Examining the reciprocal associations between symptoms of depression and anxiety and contact with the criminal justice system.

BACKGROUND: Taken together, prior publications on the association between symptoms of depression and anxiety and contact with the criminal justice system (CJS) suggest a bi-directional relationship, but all the studies only focus on one direction in this relationship. AIMS: To examine, in longitudinally collected data, period-specific within-individual change in anxiety and depression measures preceding arrest measurement and, separately, following arrest measurement. METHODS: Data were obtained from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1997, a nationally representative sample of people born between 1980 and 1984 and first interviewed between ages 12-17 and a publicly accessible database. Our focus was on data for the 11 years 2000-2010. Using whole sample data, we tested for a reciprocal association between depression and anxiety during each 2-year period and arrests during the following year, and vice versa, allowing for relatively fixed characteristics such as sex, age and socio-economic indicators. We used period-specific change modelling to test relationships. RESULTS: We found that within-individual increases in depression and anxiety scores over short periods (2-year periods) of time was associated with an increase in the number of arrests subsequent over the following year, consistently throughout the whole of the 10 years studies. The reciprocal association was also observed, albeit the magnitude of the effects was much smaller. CONCLUSION: This study adds to the literature on the association between mental health and CJS contact by showing that they may be reciprocally associated. This suggests that facilitating co-working or even formal partnerships between community mental health services and justice-related services could be beneficial.

Adrenocortical Responses to Daily Stressors Are Calibrated by Early Life Adversity: An Investigation of the Adaptive Calibration Model.

Studies examining the impact of early adversity on physiological responsivity to environmental challenges in later life yield a complex pattern of findings and ambiguity regarding the direction of effect, with some studies reporting heightened responses and others reporting dampened responses. One potential reason for these mixed findings is an oversimplified theoretical model surrounding the connection between early life stressor exposure and subsequent stress responsivity. The adaptive calibration model offersa contemporary set of assumptions aimed at providing a better understanding of the ways that early life experiences shape the stress response system to better align with current and future environments. The current study utilized a large subsample from the National Study of Daily Experiences (N = 1,605) to examine the extent to which the association between daily stressor exposure and cortisol levels varies across levels of early life adversity. Results revealed that those individuals who experienced extremely low levels of early life adversity displayed the greatest increase in cortisol levels across the day as daily stressor exposure increased. Alternatively, those individuals who experienced extremely high levels of early life adversity displayed almost no change in diurnal production of cortisol as daily stressor exposure increased. The results are discussed within the evolutionary-developmental context of the adaptive calibration model along with suggestions for future research.

Fluorescence from Multiple Chromophore Hydrogen-Bonding States in the Far-Red Protein TagRFP675.

Far-red fluorescent proteins are critical for in vivo imaging applications, but the relative importance of structure versus dynamics in generating large Stokes-shifted emission is unclear. The unusually red-shifted emission of TagRFP675, a derivative of mKate, has been attributed to the multiple hydrogen bonds with the chromophore N-acylimine carbonyl. We characterized TagRFP675 and point mutants designed to perturb these hydrogen bonds with spectrally resolved transient grating and time-resolved fluorescence (TRF) spectroscopies supported by molecular dynamics simulations. TRF results for TagRFP675 and the mKate/M41Q variant show picosecond time scale red-shifts followed by nanosecond time blue-shifts. Global analysis of the TRF spectra reveals spectrally distinct emitting states that do not interconvert during the S1 lifetime. These dynamics originate from photoexcitation of a mixed ground-state population of acylimine hydrogen bond conformers. Strategically tuning the chromophore environment in TagRFP675 might stabilize the most red-shifted conformation and result in a variant with a larger Stokes shift.

Perceived causal relations: novel methodology for assessing client attributions about causal associations between variables including symptoms and functional impairment.

Researchers have argued that the investigation of causal interrelationships between symptoms may help explain the high comorbidity rate between certain psychiatric disorders. Clients' own attributions concerning the causal interrelationships linking the co-occurrence of their symptoms represent data that may inform their clinical case conceptualization, treatment, and psychological theory regarding the etiology of comorbid disorders. The present study developed and evaluated a novel psychological assessment methodology for measuring Perceived Causal Relations (PCR) and examined its psychometric properties as applied to the question of whether posttraumatic stress and anxiety symptoms represent causal risk factors for depressive symptoms in 225 undergraduates. Participants attributed their symptoms of anxiety and posttraumatic reexperiencing as significant causes of their depressive symptoms. Exploratory analyses identified a listing of symptoms reliably attributed as significant causes of other symptoms and functional impairment, as well as a listing of symptoms reliably attributed as significant effects (outcomes) of other symptoms and functional impairment. The PCR method has promise as an idiographic approach to assessing the causes and consequences of comorbid psychiatric symptoms and associated functional impairment. Research is required to assess the relevance and replicate these findings in distinct psychiatric groups experiencing various symptomatic presentations. Future research may also examine PCR ratings associating other individual differences, for example, between measures of history (e.g., life events), life choices, and personality.