Perceived responsiveness in suicidal ideation: An experience sampling study in psychiatric patients.

INTRODUCTION: Perceived responsiveness, or the extent to which one feels understood, validated and cared for by close others, plays a crucial role in people's well-being. Can this interpersonal process also protect people at risk? We assessed whether fluctuations in suicidal ideation were associated with fluctuations in the degree of perceived responsiveness that psychiatric patients (admitted in the context of suicide or indicating suicidal ideation) experienced in daily interactions immediately after discharge. METHODS: Fifty-seven patients reported on suicidal ideation (5 times a day) and perceived responsiveness (daily) for four consecutive weeks. The effects of established risk factors-thwarted belongingness, perceived burdensomeness, and hopelessness-were assessed as well. RESULTS: The more patients felt that close others had been responsive to them, the less suicidal ideation they reported. At low levels of thwarted belongingness, perceived burdensomeness, or hopelessness, perceived responsiveness seemed to play a protective role, negatively co-occurring with suicidal ideation. When thwarted belongingness, perceived burdensomeness, and hopelessness were high, perceived responsiveness did not have an effect. CONCLUSION: Perceived responsiveness could be a protective factor for suicidal ideation for people at risk only when they are experiencing low levels of negative perceptions. When experiencing highly negative perceptions, however, perceived responsiveness seems to matter less.

When I am sixty-four evaluating language markers of well-being in healthy aging narratives.

Natural language use is a promising candidate for the development of innovative measures of well-being to complement self-report measures. The type of words individuals use can reveal important psychological processes that underlie well-being across the lifespan. In this preregistered, cross-sectional study, we propose a conceptual model of language markers of well-being and use written narratives about healthy aging (N = 701) and computerized text analysis (LIWC) to empirically validate the model. As hypothesized, we identified a model with three groups of language markers (reflecting affective, evaluative, and social processes). Initial validation with established self-report scales (N = 30 subscales) showed that these language markers reliably predict core components of well-being and underlying processes. Our results support the concurrent validity of the conceptual language model and allude to the added benefits of language-based measures, which are thought to reflect less conscious processes of well-being. Future research is needed to continue validating language markers of well-being across the lifespan in a theoretically informed and contextualized way, which will lay the foundation for inferring people's well-being from their natural language use.

Comparing the language style of heads of state in the US, UK, Germany and Switzerland during COVID-19.

The COVID-19 pandemic posed a global threat to nearly every society around the world. Individuals turned to their political leaders to safely guide them through this crisis. The most direct way political leaders communicated with their citizens was through official speeches and press conferences. In this report, we compare psychological language markers of four different heads of state during the early stage of the pandemic. Specifically, we collected all pandemic-related speeches and press conferences delivered by political leaders in the USA (Trump), UK (Johnson), Germany (Merkel), and Switzerland (Swiss Federal Council) between February 27th and August 31st, 2020. We used natural language analysis to examine language markers of expressed positive and negative emotions, references to the community (we-talk), analytical thinking, and authenticity and compare these language markers across the four nations. Level differences in the language markers between the leaders can be detected: Trump's language was characterized by a high expression of positive emotion, Merkel's by a strong communal focus, and Johnson's and the Swiss Federal Council by a high level of analytical thinking. Overall, these findings mirror different strategies used by political leaders to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.

The worse we feel, the more intensively we need to stick together: a qualitative study of couples' emotional co-regulation of the challenge of multimorbidity.

