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In May 2020, the New York City (NYC) Mayor’s Office of Climate Resiliency (MOCR) began convening bi-weekly discussions, called the Rapid Research and Assessment (RRA) Series, between City staff and external experts in science, policy, design, engineering, communications, and planning. The goal was to rapidly develop authoritative, actionable information to help integrate resiliency into the City’s COVID response efforts. The situation in NYC is not uncommon. Extreme events often require government officials, practitioners, and citizens to call upon multiple forms of scientific and technical assistance from rapid data collection to expert elicitation, each spanning more or less involved engagement. We compare the RRA to similar rapid assessment efforts and reflect on the nature of the RRA and similar efforts to exchange and co-produce knowledge. The RRA took up topics on social cohesion, risk communication, resilient and healthy buildings, and engagement, in many cases strengthening confidence in what was already known but also refining the existing knowledge in ways that can be helpful as the pandemic unfolds. Researchers also learned from each other ways to be supportive of the City of New York and MOCR in the future. The RRA network will continue to deepen, continue to co-produce actionable climate knowledge, and continue to value organizational sensemaking as a usable climate service, particularly in highly uncertain times. Given the complex, rare, and, in many cases, unfamiliar context of COVID-19, we argue that organizational sensemaking is a usable climate service.

Early thinking about cognitive process and suicidal behaviors tended to focus on the immediate situation surrounding the individual - typically the underlying psychiatric condition that was seen as leading to his or her distress. However, we now know that the cognitive processes involved in a range of suicidal thoughts and behaviors can exert a significant impact on the expression or development of these behaviors, even without an environmental stressor or psychiatric condition. In this chapter, we summarize theoretical perspectives that led to this realization and explore the current understanding of the link between cognition and suicide from recent research and clinical findings. We present these findings first by psychiatric disorder, then by cognitive domains, and finally by specific suicidal construct in order to highlight the importance of these factors in determining the role of cognition in the suicidal process.Within and across psychiatric disorders, certain cognitive processes - negativistic thinking, impulsivity, cognitive rigidity, and altered emotional processing - are frequently found to be linked to suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Overall cognitive performance, decreased processing speed, executive dysfunction, and negative biases in memory and attention have also been linked to suicidal thoughts and behaviors. However, these findings do not hold true for all populations. There seems to be a role both for cognitive distortions (such as hopelessness) and neurocognitive deficits (such as poor overall cognitive performance, slower processing speed, and executive dysfunction) in the suicidal process, which warrant further exploration both separately and together.

Given the common use of self-report questionnaires to assess schizotypy in personality pathology and schizophrenia research, it is important to determine the concordance between self-report and clinician ratings. 250 individuals with schizotypal personality disorder (SPD) and 116 community controls (CTR) were assessed on schizotypal traits using a clinical interview, the Structured Interview for DSM-IV Personality disorders (SIDP), and a self-report questionnaire, the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire (SPQ). Ordinal logistic regressions examined concordance between self-reported and clinician-rated scores in CTR and SPD separately. Analyses of variance examined how the SPQ performed on differentiating between CTR with low schizotypy, CTR with high schizotypy, and SPD. For both CTR and SPD, higher SPQ subscale scores were significantly associated with higher clinician ratings on the respective SIDP items for the Ideas of Reference, Magical Thinking, Unusual Perceptual Experience, Suspiciousness, and Social Anxiety items, but not the Odd Speech or Limited Affect items. Higher SPQ subscale scores for Odd Behavior and Lack of Close Friends were significantly associated with the clinician-rated SIDP item scores in CTR but not SPD. CTR with low schizotypy scored lower on all SPQ subscales than CTR with high schizotypy, who did not differ from SPD. Self-report ratings are concordant with clinician ratings for positive schizotypal traits, whereas certain disorganization and interpersonal traits are not, particularly for individuals with SPD. The SPQ can differentiate between high and low schizotypy controls, but not between high schizotypy controls and individuals with SPD. Assessment of schizotypal traits should include both self-report questionnaires and clinician ratings.

