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Adolescence is a significant developmental period for building social connections. Technology has provided new ways to engage with others, particularly through social media. The current study examines developmental characteristics that support seeking connection through social media and considers how the parent–child relationship influences adolescents. Within a nationally representative sample of adolescents (N = 4952, Mage = 14.62), adolescent-report of greater empathic concern (feeling similar emotions to others) and perspective-taking (ability to understand others' emotions) were associated with using social media for social connectedness. Furthermore, the parent–child relationship moderated these associations such that associations were no longer significant among adolescents who reported stronger parent–child relationships. While adolescents are drawn online for social connection, the family remains an important context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Ongoing consultation following initial training is one of the most commonly deployed implementation strategies to facilitate uptake of evidence-based practices, such as measurement-based care (MBC). Group consultation provides an interactive experience with an expert and colleagues to get feedback on actual issues faced, yet there is little research that unpacks the questions raised in consultation and what types of issues are important to address. Methods: The current study characterized the questions and concerns raised by community mental health clinicians (N = 38 across six clinics) during group consultation sessions completed as part of an MBC implementation trial. We conducted a qualitative content analysis of consultation forms completed by clinicians before each MBC consultation session. Results: Clinicians sought MBC consultation for clients across a range of ages and levels of depression severity. Qualitative results revealed five main questions and concerns in consultation sessions: (1) how to administer the PHQ-9, (2) how to review PHQ-9 scores, (3) how to respond to PHQ-9 score, (4) the types of clients for whom MBC would be appropriate, and (5) how MBC could impact a clinician's usual care. Conclusion: Findings highlight the need for ongoing consultation and limitations of workshop training alone. Practical recommendations for addressing the common questions and concerns identified are presented to support MBC use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Doing What Matters in Times of Stress (DWM) is a five-module transdiagnostic guided self-help (GSH) intervention developed by the World Health Organization, originally in a group-based format. In a sample of individuals recruited from across the United States, we conducted an open trial to study the feasibility and acceptability of an adaptation of DWM in which guidance was provided individually and remotely via phone and videoconferencing. Methods: We assessed internalizing symptoms, psychological well-being, work and social functioning, usability of the intervention, and emotion regulation over the course of 6 weeks. Results: A total of 263 individuals completed our screening. Of those, 75.29% (n = 198) qualified for the intervention. We reached most participants who qualified (71.21%, n = 141) via phone to schedule a GSH session. Most of those scheduled attended a study session (84.4%, n = 119), and most of those who attended a session completed more than half the treatment (84.03%, n = 100). Retention rates were comparable to meta-analytic estimates of dropout rates in GSH. Participants showed improvement on internalizing symptoms, psychological well-being, work and social functioning, usability of the intervention, and emotion regulation. Conclusion: DWM is a freely available, seemingly efficacious transdiagnostic intervention for internalizing disorder symptoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Internalizing, externalizing, and somatoform disorders are the most common and disabling forms of psychopathology. Our understanding of these clinical problems is limited by a reliance on self-report along with research using small samples. Social media has emerged as an exciting channel for collecting a large sample of longitudinal data from individuals to study psychopathology. Objective: This study reported the results of 2 large ongoing studies in which we collected data from Twitter and self-reported clinical screening scales, the Studies of Online Cohorts for Internalizing Symptoms and Language (SOCIAL) I and II. Methods: The participants were a sample of Twitter-using adults (SOCIAL I: N=1123) targeted to be nationally representative in terms of age, sex assigned at birth, race, and ethnicity, as well as a sample of college students in the Midwest (SOCIAL II: N=1988), of which 61.78% (1228/1988) were Twitter users. For all participants who were Twitter users, we asked for access to their Twitter handle, which we analyzed using Botometer, which rates the likelihood of an account belonging to a bot. We divided participants into 4 groups: Twitter users who did not give us their handle or gave us invalid handles (invalid), those who denied being Twitter users (no Twitter, only available for SOCIAL II), Twitter users who gave their handles but whose accounts had high bot scores (bot-like), and Twitter users who provided their handles and had low bot scores (valid). We explored whether there were significant differences among these groups in terms of their sociodemographic features, clinical symptoms, and aspects of social media use (ie, platforms used and time). Results: In SOCIAL I, most individuals were classified as valid (580/1123, 51.65%), and a few were deemed bot-like (190/1123, 16.91%). A total of 31.43% (353/1123) gave no handle or gave an invalid handle (eg, entered "N/A"). In SOCIAL II, many individuals were not Twitter users (760/1988, 38.23%). Of the Twitter users in SOCIAL II (1228/1988, 61.78%), most were classified as either invalid (515/1228, 41.94%) or valid (484/1228, 39.41%), with a smaller fraction deemed bot-like (229/1228, 18.65%). Participants reported high rates of mental health diagnoses as well as high levels of symptoms, especially in SOCIAL II. In general, the differences between individuals who provided or did not provide their social media handles were small and not statistically significant. Conclusions: Triangulating passively acquired social media data and self-reported questionnaires offers new possibilities for large-scale assessment and evaluation of vulnerability to mental disorders. The propensity of participants to share social media handles is likely not a source of sample bias in subsequent social media analytics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trauma exposure and posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) are associated with biases in emotional face processing. Existing research has utilized a variety of methodological techniques to demonstrate hyperreactivity to threatening cues in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD; i.e., fearful faces), but studies to date have shown conflicting