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Many people, including nearly half of American households, own a pet dog. Previous work has found that therapy dog interactions reduce distress, but little work to date has empirically established the mood-enhancing effects of interaction with one's own pet dog. In this study, dog owners (N = 73; 86.3% female, 13.7% male; age 25-77 years) underwent a stress-inducing task followed by random assignment to either (a) interacting with their dog (n = 24), (b) an expectancy control (n = 25; "stress-reducing" coloring books), or (c) a waiting control (n = 24). We compared the effects of each condition on affect and state anxiety. Participants assigned to the dog interaction showed greater increases in positive affect, as well as greater reductions in anxiety compared to both expectancy and waiting controls (ds > 0.72, ps < .018). No significant reductions in negative affect were detected. Second, we found that self-reported experiences with animals, attitudes toward animals, or bondedness with their dog did not differentially predict the condition's impact on the owner's mood. Finally, we coded participants' degree of engagement (e.g., time spent playing) with the dog and found that higher engagement predicted reduced negative affect. Overall, interacting with one's own pet dog reduced owners' distress. Such interactions, which occur commonly in daily life, may have the potential to alleviate distress at a large scale. Precisely how this works and for whom it is especially well suited remain intriguing open questions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

COVID-19 presents significant social, economic, and medical challenges. Because COVID-19 has already begun to precipitate huge increases in mental health problems, clinical psychological science must assert a leadership role in guiding a national response to this secondary crisis. In this article, COVID-19 is conceptualized as a unique, compounding, multidimensional stressor that will create a vast need for intervention and necessitate new paradigms for mental health service delivery and training. Urgent challenge areas across developmental periods are discussed, followed by a review of psychological symptoms that likely will increase in prevalence and require innovative solutions in both science and practice. Implications for new research directions, clinical approaches, and policy issues are discussed to highlight the opportunities for clinical psychological science to emerge as an updated, contemporary field capable of addressing the burden of mental illness and distress in the wake of COVID-19 and beyond. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

The authors' original article (Gershoff et al., 2018) summarized the extensive body of research demonstrating that parents' use of physical punishment is ineffective and linked with risk of detrimental outcomes for children. In this Reply, the authors agree with several points raised in two commentaries on the article (Larzelere, Gunnoe, Ferguson, & Roberts, 2019; Rohner & Melendez-Rhodes, 2019)-that statistical rigor is needed before making conclusions and that potential contextual moderators need to be considered. However, neither commentary negated the scientific inferences and conclusions of the Gershoff et al. article or presented any convincing evidence that physical punishment is beneficial to children. The preponderance of evidence clearly indicates physical punishment is harmful, a finding that is increasingly being recognized by professional organizations, including the American Psychological Association. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

The question of whether physical punishment is helpful or harmful to the development of children has been subject to hundreds of research studies over the past several decades. Yet whether causal conclusions can be drawn from this largely nonexperimental research and whether the conclusions generalize across contexts are issues that remain unresolved. In this article, the authors summarize the extent to which the empirical research on physical punishment meets accepted criteria for causal inference. They then review research demonstrating that physical punishment is linked with the same harms to children as is physical abuse and summarize the extant research that finds links between physical punishment and detrimental outcomes for children are consistent across cultural, family, and neighborhood contexts. The strength and consistency of the links between physical punishment and detrimental child outcomes lead the authors to recommend that parents should avoid physical punishment, psychologists should advise and advocate against it, and policymakers should develop means of educating the public about the harms of and alternatives to physical punishment. (PsycINFO Database Record

BackgroundAnxiety and depression are common among university students, and university counseling centers are under pressure to develop effective, novel, and sustainable interventions that engage and retain students. Group interventions delivered via the internet could be a novel and effective way to promote student mental health. ObjectiveWe conducted a pragmatic open trial to investigate the uptake, retention, treatment response, and level of satisfaction with a remote group cognitive behavioral therapy intervention designed to reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression delivered on the web to university students during the COVID-19 pandemic. MethodsPreintervention and postintervention self-reported data on anxiety and depression were collected using the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 and Patient Health Questionnaire-9. Satisfaction was assessed postintervention using the Client Satisfaction with Treatment Questionnaire. ResultsA total of 175 students were enrolled, 158 (90.3%) of whom initiated treatment. Among those initiating treatment, 86.1% (135/158) identified as female, and the mean age was 22.4 (SD 4.9) years. The mean number of sessions attended was 6.4 (SD 2.8) out of 10. Among participants with clinically significant symptoms at baseline, mean symptom scores decreased significantly for anxiety (t56=11.6; P