Introduction: Being faced with multimorbidity (i.e., being diagnosed with at least two chronic conditions), is not only demanding in terms of following complicated medical regimes and changing health behaviors. The changes and threats involved also provoke emotional responses in the patients but also in their romantic partners. This study aims at exploring the ways of emotional co-regulation that couples facing multimorbidity express when interviewed together. Method: N = 15 opposite sex couples with one multimorbid patient after an acute health crisis that led to hospitalization were asked in a semi-structured interview about how they found ways to deal with the health situation, what they would recommend to other couples in a similar situation, and how they regulated their emotional responses. Interviews were analyzed qualitatively following open, axial, and selective coding, as in the grounded theory framework. Results: Emerging categories from the romantic partners' and the patients' utterances revealed three main categories: First, overlapping cognitive appraisals about the situation (from fighting spirit to fatalism) and we-ness (construing the couple self as a unit) emerged as higher order factor from the utterances. Second, relationship-related strategies including strategies aimed at maintaining high relationship quality in spite of the asymmetric situation like strengthening the common ground and balancing autonomy and equity in the couple were often mentioned. Third, some couples mentioned how they benefit from individual strategies that involve fostering individual resources of the partners outside the couple relationship (such as cultivating relationships with grandchildren or going outdoors to nature). Discussion: Results underline the importance of a dyadic perspective not only on coping with disease but also on regulating the emotional responses to this shared challenging situation. The utterances of the couples were in line with earlier conceptualizations of interpersonal emotion regulation and dyadic perspectives on we-disease. They broaden the view by integrating the interplay between individual and interpersonal regulation strategies and underline the importance of balancing individual and relational resources when supporting couples faced with chronic diseases.

You Do Not Have to Get through This Alone: Interpersonal Emotion Regulation and Psychosocial Resources during the COVID-19 Pandemic across Four Countries.

While experiencing the unpredictable events of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are likely to turn to people in order to regulate our emotions. In this research, we investigate how this interpersonal emotion regulation is connected to affective symptoms, above and beyond intrapersonal emotion regulation. Furthermore, we explore whether perceived psychosocial resources moderate these associations, i.e., if individuals reporting healthier social connections benefit differently from interpersonal emotion regulation. N = 1401 participants from the USA, UK, Germany, and Switzerland completed an online survey that included text samples. Affective symptoms (depression, adjustment disorder, fear of COVID-19) were examined based on self-reported as well as language-based indicators. As psychosocial resources, we examined social support, loneliness, attachment style, and trust. We defined latent variables for adaptive and maladaptive interpersonal emotion regulation and analyzed how they were associated with affective symptoms controlling for intrapersonal emotion regulation. Further, we analyzed how they interacted with psychosocial resources. Maladaptive interpersonal emotion regulation strategies were associated with affective symptoms. With lower psychosocial resources, the associations between interpersonal emotion regulation and depressive symptoms were more pronounced. The results highlight that maladaptive interpersonal emotion regulation is associated with worse mental health. These effects are not buffered by more psychosocial resources and are stronger for people with low psychosocial resources.

Electronic Health Diary Campaigns to Complement Longitudinal Assessments in Persons With Multiple Sclerosis: Nested Observational Study.

BACKGROUND: Electronic health diaries hold promise in complementing standardized surveys in prospective health studies but are fraught with numerous methodological challenges. OBJECTIVE: The study aimed to investigate participant characteristics and other factors associated with response to an electronic health diary campaign in persons with multiple sclerosis, identify recurrent topics in free-text diary entries, and assess the added value of structured diary entries with regard to current symptoms and medication intake when compared with survey-collected information. METHODS: Data were collected by the Swiss Multiple Sclerosis Registry during a nested electronic health diary campaign and during a regular semiannual Swiss Multiple Sclerosis Registry follow-up survey serving as comparator. The characteristics of campaign participants were descriptively compared with those of nonparticipants. Diary content was analyzed using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count 2015 software (Pennebaker Conglomerates, Inc) and descriptive keyword analyses. The similarities between structured diary data and follow-up survey data on health-related quality of life, symptoms, and medication intake were examined using the Jaccard index. RESULTS: Campaign participants (n=134; diary entries: n=815) were more often women, were not working full time, did not have a higher education degree, had a more advanced gait impairment, and were on average 5 years older (median age 52.5, IQR 43.25-59.75 years) than eligible nonparticipants (median age 47, IQR 38-55 years; n=524). Diary free-text entries (n=632; participants: n=100) most often contained references to the following standard Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count word categories: negative emotion (193/632, 30.5%), body parts or body functioning (191/632, 30.2%), health (94/632, 14.9%), or work (67/632, 10.6%). Analogously, the most frequently mentioned keywords (diary entries: n=526; participants: n=93) were "good," "day," and "work." Similarities between diary data and follow-up survey data, collected 14 months apart (median), were high for health-related quality of life and stable for slow-changing symptoms such as fatigue or gait disorder. Similarities were also comparatively high for drugs requiring a regular application, including interferon beta-1a (Avonex) and glatiramer acetate (Copaxone), and for modern oral therapies such as fingolimod (Gilenya) and teriflunomide (Aubagio). CONCLUSIONS: Diary campaign participation seemed dependent on time availability and symptom burden and was enhanced by reminder emails. Electronic health diaries are a meaningful complement to regular structured surveys and can provide more detailed information regarding medication use and symptoms. However, they should ideally be embedded into promotional activities or tied to concrete research study tasks to enhance regular and long-term participation.

