Identifying internalizing transdiagnostic profiles through motivational and cognitive control systems: Relations with symptoms, functionality, and quality of life.

BACKGROUND: The diversity of patients' symptomatology among people seeking treatment on community-based mental health services poses significant challenges to traditional models of care. Recent approaches favor identifying transdiagnostic factors that allow a better understanding of patient heterogeneity and designing more effective and quality interventions. This study examines the heterogeneity of patients with internalizing symptoms based on profiles identified with cognitive and motivational control variables. Differences between these profiles on dimensional measures of psychopathology and quality of life are examined. METHODS: 263 patients were selected by non-probabilistic sampling procedures on mental health services in the province of Huelva (Spain). A latent class analysis on the standardized scale scores of The Behavioral Inhibition/Behavioral Activation System Scales and the Effortful Control Scale of the Adult Temperament Questionnaire Short-Form was conducted. Profiles were compared on the scores of the Inventory of Depression and Anxiety Symptoms-II, the WHO Disability Assessment Schedule II, and the Health Assessment Questionnaire SF-36. RESULTS: The four latent profile solution is the one that showed the best fit indicators and substantive interpretability, with a kappa of 0.94 in the cross-validation procedure with 75% of the sample. No sex differences were found between the profiles (χ32 5.17, p = .160). Profiles #1 and #3, both characterized by an imbalance between low activation and high inhibition, had lower well-being, lower functionality, and quality of life. When comparing profile #2 (featuring the highest inhibitory control) lower scores on most internalizing scales are observed, specially claustrophobia, social anxiety, panic mania. Profile #4 (low control, high activation, and high inhibition) showed greater scores on both mania and euphoria and lower scores on emotional role. CONCLUSIONS: We identified four distinctive profiles that had overly increased behavioral inhibition (as expected in internalizing disorders) and differed in the degree of imbalance between inhibition and activation systems, and between motivational systems and top-down cognitive control. The profile characterized by high activation and reduced cognitive (inhibitory) control was the one showing greater mood-related symptoms and lower levels of quality of life. These profiles could be generated by treatment providers to guide clinical management in an evidence-based manner.

Preliminary study for the validation of the Spanish version of the Personality Belief Questionnaire

Introduction. Dysfunctional beliefs are defined as cognitive schemas that drive an abnormal perception and interpretation of reality, being present in all personality disorders. Beck and Beck developed the Personality Belief Questionnaire (PBQ) in order to measure the degree to which individuals endorse basic beliefs associated with personality disorders, providing unique information about the intensity of the dysfunctional beliefs that must be addressed during treatment. Objective. The aims of this study are, first, to develop a Spanish version of the PBQ and to evaluate its psychometric properties in a sample from the normal population, and second, to examine if PBQ's indexed intensity of dysfunctional beliefs may discriminate between subgroups of individuals within the extreme tails of their corresponding personality traits (measured by a gold standard, the MCMI-III). Methods. We administered the PBQ and the MCMI-III to a sample of 63 undergraduate students of Spanish nationality. Results. Results showed that the Spanish adaptation of the PBQ have sound psychometric properties. Furthermore, we showed that there is a good fit between the personality traits measured with the gold standard and the intensity of dysfunctional beliefs measured with the PBQ, since this questionnaire was able to discriminate between individuals with high vs. low levels of the corresponding personality traits. Conclusions. We conclude that the Spanish adaptation of the PBQ presents adequate psychometric properties (in terms of reliability and construct validity) and holds an important potential for application to clinical populations, in which it may assist the treatment process (AU)

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