Anxiety sensitivity and COVID-19 mental health, fatigue, and well-being: a longitudinal examination among adults from the United States during March-October 2020.

There is widespread empirical evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to elevated risk of mental and physical health symptoms and decreased quality of life. The present investigation sought to examine if individual differences in anxiety sensitivity was associated with mental health, psychosomatic, and well-being among a sample of US adults during a 6-month period early in the COVID-19 pandemic. Employing longitudinal research methodology, we tested the hypothesis that the anxiety sensitivity global factor would be related to increased risk of anxiety, depression, fatigue, and lower well-being. Secondary analyses evaluated the lower order anxiety sensitivity factors for the same criterion variables. The sample consisted of 778 participants with an average age of 37.96 (SD = 11.81; range 18-73). Results indicated that, as hypothesized, anxiety sensitivity was associated with increased risk for more severe anxiety, depression, fatigue, and lesser well-being; the observed effects of anxiety sensitivity were relatively robust and evident in adjusted models that controlled for numerous theoretically and clinically relevant factors (e.g. perceived health status). Overall, these results suggest that pandemic functioning could likely be improved via interventions that target elevated anxiety sensitivity as a vulnerability factor for a broad range of aversive psychosomatic symptoms and personal well-being.

Emotional dysregulation among English-speaking Hispanic persons who smoke living in the United states.

Hispanic/Latinx (hereafter Hispanic) individuals in the United States (US) experience serious tobacco-related disparities and factors contributing to such disparities need to be adequately identified and clinically addressed. Emotion dysregulation is a key transdiagnostic relevant to smoking. The present cross-sectional investigation sought to test if emotion dysregulation was related to more severe problems during smoking quit attempts (e.g., irritability, weight gain), perceptions of difficulty about quitting, as well as negative and positive beliefs about smoking abstinence in a sample of English-speaking Hispanic adults residing in the US who smoke. Participants included 332 Hispanic adults who engaged in daily cigarette smoking (35.46 years old, 37 % identified as female). Emotion dysregulation was significantly related to more severe problems when quitting and perceived barriers for quitting, as well as negative beliefs about smoking abstinence. Additionally, emotion dysregulation was significantly and negatively related to positive outcomes about smoking abstinence. The amount of change in the various smoking criterion variables accounted for by emotion dysregulation was small (sr2 range: 0.028-0.085), but evident in adjusted models that accounted for a wide range of factors (e.g., depression, drug use severity). Overall, this investigation found consistent empirical evidence that individual differences in emotion dysregulation in Hispanic individuals were associated with several clinically significant smoking processes, suggesting this construct may represent an important factor involved in the maintenance and relapse of smoking among this ethnic population.