Emotion regulation across the lifespan: age differences in intrapersonal and interpersonal strategies for the adjustment to the COVID-19 pandemic in four countries.

OBJECTIVES: Studies have shown age differences in adapting to the COVID-19 pandemic. The processes explaining these age differences remain unclear. Intrapersonal and interpersonal emotion regulation play an important role in psycho-social adjustment and develop across the lifespan. This study investigated whether differences in COVID-19-related adjustment disorder symptoms can be explained by age-differences in rumination in a multi-national sample. Furthermore, linguistic indicators of ruminative processing were examined with reference to age. METHODS: N = 1401 participants (from USA, UK, Switzerland, Germany, aged 18-88) completed an online survey and a writing task. Measures included brooding, co-brooding, adjustment disorder symptoms, and language indicators of negative self- and communal-focus . RESULTS: Older participants reported less adjustment disorder symptoms which was mediated by less (co-)brooding. Participants reporting more (co-)brooding wrote about COVID-19 more negatively. While in younger adults more self-focus was associated with higher ruminative brooding, in older adults it was associated with less brooding. CONCLUSION: These findings contribute to a better understanding of regulatory mechanisms that help explain age differences in mental health. They warrant further research considering age-related differences, as our results suggest not only more adaptive emotion regulation as resilience factor in older individuals but also different qualities of self-focus while processing stressful events.

Dirty laundry: The nature and substance of seeking relationship help from strangers online.

Interpersonal relationships are vital to our well-being. In recent years, it has become increasingly common to seek relationship help through anonymous online platforms. Accordingly, we conducted a large-scale analysis of real-world relationship help-seeking to create a descriptive overview of the nature and substance of online relationship help-seeking. By analyzing the demographic characteristics and language of relationship help-seekers on Reddit (N = 184,631), we establish the first-ever big data analysis of relationship help-seeking and relationship problems in situ among the general population. Our analyses highlight real-world relationship struggles found in the general population, extending beyond past work that is typically limited to counseling/intervention settings. We find that relationship problem estimates from our sample are closer to those found in the general population, providing a more generalized insight into the distribution and prevalence of relationship problems as compared with past work. Further, we find several meaningful associations between relationship help-seeking behavior, gender, and attachment. Notably, numerous gender differences in help-seeking and romantic attachment emerged. Our findings suggest that, contrary to more traditional contexts, men are more likely to seek help with their relationships online, are more expressive of their emotions (e.g., discussing the topic of "heartache"), and show language patterns generally consistent with more secure attachment. Our analyses highlight pathways for further exploration, providing even deeper insights into the timing, lifecycle, and moderating factors that influence who, what, why, and how people seek help for their interpersonal relationships.

Psychological Balance Scale: Validation Studies of an Integrative Measure of Well-Being.

Studies infer Psychological Balance from the absence of psychopathology. In this article, we investigated this construct as an antecedent of well-being. We present empirical evidence toward the validation of a new theoretical model regarding Psychological Balance, a dynamic state with relatively constant characteristics, comprising Consistency and Flexibility and influenced by a Self/Others Ratio. A battery of 31 items, as indicators of Consistency, Flexibility, and Self/Others Ratio, aided this empirical investigation. In an online study (N = 933), we collected cross-sectional data from the United Kingdom. Results of cross-validation analyses provided evidence toward the validity of the proposed model and the psychometric properties of its instrument. There were statistically significant associations between Consistency (i.e., degree of integration of a universal value structure as self-related characteristics that motivate personal goals and behavior), Flexibility (i.e., degree of ability to re-define meaningful and important goals in response to situational challenge), and five well-being variables (e.g., Meaning in Life). Self/Others Ratio (i.e., ratio of motivation to serve self-interest and the interest of others), operationalized as a binary variable (e.g., close and away from 1), moderated some of these associations. Altogether, this work may contribute toward a nuanced understanding of well-being and form the basis of interventions that aim to decrease emotional discomfort and increase meaning, happiness, and life satisfaction.

