Search Results

open access

New Religious Movements, Mental Health, and Well-Being

Description: Recent years have observed significant change in the landscape of American religious/spiritual environment and religious/spiritual groups called new religious movements (NRMs) have developed as an alternative for many individuals to engage in religious/spiritual beliefs and practices outside the traditional religions. It was unclear if participation in NRMs provide adherents with similar mental health benefits as participation in traditional religious groups, or whether there might be importantā€¦ more
Date: August 2019
Creator: Zhang, Hansong
open access

Bouncing Back: Resilience as a Moderator between Aggression and Depression in Older Gay Men and Lesbians Group Differences

Description: Older gay men and lesbians may be at greater risk for depression than older sexual majority adults due to a lifetime of sexual minority stress. We hypothesize that aggression and being single are positively associated with depression. Resilience is negatively associated with depression. Aggression, being single and resilience account for a significant proportion of variance in depression. Resilience moderates the relationship between aggression and depression. Significant differences between olā€¦ more
Date: May 2019
Creator: Griggs, Tosha

Independence of Mania and Depression across 4 Years in Bipolar Disorder

Description: If mania and depression are part of the same pathological processes, one would predict that episodes of one prospectively increase the odds of episodes of the other. The aim of the present study was to test this hypothesis. For comparison purposes, their relationship was contrasted to the relationship between mania and periods of psychosis. Exploratory analyses also tested the degree to which episodes of each occur with greater frequency over time (i.e., kindling). Participants for the present ā€¦ more
Access: Restricted to UNT Community Members. Login required if off-campus.
Date: May 2019
Creator: Bennett, Charles B.

The Effect of Trauma Experiences and PTSD Severity on Positive Memory Recall and Memory Phenomenology

Description: Positive memories play an important role in the etiology and maintenance of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Additionally, there are potential clinical benefits of recalling positive memories on affect, cognitions, and behaviors. However, most research/clinical work has focused on the role of traumatic memories in PTSD's symptomatology and treatment. The current study examined positive memory recall difficulties and positive memory phenomenology among 185 trauma-exposed individuals with vaā€¦ more
Access: Restricted to UNT Community Members. Login required if off-campus.
Date: May 2019
Creator: Dolan, Megan

Insomnia and Cognitive Performance: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Description: Daytime cognitive performance and sleep/wake cycles are strongly interrelated, and cognitive dysfunction has been extensively investigated in relation to insomnia. However, methods and outcomes vary widely by study, making comparison difficult without more systematic evaluation. Review of the literature reveals discrepant findings for the relationship between both subjective and objective measures of cognitive performance and insomnia. The current meta-analysis included 42 studies investigatingā€¦ more
Access: Restricted to UNT Community Members. Login required if off-campus.
Date: May 2019
Creator: Pinkston, Sophie Wardle
open access

Contribution of Psychopathic Traits in the Prediction of Generalized Prejudice in Males

Description: Very few studies have investigated how psychopathic traits might contribute to our understanding of prejudicial attitudes. Moreover, previous studies involve a number of limitations which cloud interpretation of their findings. The current study examined the relationship between prejudice and a number of its predictors (e.g., social dominance orientation (SDO) and right-wing authoritarianism (RWA)), while also including psychopathic traits and an innovative new measure of empathy using an onlinā€¦ more
Date: December 2018
Creator: Mark, Daniel
open access

Pathways to Prolonged Grief and Posttraumatic Growth: Examining the Roles of Attachment, Identity Distress, and Shattered Assumptions

Description: The sudden or violent death of a loved one (e.g., suicide, homicide, accident, etc.) poses unique challenges for the bereaved. Research has found such losses to be associated with higher levels of chronic psychological distress, now termed Persistent Complex Bereavement Disorder in the DSM-5 and Prolonged Grief Disorder in the forthcoming ICD-11. The present study, developed through the lens of Multidimensional Grief Theory (MGT; Kaplow et al., 2013), explored underlying mechanisms and risk andā€¦ more
Date: August 2018
Creator: Captari, Laura E.
open access

Mental Illness Stigma, Parent-Child Communication, and Help-Seeking of Young American Adults with Immigrant Parents

Description: This study examined a mediational model of mental illness stigma, parent-child communication about mental health concerns, and help seeking attitudes/behaviors among young adults with at least one immigrant parent while considering the possible moderating effect of acculturation gap. The primary goal of this study was to examine whether the acculturation gap changed the relation between mental illness stigma and communication about personal mental health concerns with immigrant parents, which iā€¦ more
Date: August 2018
Creator: Bismar, Danna
open access