The high prevalence rates of mental disorders worldwide and the paucity of services constitute a mental health crisis. The vast majority of people in low-, middle-, and high-income countries do not receive any intervention for their symptoms of mental disorders, despite enormous advances in developing evidence-based psychosocial treatments and medications. The article proposes greater utilization of interventions in everyday life as an addition to the more traditional and commonly used mental-health interventions. The article delineates criteria to help identify what such interventions ought to include to permit accessibility, scalability, and reach to special populations. Physical activity, contact with nature, and yoga are examples to illustrate the class of everyday interventions that have evidence attesting to their impact on mental health and symptoms of psychopathology. The challenge is to integrate such interventions in mental health practices to better promote these at the population level and to monitor the impact. Many components of what is needed are in place but are not coordinated in an effective way to have widespread impact on mental health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Despite their documented efficacy, substantial proportions of patients discontinue antidepressant medication (ADM) without a doctor's recommendation. The current report integrates data on patient-reported reasons into an investigation of patterns and predictors of ADM discontinuation. Methods: Face-to-face interviews with community samples from 13 countries (n = 30 697) in the World Mental Health (WMH) Surveys included n = 1890 respondents who used ADMs within the past 12 months. Results: 10.9% of 12-month ADM users reported discontinuation-based on recommendation of the prescriber while 15.7% discontinued in the absence of prescriber recommendation. The main patient-reported reason for discontinuation was feeling better (46.6%), which was reported by a higher proportion of patients who discontinued within the first 2 weeks of treatment than later. Perceived ineffectiveness (18.5%), predisposing factors (e.g. fear of dependence) (20.0%), and enabling factors (e.g. inability to afford treatment cost) (5.0%) were much less commonly reported reasons. Discontinuation in the absence of prescriber recommendation was associated with low country income level, being employed, and having above average personal income. Age, prior history of psychotropic medication use, and being prescribed treatment from a psychiatrist rather than from a general medical practitioner, in comparison, were associated with a lower probability of this type of discontinuation. However, these predictors varied substantially depending on patient-reported reasons for discontinuation. Conclusion: Dropping out early is not necessarily negative with almost half of individuals noting they felt better. The study underscores the diverse reasons given for dropping out and the need to evaluate how and whether dropping out influences short- or long-term functioning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Untreated mental disorders are important among low- and middle-income country (LMIC) university students in Latin America, where barriers to treatment are high. Scalable interventions are needed. This study compared transdiagnostic self-guided and guided internet-delivered cognitive behavioral therapy (i-CBT) with treatment as usual (TAU) for clinically significant anxiety and depression among undergraduates in Colombia and Mexico. Method: 1,319 anxious, as determined by the Generalized Anxiety Disorder–7 (GAD-7) = 10+ and/or depressed, as determined by the Patient Health Questionnaire–9 (PHQ-9) = 10+, undergraduates (mean [SD] age = 21.4 [3.2]); 78.7% female; 55.9% first-generation university student) from seven universities in Colombia and Mexico were randomized to culturally adapted versions of self-guided i-CBT (n = 439), guided i-CBT (n = 445), or treatment as usual (TAU; n = 435). All randomized participants were reassessed 3 months after randomization. The primary outcome was remission of both anxiety (GAD-7 = 0–4) and depression (PHQ-9 = 0–4). We hypothesized that remission would be higher with guided i-CBT than with the other interventions. Results: Intent-to-treat analysis found significantly higher adjusted (for university and loss to follow-up) remission rates (ARD) among participants randomized to guided i-CBT than either self-guided i-CBT (ARD = 13.1%, χ12 = 10.4, p =.001) or TAU (ARD = 11.2%, χ12 = 8.4, p =.004), but no significant difference between self-guided i-CBT and TAU (ARD = −1.9%, χ12 = 0.2, p =.63). Per-protocol sensitivity analyses and analyses of dimensional outcomes yielded similar results. Conclusions: Significant reductions in anxiety and depression among LMIC university students could be achieved with guided i-CBT, although further research is needed to determine which students would most likely benefit from this intervention. What is the public health significance of this article?: Anxiety and depression are significant public health problems in LMIC universities. A culturally adapted transdiagnostic-guided i-CBT could help alleviate these problems as a low-threshold intervention component of a stepped-care treatment delivery model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Randomized control trials (RCTs) have played a critical role in psychotherapy research. This article discusses RCTs in the context of the criteria for drawing causal inferences in psychotherapy and intervention research more generally. The article also highlights underused variations of RCTs and how they not only establish causal relations but also address critical questions that can improve our intervention portfolio and patient care. Random assignment is discussed in terms of what it can and cannot do in relation to drawing conclusions about the effects of interventions. Finally, RCTs are examined in the context of multiple questions that can guide therapy research, improve patient care, and develop treatments that reach people in need of psychological services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Caregivers of children with autism spectrum disorder are vulnerable to overstated benefits of interventions, and such overstatements are common with interventions involving animals. This response to Wright, Hall, Hames, Hardmin, Mills, the Paws Team, and Mills' (2015) article, "Acquiring a Pet Dog Significantly Reduces Stress of Primary Careers for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Prospective Case Control Study," details why that study's conclusions are premature. Specific limitations of the study are detailed, including overstatements of the supportive literature, problems with the design, and mismatch between the findings and conclusions. The purpose is not to challenge the benefits of pet ownership, but to point out that those benefits have not yet been established.