Adjustment of Couples to the Transition to Retirement: The Interplay of Intra- and Interpersonal Emotion Regulation in Daily Life.

Background: Retirement is a central transition in late adulthood and requires adjustment. These processes not only affect the retired individuals but also their romantic partners. The aim of this study is to investigate the interplay of intrapersonal emotion regulation (rumination) with interpersonal regulation processes (disclosure quality). Furthermore, the associations of daily retirement-related disclosure with adjustment symptoms in disclosing and the listening partner will be investigated. It is expected that the effects of disclosure alter after providing the couples with a self-applied solitary written disclosure task in order to support their intrapersonal emotion regulation. Methods: In this dyadic online-diary study, 45 couples (N = 45) with one partner perceiving the adjustment to a recent retirement as challenging reported rumination, perceived disclosure quality (repetitive, focused on negative content, hard to follow, disclosing partner open for common/authentic), retirement-related disclosure, and ICD-11 adjustment symptoms preoccupation and failure to adapt were assessed at the end of the day over 14 days. In the middle of this assessment period, couples performed a modified online-expressive writing about their thoughts and feelings regarding the transition to retirement. Results: The double-intercept multilevel Actor-Partner Interdependence Models (APIM) reveal that on days with more daily rumination, the spouse perceived that disclosure of the retiree is more difficult to follow, more negative, and repetitive. In contrast, the retiree perceived less authenticity and openness to comments during disclosure on days when the spouse reports more rumination. Retirement-related disclosure showed no within-couple association with failure to adapt but actor effects on preoccupation. Moreover, a partner effect of disclosure of the retirees on the preoccupation of spouses could be observed. This contagious effect of the retiree disclosure, however, disappeared during the week after writing. Conclusion: Our results support the notion that disclosure processes are altered during maladaptive intrapersonal emotion regulation processes. This in turn seems to lead to less effective interpersonal regulation and contagious spilling over of symptoms. Supporting intrapersonal emotion regulation seems to have the potential to allow more favorable interpersonal regulation processes and to free interpersonal resources for an individual adjustment. This has implications for further planning of support for couples facing life transitions and aging-related changes.

Self-Focused and Other-Focused Health Concerns as Predictors of the Uptake of Corona Contact Tracing Apps: Empirical Study.

BACKGROUND: Corona contact tracing apps are a novel and promising measure to reduce the spread of COVID-19. They can help to balance the need to maintain normal life and economic activities as much as possible while still avoiding exponentially growing case numbers. However, a majority of citizens need to be willing to install such an app for it to be effective. Hence, knowledge about drivers for app uptake is crucial. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to add to our understanding of underlying psychological factors motivating app uptake. More specifically, we investigated the role of concern for one's own health and concern to unknowingly infect others. METHODS: A two-wave survey with 346 German-speaking participants from Switzerland and Germany was conducted. We measured the uptake of two decentralized contact tracing apps officially launched by governments (Corona-Warn-App, Germany; SwissCovid, Switzerland), as well as concerns regarding COVID-19 and control variables. RESULTS: Controlling for demographic variables and general attitudes toward the government and the pandemic, logistic regression analysis showed a significant effect of self-focused concerns (odds ratio [OR] 1.64, P=.002). Meanwhile, concern of unknowingly infecting others did not contribute significantly to the prediction of app uptake over and above concern for one's own health (OR 1.01, P=.92). Longitudinal analyses replicated this pattern and showed no support for the possibility that app uptake provokes changes in levels of concern. Testing for a curvilinear relationship, there was no evidence that "too much" concern leads to defensive reactions and reduces app uptake. CONCLUSIONS: As one of the first studies to assess the installation of already launched corona tracing apps, this study extends our knowledge of the motivational landscape of app uptake. Based on this, practical implications for communication strategies and app design are discussed.