Transitioning from Sport: Retirement and Former Female Collegiate Athletes' Satisfaction with Life, Depressive Symptomatology, and Body Satisfaction

Description: Retirement from elite sport can be highly distressing for athletes, and many athletes report elevated depression and anxiety or body dissatisfaction when going through this transition. Factors that may be important in determining a higher level of adjustment in retirement include feeling in control of when and how retirement occurs, planning occupationally for after sport, and having achieved sport goals. Thus, we examined how such factors related to former female collegiate athletes (N = 218) ā€¦ more
Date: August 2018
Creator: Wartalowicz, Karolina Maria
open access

An Examination of the Language of Psychopaths: Differences in Prosodic Channels of Communication in Psychopathic and Non-Psychopathic Offenders

Description: Natural speech contains a wealth of information relevant to understanding cognitive and affective psychological processes, which are reflected in both prosodic and semantic channels of communication. While differences in semantic channels have been demonstrated among psychopathic versus non-psychopathic individuals, research on the role of prosody in psychopathy is scant. The Computerized Assessment of Natural Speech protocol provides adetailed assessment of macroscopic-level prosody variables ā€¦ more
Date: August 2018
Creator: Walsh, Hannah C
open access

Differential Associations between Psychopathy Factors and Shooter Bias in the Police Officer's Dilemma

Description: The current study assessed abnormal attention in 71 undergraduate men, approximately half of which displayed elevated psychopathic traits, as they attended to cues on the Police Officer's Dilemma. In the computerized task, participants are instructed to shoot men holding guns and not shoot men holding neutral objects. However, research has shown that irrelevant racial cues in the task can influence participants to shoot unarmed Black men more frequently than unarmed White men; a phenomenon termā€¦ more
Date: August 2018
Creator: Roy, Sandeep
open access

Marital Satisfaction and Parental Mental Health in Association with Secure-Base Provision to School-Age Children

Description: The current study examines interrelations among family factors in a sample of married couples with children in middle childhood. Specifically, this study tested the associations between parents' mental health, marital satisfaction, and provision of a secure base through emotional sensitivity to the child. We further explored bidirectional and moderation effects between spouses. Participants included 86 heterosexual couples residing in the North Texas community. Using the actor-partner interā€¦ more
Date: August 2018
Creator: Oosterhouse, Kendra
open access

The Relationship of Appearance Pressures, Exercise Behaviors, and Reasons for Exercise to the Psychological Well-Being of Retired Female Athletes

Description: Retirement from sport can be difficult for athletes. Physically, retirement is associated with challenges such as weight gain, muscle loss, and degradation of physical skills. Psychologically, retirement has been linked to increased identity confusion, depression, body dissatisfaction, and disordered eating. Research shows that exercise is a way athletes cope with stressors such as psychosocial pressure and retirement. However, exercise is positively correlated with psychological well-being forā€¦ more
Date: August 2018
Creator: Mikesell, Matthew
open access

The Revised Stress-Related Growth Scale: Improving the Measurement of Posttraumatic Growth

Description: This study evaluated a revised version of the Stress-Related Growth Scale (SRGS-R). The SRGS-R has two major differences from the Stress-Related Growth Scale (SRGS). It uses neutral wording of items instead of the original positively worded items, and it uses positive and negative scaling choices. This study included participants (N = 764) recruited through Amazon MTurk. There were three versions of the SRGS-R tested - the SRGS with neutral wording of items only (SRGS-R-N), the SRGS with positiā€¦ more
Date: May 2018
Creator: Bedford, Lee
open access

An Investlarks and Hearts: Circadian Mismatch and Effort Intensity

Description: My experiment concerned the influence of chronobiological (circadian) rhythm on fatigue, effort, and cardiovascular (CV) response. It evaluated responses of morning people (Larks) presented an easy or difficult recognition memory task at a time congruent or incongruent with their rhythm. Based on an extension of a conceptual analysis of fatigue influence, my central prediction was that circadian rhythm would combine interactionally with task difficulty to determine effort and associated CV resā€¦ more
Date: May 2018
Creator: Carbajal, Ivan
open access

Feeling Fat and Depressed: Positive Dimensions of Self-Concept Lessen that Relationship for College Men

Description: The purpose of the current study was to examine if positive family, social, and/or academic dimensions of SC weaken (i.e., moderate) the direct relationship between physical SC (i.e., a person's evaluation of their physique, adiposity, and weight) and depressive symptoms in a sample of adult men. A convenience sample of 239 college men completed self-report measures including the Tennessee Self-Concept Scale-2 (TSCS-2) and Symptom Checklist-90 Revised. Hierarchical regressions revealed that famā€¦ more
Date: May 2018
Creator: McGregor, Carlie C.
open access

