Alexithymia is characterised by difficulties identifying and describing feelings, as well as a lack of focus on feelings. Alexithymia is a transdiagnostic risk factor for developing a wide array of psychopathologies, such as anxiety and depression, with a key hypothesised mechanism being the impairing impact of alexithymia on emotion regulation competency. However, no study has tested whether difficulties with emotion regulation mediate the link between alexithymia and psychopathological symptoms using longitudinal designs. The present study aimed to address this limitation by collecting data from 164 Iranian high school students (73

Numerous tools assess death anxiety, but many have questionable psychometric properties. The Death Anxiety Beliefs and Behaviors Scale (DABBS) addresses these shortcomings, assessing death-related maladaptive affect, beliefs, and behaviors that could be foundational to fears associated with death. We translated the DABBS into Persian and examined its psychometric properties among Iranian adolescents (n = 598, Mage = 14.80, range = 12-18 years old). Confirmatory factor analyses supported the intended three-factor structure that comprises death-related affect, beliefs, and behaviors. Furthermore, the DABBS demonstrated good internal consistency, as well as expected associations with other measures of death anxiety and psychopathology measures, except that the Behaviors subscale unexpectedly did not relate to theoretically relevant constructs. Our findings indicate that the DABBS affect and belief subscales have strong psychometric properties among Iranian adolescents. However, further research is needed to elucidate whether the overall DABBS score demonstrates improved validity when used with other populations.

People’s beliefs about emotions contribute to their psychological wellbeing, and two important beliefs about emotions concern their controllability and usefulness. Recently, the Emotion Beliefs Questionnaire (EBQ) was developed to assess beliefs about the controllability and usefulness of positive and negative emotions. To date, most psychometric studies of the EBQ have been conducted with Western populations, and no studies have examined the EBQ’s psychometric properties among adolescents. We examined the psychometric properties of the EBQ among Iranian adolescents (n = 557), Iranian adults (n = 347), and American adults (n = 242). Participants also completed Implicit Theories of Emotions Scale (ITES), Perth Emotion Regulation Competency Inventory (PERCI), and Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale-21 (DASS-21) for measuring the concurrent validity of the EBQ. Confirmatory factor analyses supported the intended four-factor model that distinguishes between controllability and usefulness facets of beliefs about emotions across positive and negative emotions within all three samples. Importantly, this four-factor model was found invariant in terms of gender, age, and culture groups. Furthermore, the EBQ demonstrated good internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and concurrent validity. Our findings indicate that the EBQ has strong psychometric properties among both Asian and Western samples and can be utilised with adolescents too.

ObjectiveAlexithymia is a trait defined by difficulty in identifying and describing feelings, as well as externally oriented thinking. It is an important transdiagnostic risk factor for a range of psychopathologies, and therefore its assessment is of substantial interest. Recently, the Perth Alexithymia Questionnaire (PAQ) was developed to try to enable more comprehensive assessments of alexithymia. To date, no studies have examined the PAQ's psychometric properties among adolescents, and few have examined non-Western populations.MethodTo address these gaps, here we examined the psychometric properties of the PAQ among three samples of Iranian adolescents (N = 557, 53% female, M-age = 14.94, SD = 1.29), Iranian adults (N = 926, 62% female, M-age = 32.52, SD = 9.65) and American adults (N = 242, 40% female, M-age = 40.69, SD = 11.91).ResultsConfirmatory factor analysis supported the intended five-factor model (that distinguished between different facets of alexithymia across positive and negative emotions) within all three samples. This five-factor model was invariant across genders, ages and cultural groups. Furthermore, the PAQ subscales showed good internal consistency, test-retest reliability and concurrent validity.ConclusionsOverall, the present findings indicate that PAQ has strong psychometric properties among both Middle Eastern and Western samples, and functions similarly across adults and adolescents. The PAQ therefore appears to be a useful tool for comprehensively operationalising alexithymia across a diverse range of populations.