Within-Person Associations Between Attachment Security, Need Satisfaction and Psychological Adjustment in Daily Life of Older Adults.

OBJECTIVES: Little is known about how attachment processes manifest within older adults in daily life and how these processes are associated with daily psychological adjustment. This study examined the within-person associations between states of attachment security and psychological adjustment. It is expected that this association is mediated by higher levels of satisfied needs in daily life. METHODS: Microlongitudinal self-report data were collected in a sample of 136 older adults ranged in age from 60 to 90 years (ageM = 70.45 years) across 10 days with daily morning and afternoon measurement occasions. RESULTS: Three main findings from multilevel analyses emerged. First, older adults showed significant within-person variation in attachment security, satisfaction of the needs for autonomy and competence, and psychological adjustment over time. Second, attachment security was positively associated with psychological adjustment within individuals. Third, both satisfaction of the needs for autonomy and competence mediated the within-person association between attachment security and psychological adjustment. DISCUSSION: The results suggest that attachment security is associated with the experience of autonomy and competence in daily life of older adults which in turn is related with better psychological adjustment.

Stereotyping in the digital age: Male language is "ingenious", female language is "beautiful" - and popular.

The huge power for social influence of digital media may come with the risk of intensifying common societal biases, such as gender and age stereotypes. Speaker's gender and age also behaviorally manifest in language use, and language may be a powerful tool to shape impact. The present study took the example of TED, a highly successful knowledge dissemination platform, to study online influence. Our goal was to investigate how gender- and age-linked language styles-beyond chronological age and identified gender-link to talk impact and whether this reflects gender and age stereotypes. In a pre-registered study, we collected transcripts of TED Talks along with their impact measures, i.e., views and ratios of positive and negative talk ratings, from the TED website. We scored TED Speakers' (N = 1,095) language with gender- and age-morphed language metrics to obtain measures of female versus male, and younger versus more senior language styles. Contrary to our expectations and to the literature on gender stereotypes, more female language was linked to higher impact in terms of quantity, i.e., more talk views, and this was particularly the case among talks with a lot of views. Regarding quality of impact, language signatures of gender and age predicted different types of positive and negative ratings above and beyond main effects of speaker's gender and age. The differences in ratings seem to reflect common stereotype contents of warmth (e.g., "beautiful" for female, "courageous" for female and senior language) versus competence (e.g., "ingenious", "informative" for male language). The results shed light on how verbal behavior may contribute to stereotypical evaluations. They also illuminate how, within new digital social contexts, female language might be uniquely rewarded and, thereby, an underappreciated but highly effective tool for social influence. WC = 286 (max. 300 words).

Machine learning uncovers the most robust self-report predictors of relationship quality across 43 longitudinal couples studies.

Given the powerful implications of relationship quality for health and well-being, a central mission of relationship science is explaining why some romantic relationships thrive more than others. This large-scale project used machine learning (i.e., Random Forests) to 1) quantify the extent to which relationship quality is predictable and 2) identify which constructs reliably predict relationship quality. Across 43 dyadic longitudinal datasets from 29 laboratories, the top relationship-specific predictors of relationship quality were perceived-partner commitment, appreciation, sexual satisfaction, perceived-partner satisfaction, and conflict. The top individual-difference predictors were life satisfaction, negative affect, depression, attachment avoidance, and attachment anxiety. Overall, relationship-specific variables predicted up to 45% of variance at baseline, and up to 18% of variance at the end of each study. Individual differences also performed well (21% and 12%, respectively). Actor-reported variables (i.e., own relationship-specific and individual-difference variables) predicted two to four times more variance than partner-reported variables (i.e., the partner's ratings on those variables). Importantly, individual differences and partner reports had no predictive effects beyond actor-reported relationship-specific variables alone. These findings imply that the sum of all individual differences and partner experiences exert their influence on relationship quality via a person's own relationship-specific experiences, and effects due to moderation by individual differences and moderation by partner-reports may be quite small. Finally, relationship-quality change (i.e., increases or decreases in relationship quality over the course of a study) was largely unpredictable from any combination of self-report variables. This collective effort should guide future models of relationships.

