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The Latinx population is the largest minority group in the United States (U.S.) and is expected to continue to grow through at least 2050. Although there is growing recognition of the importance of pain among Latinx individuals, few studies have examined individualized psychological processes governing pain severity and disability in Latinx populations. One psychological factor that has shown promise in relation to pain experience specifically and clinical conditions more generally is anxiety sensitivity. The present investigation sought to (1) characterize the severity of pain among an unselected sample of adult Latinx individuals attending a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC); (2) evaluate the severity of anxiety sensitivity as a function of pain severity; and (3) test the potential explanatory relevance of anxiety sensitivity as an individual difference factor for pain intensity, pain disability, psychological inflexibility for emotional distress, and global life impairment. Participants included 406 adult Spanish-speaking Latinx persons (87.2% female; M.sub.age = 40.26 years, SD = 11.20, and 98.3% used Spanish as their first language) who attended an FQHC in Houston, Texas. Analyses revealed that 62.6% of the sample had at least some pain, and 21.9% of the same had high intensity, moderate interference, or severe interference chronic pain. Further, results provided evidence for anxiety sensitivity as a function of pain grade, such that individuals with grade 2 (high-intensity pain), grade 3 (moderate pain interference), and grade 4 (severe pain interference) chronic pain reported significantly higher levels of anxiety sensitivity than those with grade 0 pain (no chronic pain). Additionally, after controlling for age, gender, marital status, years of education, years living in the U.S., and generalized anxiety, anxiety sensitivity significantly accounted for significant variance in pain intensity, inflexibility in relation to emotional distress, and life impairment. Overall, the current study builds upon what is currently understood about anxiety sensitivity among the Latinx population and uniquely extends past work by linking individual differences in this construct to clinically relevant aspects of pain experience and life impairment among adults attending FQHC's. Additional clinical attention should be focused on anxiety sensitivity to offset pain disparities among this established health disparities group., Author(s): Michael J. Zvolensky [sup.1] [sup.2] [sup.3] , Tanya Smit [sup.1] , Andrew H. Rogers [sup.1] , Cameron Matoska [sup.1] , Lorra Garey [sup.1] , Andres G. Viana [sup.1] , [...]

Objective: Latinx young adults in college (ages 18-25 years) are at a heightened risk for health disparities and there is a need to understand individual-based characteristics that are related to such health inequalities including anxiety, depression, and sleep disturbances. The cross-sectional current study investigated the role of worry in relation to anxious arousal, social anxiety, general depression, and insomnia among Latinx college students. Participants/Method: Participants included 401 (M[subscript age] = 21 years; SD =2.01; 83% female) Latinx students at a large, southwestern university. Results: Results indicated that greater levels of worry were related to increased levels of anxious arousal, social anxiety, general depression, and insomnia. These findings were evident above and beyond variance accounted for by age, sex, and subjective social status. Conclusions: The current investigation suggests that elevated levels of worry among Latinx young adults may be associated with greater levels of anxiety, depression, and insomnia.