Objective A critical factor for adaptive psychological functioning is the ability to successfully regulate negative and positive emotions. Various tools and methods have been developed to assess emotion regulation competence. Recently, the Perth Emotion Regulation Competency Inventory (PERCI) was developed to overcome some of the limitations of previous assessment tools including a lack of emotion regulation assessment across both positive and negative emotions. To date, no studies have examined the PERCI’s psychometric properties among adolescents and non-Western general populations.Method To address this gap in the literature, we examined the psychometric properties of the PERCI among Iranian adolescents (n = 557), Iranian adults (n = 926), and American adults (n = 242). Participants also completed Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ), Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20 (TAS-20), and Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale-21 (DASS-21) for measuring the concurrent validity of the PERCI.Results Confirmatory factor analyses supported the intended eight-factor structure that distinguishes between different emotion regulation components and negative and positive emotions. The eight-factor structure was also found invariant in terms of gender, age, and culture groups. Furthermore, the PERCI demonstrated good internal consistency, test-retest reliability, as well as expected associations with measures of psychopathology, emotion regulation strategy, and alexithymia.Conclusions Our findings indicate that the PERCI has strong psychometric properties among both Middle Eastern and Western samples and can also be utilised with adolescents.

Background: Nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) is the direct and deliberate destruction of one’s own body tissue without suicidal intent. This prevalent behavior can have physical, psychological, and social consequences. Objectives: This study aimed to explain NSSI in adolescents based on Hooley’s negative self-association model. Materials and Methods: The sample consisted of 223 high school students in public schools in Tehran province, of whom 63 were self-injured and 160 were non-self-injured. The subjects were selected by purposive sampling. The data were gathered using the Deliberate Self-harm Inventory (DSHI), Forms of Self-criticism/Attacking and Self-reassuring Scale (FSCRS), Emotional Avoidance Strategy Inventory for Adolescents (EASI-A), Self-punishment Scale (SPS), Self-injury Implicit Association Test (SI-IAT), and General Health Questionnaire (GHQ). Data analysis was performed based on structural equation modeling (SEM) using the statistical software IBM SPSS AMOS v22.0. Results: The SEM indicated that among the goodness of fit indices, CFI, TLI, and RMSEA were in the desired range. Negative self-association played a central role in NSSI attempts. There was a significant relationship (P < 0.05) between self-punishment and self-injury. Negative associations made people more inclined to avoid negative emotions, but no significant relationship was found with NSSI. However, the path of negative self-association and its relationship with accessibility to and identification with self-injury and attempt to NSSI did not have enough significance and led to a decrease in the model’s fit. Conclusions: Consistent with the findings of research conducted in the field of self-injury, this study showed that negative self-associations play a central role in attempting NSSI. The results of this study provide a new guideline for designing prevention and treatment programs for self-injuring behavior.

Article info: Received: 01 Feb 2018 First Revision: 15 Feb 2018 Accepted: 13 May 2018 Published: 01 Jul 2018

Objectives: Cognitive flexibility, shame, and emotion regulation difficulties are considered potential mediating factors that may explain the relationship between neuroticism and depression severity. The aim of this study was to examine the mediating role of cognitive flexibility, shame and emotion dysregulation in the relationship between neuroticism and depression among university students. Methods: A total of 271 students (102 males and 169 females) were selected by cluster random sampling from University of Tehran, Allameh Tabataba’i University, and Iran University of Science & Technology. Cognitive Flexibility Inventory (CFI), Test of Self-Conscious Affect-2 (TOSCA-2), Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS), NEO Five-Factor Inventory, and Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) were used to collect the data. Pearson correlation, multiple regression, and path analysis were applied for data analysis. Results: It was found that neuroticism was significantly associated with depression and all three mediators (P<0.0001). Neuroticism by means of emotion dysregulation was the only significant indirect effect on depression (P<0.0001). First total mediation model had a poor fit to the data, CMIN=87, P<0.0001, CMIN/df=21.75, CFI=82, RMSEA=28. Discussion: These findings suggest that for student depression, emotion dysregulation might be important and future intervention works can examine the effects of targeting emotion dysregulation among university students with high levels of neuroticism and/or depression.

Received: 10 Jan. 2017 Accepted: 01 May 2017