Couples Adjusting to Multimorbidity: A Dyadic Study on Disclosure and Adjustment Disorder Symptoms.

BACKGROUND: Multimorbidity is challenging not only for the patient but also for the romantic partner. Strategies for interpersonal emotion regulation like disclosing to the partner are supposed to play a major role in the psychosocial adjustment to multimorbidity. Research has often focused on disease-related disclosure, even though disclosing thoughts and feelings related to mundane, everyday life occurrences might also play a role in coadjustment. The current dyadic study aimed at investigating the association between these two types of interpersonal regulation strategies and adjustment disorder symptoms, following the new ICD 11 criteria in multimorbid patients and their partners. METHODS: Shortly after being hospitalized due to an acute health crisis, N = 28 multimorbid patients (average age 70 years) and their partners filled in questionnaires on disclosure in the couple, adjustment disorder criteria of the ICD 11 ("preoccupation," "failure to adapt"), and sleep problems. RESULTS: Both patients and their partners did show similarly high levels of preoccupation and failure to adapt indicating adjustment problems to the complex health situation. The adjustment symptoms of both partners correlated between r = 0.22 and 0.45. Regression based on Actor-Partner Interdependence-Models revealed that own mundane disclosure was related to less adjustment symptoms in the patients. Beyond that, a partner effect was observed, revealing a negative association between partners' illness-related disclosure and the patients' level of preoccupation. For the partners, mundane disclosure of the partner was associated with less preoccupation, failure to adapt, and reported sleep problems above and beyond own disclosure reports. Furthermore, there was an actor effect of disease-related disclosure on less sleep problems for the partners. CONCLUSION: These results support an interpersonal view on adjustment processes to physical disease. Disclosure as a way of regulating the relationship and emotional responses might play a relevant role here, which seems to be different for patients and their partners. Further research is needed to shed more light on the differential role of disease-related and mundane everyday disclosure for psychosocial adjustment in couples confronted with health challenges.

Depression, negative emotionality, and self-referential language: A multi-lab, multi-measure, and multi-language-task research synthesis.

Depressive symptomatology is manifested in greater first-person singular pronoun use (i.e., I-talk), but when and for whom this effect is most apparent, and the extent to which it is specific to depression or part of a broader association between negative emotionality and I-talk, remains unclear. Using pooled data from N = 4,754 participants from 6 labs across 2 countries, we examined, in a preregistered analysis, how the depression-I-talk effect varied by (a) first-person singular pronoun type (i.e., subjective, objective, and possessive), (b) the communication context in which language was generated (i.e., personal, momentary thought, identity-related, and impersonal), and (c) gender. Overall, there was a small but reliable positive correlation between depression and I-talk (r = .10, 95% CI [.07, .13]). The effect was present for all first-person singular pronouns except the possessive type, in all communication contexts except the impersonal one, and for both females and males with little evidence of gender differences. Importantly, a similar pattern of results emerged for negative emotionality. Further, the depression-I-talk effect was substantially reduced when controlled for negative emotionality but this was not the case when the negative emotionality-I-talk effect was controlled for depression. These results suggest that the robust empirical link between depression and I-talk largely reflects a broader association between negative emotionality and I-talk. Self-referential language using first-person singular pronouns may therefore be better construed as a linguistic marker of general distress proneness or negative emotionality rather than as a specific marker of depression. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Early Linguistic Markers of Trauma-Specific Processing Predict Post-trauma Adjustment.

Identifying early predictors for psychiatric disorders, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), is crucial for effective treatment and prevention efforts. Obtaining such predictors is challenging and methodologically limited, for example by individuals' distress, arousal, and reduced introspective ability. We investigated the predictive power of language-based, implicit markers of psychological processes (N = 163) derived from computerized text-analysis of trauma and control narratives provided within 18 days post-trauma. Trauma narratives with fewer cognitive processing words (indicating less cognitive elaboration), more death-related words (indicating perceived threat to life), and more first-person singular pronouns (indicating self-immersed processing) predicted greater PTSD symptoms at 6 months. These effects were specific to trauma narratives and held after controlling for early PTSD symptom severity and verbal intelligence. When self-report questionnaires of related processes were considered together with the trauma narrative linguistic predictors, use of more first-person singular pronouns remained a significant predictor alongside self-reported mental defeat. Language-based processing markers may complement questionnaire measures in early forecasting of post-trauma adjustment.