findings, including both increased and decreased time fixating on fearful faces. Moreover, the impact of PTSS severity on emotional face processing in the general population is unknown, as the generalizability of prior work is limited. The current study aimed to examine the associations between PTSS and sensitivity to detecting differences in fearful, angry, and happy faces in a large international sample. Participants were 1,182 visitors (Mage = 31.13 years, SD = 13.57, range: 18–85 years) to TestMyBrain.org who completed three emotion sensitivity tasks and the PTSD Checklist for DSM‐5. The results indicated that higher PTSS scores were associated with poorer performance in detecting happiness, fear, and anger, ps <.001, with the largest effect for fear, f2 =.06, controlling for age and gender. Participants who experienced more recent and more direct trauma exposure displayed higher levels of PTSS, with a small but significant effect whereby more direct trauma exposure was associated with higher (i.e., better) scores for anger and fear, f2s =.02. Women showed heightened sensitivity to detecting fear compared to men, d = 0.17. The present findings underscore the value of citizen science initiatives that allow researchers to obtain clinical data from diverse samples with a high degree of PTSS variability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emotion regulation is a central task of daily life. Difficulty regulating emotions is a core feature of borderline personality disorder (BPD), one of the most common and impairing personality disorder diagnoses. While anger and symptoms of depression are instantiated in the criteria for BPD, anxiety is not, despite being among the most common psychiatric symptoms. In a sample of online respondents (N = 471), we explored the interactions between anxiety symptoms and BPD traits in predicting well-being (WHO-5) as well as poorer work and social adjustment (WSAS), while controlling for anger and depression. We hypothesized that anxiety would lead to more impairment (i.e., lower well-being and poorer work and more difficulties with work and social adjustment) as BPD traits increased. BPD traits and symptoms of anxiety both contributed to overall lower levels well-being and higher levels of psychosocial dysfunction. However, contrary to our expectations, at higher (vs. lower) levels of BPD traits, symptoms of anxiety were less conducive to lower well-being on the WHO-5. For the WSAS, there was no consistent evidence for an interaction between BPD traits and anxiety in predicting functioning. By and large, our results do not support the idea that anxiety contributes to more impairment at higher levels of BPD traits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Harmful gambling is a significant public health concern with impacts on the individual, their families, and society. Approximately 2.2 million individuals are at risk or experiencing harms in the UK (NHS England, 2022) with only a very small percentage accessing treatment. A new service model has been implemented in the West Midlands region, as part of the NHS England investment in treatment. Methods: The present study will present an innovative service model based on eight principles, including: (i) a person-centred, recovery/outcomes oriented delivery; (ii) constructional approaches-building on individual and local community resources; (iii) specialist, evidence-based treatment combined with the use of new technologies and informal support networks; and (iv) use of psychometrically valid outcome measures that track service users' progress on a sessional basis. Results/Discussion: The study will present a new service model for gambling treatment in its first year of operation. Service users' outcome data will be discussed along with the key components of the service model, challenges in delivery and lessons learned. The Inclusion service model for gambling treatment is based on interactive, evidence-based, innovative tracking and digital technologies to deliver specialist gambling harms treatment through a centralised hub with local communities and neighbourhoods supporting recovery and inclusion. Conclusion: Effectiveness of treatment for gambling-related harms in the UK remains relatively unexplored. An evaluation of the Inclusion model and how it enables recovery over the longer term can inform subsequent service developments and add to a stronger evidence base for tackling gambling harms at a policy level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Importance: Measurement-based care (MBC) is the systematic evaluation of patient symptoms before or during an encounter to inform behavioral health treatment. Despite MBC's demonstrated ability to enhance usual care by expediting improvements and rapidly detecting patients whose health would otherwise deteriorate, it is underused, with typically less than 20% of behavioral health practitioners integrating it into their practice. This narrative review addresses definitional issues, offers a concrete and evaluable operationalization of MBC fidelity, and summarizes the evidence base and utility of MBC. It also synthesizes the extant literature's characterization of barriers to and strategies for supporting MBC implementation, sustainment, and scale-up.Observations: Barriers to implementing MBC occur at multiple levels: patient (eg, concerns about confidentiality breach), practitioner (eg, beliefs that measures are no better than clinical judgment), organization (eg, no resources for training), and system (eg, competing requirements). Implementation science-the study of methods to integrate evidence-based practices such as MBC into routine care-offers strategies to address barriers. These strategies include using measurement feedback systems, leveraging local champions, forming learning collaboratives, training leadership, improving expert consultation with clinical staff, and generating incentives.Conclusions and Relevance: This narrative review, informed by implementation science, offers a 10-point research agenda to improve the integration of MBC into clinical practice: (1) harmonize terminology and specify MBC's core components; (2) develop criterion standard methods for monitoring fidelity and reporting quality of implementation; (3) develop algorithms for MBC to guide psychotherapy; (4) test putative mechanisms of change, particularly for psychotherapy; (5) develop brief and psychometrically strong measures for use in combination; (6) assess the critical timing of administration needed to optimize patient outcomes; (7) streamline measurement feedback systems to include only key ingredients and enhance electronic health record interoperability; (8) identify discrete strategies to support implementation; (9) make evidence-based policy decisions; and (10) align reimbursement structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the effects of a two-step practice poster session on first-year doctoral counseling trainees' self-efficacy beliefs about making professional presentations. Evaluation of the usefulness of an active-learning teaching assignment; Collection of data from participants after two practice poster sessions.