Effects of Bodily Arousal on Desire to Drink Alcohol among Trauma-Exposed Emerging Adult College Students

Description: Alcohol consumption on college campuses is a major public health concern, particularly among emerging adults. Extant literature has identified trauma exposure and posttraumatic stress as robust risk factors for problematic alcohol use. However, the mechanisms underlying this association are less well-studied. Research indicates that bodily arousal is a fundamental feature of trauma exposure and posits that internal stimuli (e.g., heart pounding) at the time of trauma may manifest into conditionā€¦ more
Date: May 2018
Creator: Kearns, Nathan T
open access

Examining the Clinical Utility of Research Domain Criteria in an Outpatient Sample

Description: This study examined the clinical utility of the recently released National Institute of Mental Health's (NIMH) research domain criteria (RDoC) by replicating and extending earlier work by using a demographically novel sample. Information retrieval and natural language processing of archival clinical records was used to achieve two main objectives: (1) estimate how well the RDoC domains match language used by clinicians by creating domain scores and (2) examine the differences between the DSM's ā€¦ more
Date: May 2018
Creator: Love, Patrick K.
open access

From Childhood Maltreatment to Depressive Symptoms in Adulthood: The Roles of Self-Compassion and Shame

Description: We hypothesized that the formation of malevolent introjects undermines the development of self-compassion, which in turn produces greater feelings of shame. We hypothesized that these feelings of shame account for concurrent depressive symptoms in adulthood. To test these hypotheses, we proposed a multiple mediator mediation model in which our independent variable was childhood maltreatment. We modeled child maltreatment as negatively predicting our first mediator, self-compassion, which in ā€¦ more
Date: May 2018
Creator: Ross, Nicholas Dutra
open access

Association of Personality Facets with Unique Dimensions of PTSD

Description: The present study aims to examine which maladaptive and Big Five personality traits, as well as which lower order facets, are related to symptoms specific to PTSD (i.e., intrusions and avoidance). Unique effects were isolated by controlling for nonspecific general depression that occurs in the disorder but is not specific to it. 707 undergraduate students were administered a self-report online survey to assess their personality, trauma history, PTSD and mood symptoms. Additionally, data from 5ā€¦ more
Date: May 2018
Creator: Shteynberg, Yuliya A
open access

Academic and Social Functioning of College Students with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

Description: Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a complicated psychiatric disorder that is typically first diagnosed in childhood and associated with negative outcomes in adulthood such as poor academic performance and difficulties with social relationships. ADHD can be difficult to accurately diagnose in adulthood, given the absence of clear, agreed upon ADHD symptomology in adults. In the current study, two raters used psychometrically sound instruments and diagnostically valid assessment ā€¦ more
Date: December 2017
Creator: Calmenson, Nina
open access

Ethnic and Sexual Minority Differences in the Prediction of Disordered Eating and Exercise Behaviors in College Men

Description: Despite growing evidence of their prevalence, clinical and subclinical disordered eating behaviors among men continue to be understudied phenomena. When compared to females, predictors of male disordered eating vary across ethnic groups, suggesting cultural influences on disordered eating. Moreover, gay and bisexual men experience pronounced levels of body dissatisfaction, sensitivity to societal body image standards, and subsequent disordered eating when compared to straight men and gay women.ā€¦ more
Date: December 2017
Creator: Pereira, Andrew
open access

Facets of Positive Affect and Risk for Bipolar Disorder: Role of the Behavioral Activation System

Description: Bipolar disorder is characterized by disruptions in mood and affect that occur not only during mood episodes, but during euthymic periods as well. At the same time, sensitivity of the behavioral activation system (BAS) has been implicated in the disorder and is a risk marker for it. Less clear is the relationship between BAS sensitivity and positive affect, particularly lower level facets of positive affect. The aim of the present study was to examine the relationship between positive affectā€¦ more
Date: December 2017
Creator: Dornbach-Bender, Allison
open access

Cultural Humility, Religion, and Health in Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual (LGB) Populations

Description: The purpose of this study was to explore the religion ā€“ health link in a sample of adults and undergraduate students (N = 555) that identified as lesbian, gay, or bisexual (LGB), and to explore how perceptions of cultural humility of religious individuals and groups toward LGB individuals affect the relationship between religion and health. First, I found religious commitment among LGB individuals was positively correlated with satisfaction in life, but it was negatively correlated with physicaā€¦ more
Date: August 2017
Creator: Mosher, David Keith
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