[Posttraumatic Growth after Profession-Related Traumatization in Rescue Workers]. / Posttraumatische Reifung nach berufsbezogener Traumatisierung bei Einsatzkräften.

This study aims to explore the association between self-reported secondary traumatization and personal growth in a sample of Belarusians rescue workers, focusing on the mediating role of 2 socio-interpersonal processes (disclosure and co-rumination). In a cross-sectional survey, self-reported posttraumatic growth and secondary traumatization were assessed in a sample of 168 rescue workers. Posttraumatic growth was positively linked to the extent of secondary traumatization, likewise disclosure and co-rumination were positively linked to posttraumatic growth. Mediation analyses revealed that the association between secondary traumatization and posttraumatic personal growth was mediated by disclosure and co-rumination. The results thus are in favor of a socio-interpersonal perspective on posttraumatic adjustment.

Caregiver perception of apathy in persons with mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer's disease: a longitudinal study.

OBJECTIVE: Discrepancy between self- and caregiver apathy ratings was examined longitudinally for persons with mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer's disease. Particular focus was on the distinction between the positive and negative caregiver bias and its predictive value for a clinical diagnosis of apathy. METHOD: Apathy rating discrepancy was based on the apathy evaluation scale. Dyads were categorized depending on whether the caregiver reported fewer deficits (positive caregiver bias) or more deficits (negative caregiver bias) than the cognitively impaired person did. RESULTS: Caregiver ratings and rating discrepancy showed a significant increase from baseline to follow-up. By contrast, self- and clinician ratings showed no change across the two time points. Ratings with a negative caregiver bias remained stable, while those with a positive caregiver bias showed a significant increase in the caregiver ratings but also a significant decrease in the self-ratings. A negative caregiver bias at baseline was significantly related to greater likelihood of having clinical apathy at follow-up, adjusted for an array of control variables. CONCLUSION: Positive and negative caregiver bias should be distinguished, as they seem to reflect distinct dyadic processes and are relevant for clinical outcome. Furthermore, negative rating discrepancies can be considered a risk factor for developing apathy.

Intra- and interpersonal emotion regulation and adjustment symptoms in couples: The role of co-brooding and co-reappraisal.

BACKGROUND: Adult emotion regulation is not only occurring within the person but includes strategies that happen in social interactions and that are framed as co-regulating. The current study investigates the role of the interpersonal emotion regulation strategies of co-reappraisal and co-brooding in couples for adjustment disorder symptoms as the disorder will be outlined in the International Classification of Diseases-11 (ICD-11). METHODS: Couples registered together in an online questionnaire study reporting whether or not they are adjusting to a major stressor that is psychologically challenging to them. In total, one hundred and forty-six participants (N = 73 male; N = 73 female) reported having experienced a major stressor in the last 12 months and were thus be identified as at risk for adjustment disorder. Those individuals at risk were assessed for adjustment disorder and depressive symptoms; intra- and interpersonal emotion regulation (co-/brooding, co-/reappraisal) were assessed not only in the individual at risk but also in the romantic partner. RESULTS: Regression-based dyadic analyses revealed that above and beyond intrapersonal emotion regulation, interpersonal co-brooding and for the female participants also co-reappraisal were significantly associated with symptoms of adjustment disorder and depression, standardized betas varied between .24 and .36, suggesting medium effect sizes. An association with the female partner's tendency to reappraise with fewer symptoms in the male partner at risk for adjustment disorder could also be observed. CONCLUSIONS: Co-brooding and co-reappraisal represent emotion regulation strategies that happen in social interaction and seem to play a relevant role in the context of adjustment disorders above and beyond the commonly assessed intrapersonal emotion regulation strategies.