Introduction: The COVID‐19 pandemic posed a threat to public health and psychological functioning, with early studies documenting higher rates of psychopathology within the United States and globally. Hope and optimism promote adjustment and are associated with positive physical and mental health outcomes. Thus, individual differences in hope and optimism may also foster resilience during a global health crisis. Aims: The current study examined how hope and optimism influenced longitudinal health‐focused distress and wellbeing during the pandemic. Methods: Data were collected from 788 American adults across three periods during Spring‐Summer 2020 using MTurk. Latent growth curve modeling examined whether hope and optimism predicted COVID stress, health anxiety, and wellbeing trajectories. Results: COVID stress and health anxiety decreased after the onset of the pandemic, whereas wellbeing was stable. Individually, hope and optimism predicted lower initial COVID stress and health anxiety, along with greater initial wellbeing. When examining the combined influence of hope and optimism, optimism was more strongly related to health‐focused distress, though both were strong predictors of wellbeing. Conclusions: These findings indicate that Americans were resilient and positive expectancies, particularly optimism, predicted better initial adjustment to the early phases of the pandemic. Thus, positive expectancies appear to be protective during a global health crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Although parental threatening behaviors are associated with poor mental health outcomes among college students, the underlying mechanisms of this relationship are understudied. This investigation examined the underlying role of perceived anxiety control in the association between childhood exposure to maternal threatening behaviors and depression, worry, and attention/deficit hyperactivity disorder (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder) symptoms. Participants: Participants (N = 862; Mage = 18.75 years, SD = 1.04, age range = 18–24) were recruited from a large state university in the northeast. Methods: Participants completed a battery of self-report questionnaires. Results: Tests of indirect effects indicated that greater childhood exposure to maternal threats was associated with lower perceived anxiety control, which in turn was associated with more severe depression, worry, and ADHD symptoms, respectively. Conclusions: Childhood exposure to maternal threatening behaviors may contribute to college students' low perceived anxiety control, which in turn increases the risk for these symptom clusters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cigarette smoking is associated with adverse physical and mental health among Latinx adults in the United States. The present investigation sought to explore the main and interactive effects of anxiety symptoms and anxiety sensitivity in relation to cigarette dependence, perceived barriers for smoking cessation, and severity of problems experienced when quitting among adult Latinx smokers. Participants included 338 Latinx adult daily cigarette smokers (Mage = 35.53 years; SD = 8.65; age range 18–61; 37.3% female). Results indicated that anxiety symptoms were associated with greater cigarette dependence, severity of problems when quitting, and perceived barriers for smoking cessation (effect size range: 2%−3% of variance), whereas anxiety sensitivity was related to severity of problems when quitting and perceived barriers for smoking cessation (effect size range: 2%−3% of variance). There was also a statistically significant interaction between anxiety sensitivity and anxiety symptoms for cigarette dependence; anxiety was related to cigarette dependence for Latinx smokers with higher levels of anxiety sensitivity, but not for those with lower levels of anxiety sensitivity. Overall, the present findings indicate that anxiety symptoms and anxiety sensitivity are relevant factors for better understanding cigarette dependence, problems experienced when trying to quit, and perceptions of barriers to quitting among adult Latinx smokers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Although 'racial battle fatigue' has been observed as an important construct in the context of racism and racial/ethnic discrimination, there has been little empirical work focused on fatigue-related processes in this context. The current study examined fatigue severity and sensitivity as simultaneous indirect explanatory constructs in terms of the relation between perceived racial/ethnic discrimination and negative emotional health among racial/ethnic minority individuals. Method: Participants (N = 1,324) were racial/ethnic minority adults; Mage = 21.35; SD = 4.49 recruited from a large southwestern university between September 2019 through May 2021. Primarily they self-reported identifying as female (80.7%) and Non-Hispanic/Latino Asian (36.4%). Analyses: Three independent regression models were conducted to examine how the simultaneous role of fatigue sensitivity and fatigue severity mediate the association between perceived racial/ethnic discrimination and three distinct facets of emotional functioning: general depression, anxious arousal, and emotional dysregulation. Results: Greater amounts of perceived racial/ethnic discrimination were related to increased levels of fatigue sensitivity and fatigue severity, which in turn, were related to more depression and emotion dysregulation; larger effect sizes were evident for fatigue sensitivity relative to fatigue severity. For anxious arousal, only fatigue sensitivity exerted a statistically significant indirect effect. All models adjusted for age, race, ethnicity, gender, level of education, and subjective social status. Conclusion: The present study offers novel empirical insight into the complexities by which perceived racial/ethnic discrimination is related to negative emotional functioning among racial/ethnic minority young adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Pain affects a significant proportion of college students in the United States and has been linked to anxiety and depressive symptoms. Rumination and worry, two transdiagnostic factors linked to comorbidity, may explain the relationship between pain and mental health symptoms. Current Study: The current study examined worry and rumination as explanatory factors in the relationship between pain and anxiety and depressive symptoms in a sample of college students with pain (n = 1,577; 79.9% female). Results: Results indicated that both rumination and worry explained the relationship between pain and depressive and social anxiety symptoms, while rumination alone explained the relationship between pain and anxious arousal symptoms. Conclusion: The current study provides novel empirical evidence that worry and rumination each help explain the relationship between pain and anxiety and depressive symptoms among college students with current pain, and college students in pain may benefit from targeted psychosocial strategies aimed at decreasing worry and ruminative responses.

Posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) and anxiety sensitivity (AS) are associated with increased alcohol use and coping-motivated drinking among university students. This study among trauma-exposed Hispanic/Latinx university students sought to examine the indirect effect of PTSS on alcohol use severity through coping-motivated drinking and test the moderating role of AS and AS subfacets. University students who identified as Hispanic/Latinx (N = 830) were recruited from a large, urban, southern university and completed online, self-report questionnaires. A significant interactive effect of PTSS and AS on coping-motivated drinking emerged. PTSS exerted a significant indirect effect on alcohol use severity, through coping-motivated drinking. Simple slope analyses revealed that PTSS was associated with coping-motivated drinking across all levels of AS. Post hoc results revealed unique biological sex differences in probable diagnosis odds ratios. These findings indicate that PTSS and AS are associated with coping-motivated drinking and alcohol use severity in trauma-exposed, Hispanic/Latinx university students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anxiety symptoms are one of the most common forms of psychological distress among Latinx individuals and related to poorer cessation outcomes among non-Latinx Whites. Yet, little is known about the relationship between anxiety symptoms and smoking among Latinx smokers. The current study evaluated sensitivity to internal anxiety-related sensations (anxiety sensitivity) as an explanatory variable in the relation between anxiety symptoms and cigarette dependence, perceived barriers for quitting, and severity of problems experienced during prior quit attempts. Participants included 363 Spanish-speaking Latinx daily smokers (58.7% female, M.sub.age = 33.3 years, SD = 9.8). Results revealed that anxiety symptoms were indirectly associated with cigarette dependence, perceived barriers for cessation, and problems experienced during past quit attempts through anxiety sensitivity. The findings suggest that anxiety sensitivity is a potential mechanism in anxiety symptom-smoking relations among Latinx adult smokers., Author(s): Michael J. Zvolensky [sup.1] [sup.2] [sup.3] , Jafar Bakhshaie [sup.1] , Justin M. Shepherd [sup.1] , Lorra Garey [sup.1] , Andres G. Viana [sup.1] [sup.4] , Natalia Peraza [sup.1] [...]

Emotion regulation (ER) is an integral aspect of emerging adults' mental health, yet little is known about interpersonal factors that influence ER in during this period. This investigation examines emerging adults' desire to emulate parental ER skills in the relation between perceived parental ER and emerging adults' emotion dysregulation. A sample of 79 emerging adults (M[subscript age] = 18.55 years, SD = 0.32; 88.6% female, 69.6% White) completed measures of perceived parental ER (Affective Style Questionnaire [ASQ] Hofmann and Kashdan 2010), emotion dysregulation (Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale [DERS] Gratz and Roemer 2004), and desire to emulate parental ER (Perception of Emotion Regulation Scale [PERS]). A desire to emulate parental ER skills moderated the relationship between perceived parental ER and emerging adults' emotion dysregulation in general (B = -0.10, SE = 0.048, t = -2.07, p = 0.043), and low emotional awareness in particular (B = -0.04 SE = 0.02, t = -2.47, p = 0.02). Findings suggest that emerging adults with an increased desire to emulate parents with lower ER skills report greater emotion dysregulation. Implications for clinical practice, along with future directions for the field of ER, are discussed.