Personality disorders (PD), by definition, are enduring and stable forms of psychopathology. This aspect is reflected in the general diagnostic criteria for PD in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – 5th Edition (DSM-5), which require that the maladaptive patterns of inner experience and behavior be “stable and of long duration” (p. 647). However, the accumulated results of several naturalistic studies indicate that DSM PD diagnoses and symptom counts do not exhibit a level of stability consistent with the clinical description of the phenomenon (Grilo et al., 2004; Lenzenweger, 1999; McGlashan et al., 2005; Zanarini, Frankenburg, Reich, & Fitzmaurice, 2012). This general finding was cited as a major reason for developing a revised system for characterizing and diagnosing PDs published in Section III (Emerging Models and Measures) of the DSM-5 (Skodol et al., 2011). Although past research suggests that dimensional assessments of PD traits are more stable than disorders or symptom counts (Hopwood et al., 2013; Morey et al., 2007; Samuel et al., 2011), the longitudinal (i.e., > 1 year) stabilities of the DSM-5 traits remain unknown. The current study was conducted to determine the mean-level, rank-order, and individual stability of the DSM-5 PD traits, as well as the longitudinal associations among traits and psychosocial functioning. Central to the concept of a PD is the enduring nature of the dysfunction, reflected in long-term persistent impairment. Although persistence is observed clinically, empirical findings paint a picture of considerable instability when PD diagnoses or symptom counts are followed prospectively using state-of-the-art empirical methods. In particular, the pattern of mean change is one of resolution or amelioration of symptomatology. For example, in the diagnoses followed in the Collaborative Longitudinal Personality Disorders Study (CLPS), 24-month remission rates ranged from 50% (avoidant PD) to 61% (schizotypal PD; Skodol et al., 2005). Similar findings have been observed in other studies (Cohen, Crawford, Johnson, & Kasen, 2005; Lenzenweger, 1999; McDavid & Pilkonis, 1996; Zanarini et al., 2013), and the same picture emerges when considering the more fine-grained changes associated with symptom counts as opposed to categorical diagnoses. In contrast, personality traits, including pathological traits (e.g., grandiosity, emotional lability), exhibit much higher rates of stability than PD symptoms (Clark, 2009; Hopwood et al., 2013; Morey et al., 2007; Roberts & Mroczek, 2008). Rank-order stability of traits is markedly higher when compared with dimensional PD symptom counts (Hopwood et al., 2013; Morey et al., 2007). Furthermore, although PD symptoms tend to remit over time on average, psychosocial dysfunction remains much more stable, likely accounting for the clinical observation of stability of impairment in PD (Skodol et al., 2005). Notably, both PD symptoms and personality traits have been shown to prospectively predict psychosocial functioning (Hopwood & Zanarini, 2010; Morey et al., 2007), although the effects are stronger for traits. Taken together, these findings have contributed to the strong evidence base showing the limitations of the existing diagnostic framework for PD, as well as the need to move to a model that would more closely match the basic definition of PD as a disorder characterized by longitudinal stability (Skodol et al., 2011). The DSM-5 currently presents two complete systems for diagnosing PD. The first, in Section II of the manual (Diagnostic Criteria and Codes), reflects only modest textual changes to the structure that has been in place since DSM-III. However, a second complete model reflecting major innovations is included in Section III (Emerging Models and Measures). This model includes a detailed description of PD-specific impairments (Criterion A) in the form of self- and interpersonal-dysfunction that replaces the general definition of PD, and a dimensional model of PD features (i.e., pathological traits) intended to map individual differences in PD expression (Criterion B). Remaining criteria reflect the standard requirements for pervasiveness (Criterion C), stability (Criterion D), and that the disorders are not better accounted for by other mental disorders, substances, or developmental stage (Criteria E, F, G). Although this model purports to address many of the documented limitations of the Section II model, these claims must be directly studied using the constructs and assessment instrumentation intended for use with the new model (e.g., the Personality Inventory for the DSM-5; PID-5; Krueger et al., 2012). In particular, the presumed benefit of bringing the empirical stability of PD features in line with the PD definition by switching to this trait model has not been tested. The current study had three primary aims. First, we sought to establish the stability of the DSM-5 Section III PD features (both primary traits and higher order domains) in individuals diagnosed with PDs over the course of 1.4 years. Our goal was to characterize both mean-level (i.e., normative) and rank-order stability, which are conceptually and quantitatively distinct. Second, we investigated whether the DSM-5 traits prospectively predicted psychosocial functioning. Finally, given prior research that has shown individual heterogeneity in PD and trait trajectories over time (Lenzenweger, Johnson, & Willett, 2004; Wright, Pincus, & Lenzenweger, 2011), we examined whether individual changes in psychosocial functioning were associated with individual changes in PD. This study is the first to examine the longitudinal performance of the DSM-5 Section-III PD model features and provides an important test of whether the putative benefits of adopting dimensional PD features in the new model are in fact evident when the model is implemented in patients diagnosed with PDs.

Current categorical and dimensional conceptualizations of personality disorder (PD) typically confound pathological PD traits with distress and impairment (dysfunction). The current study examines whether dimensions of personality pathology and psychosocial dysfunction can be psychometrically distinguished. To that end, we collected self-report ratings of personality pathology and dysfunction at baseline, along with daily ratings of dysfunctional behavior, over 10 consecutive days. Correlations revealed substantial overlap between traits and dysfunction measured at baseline. However, follow-up hierarchical regressions revealed that baseline dysfunction ratings incrementally predicted daily dysfunction ratings after accounting for personality trait ratings, suggesting that traits and dysfunction are at least partially differentiable. However, the incremental effects were stronger for some dysfunction domains (i.e., Self-Mastery and Basic Functioning) than for others (Well-Being and Interpersonal), suggesting that maladaptive trait measures are more confounded with the latter types of impairment. These findings suggest that distinguishing maladaptive PD traits from functioning in PD classification systems is likely more difficult than would be expected, a finding that has important implications for the competing Section II and Section III conceptualizations of PD presented in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition.

Recently, integrative, hierarchical models of personality and personality disorder (PD)--such as the Big Three, Big Four, and Big Five trait models--have gained support as a unifying dimensional framework for describing PD. However, no measures to date can simultaneously represent each of these potentially interesting levels of the personality hierarchy. To unify these measurement models psychometrically, we sought to develop Big Five trait scales within the Schedule for Nonadaptive and Adaptive Personality--Second Edition (SNAP-2). Through structural and content analyses, we examined relations between the SNAP-2, the Big Five Inventory (BFI), and the NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) ratings in a large data set (N = 8,690), including clinical, military, college, and community participants. Results yielded scales consistent with the Big Four model of personality (i.e., Neuroticism, Conscientiousness, Introversion, and Antagonism) and not the Big Five, as there were insufficient items related to Openness. Resulting scale scores demonstrated strong internal consistency and temporal stability. Structural validity and external validity were supported by strong convergent and discriminant validity patterns between Big Four scale scores and other personality trait scores and expectable patterns of self-peer agreement. Descriptive statistics and community-based norms are provided. The SNAP-2 Big Four Scales enable researchers and clinicians to assess personality at multiple levels of the trait hierarchy and facilitate comparisons among competing big-trait models.