on mental health outcomes.
