Understanding perceived barriers to treatment from web browsing behavior.

Background: The expanding amount of information available from our use of technologies has led researchers to explore how this information can aid in the detection of mental health issues. We expand on past work in this area by exploring how browsing histories might be able to predict perceived barriers to psychological treatment.

Methods: We obtained 10 days of browsing history data for 255 respondents as well as assessments of Perceived Barriers to Psychological Treatments and depression, the Patient Health Questionnaire.

Social desirability, deceptive reporting, and awareness of problematic aggression in intermittent explosive disorder compared with non-aggressive healthy and psychiatric controls.

Individuals with DSM-5 Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED) are often suspected of minimizing the nature of their recurrent, problematic, impulsive aggressive behavior due to the social undesirability of these behaviors. Our first study involved 400 study participants categorized as Healthy Controls (HC), Psychiatric Controls (PC) and as having IED and included the Crowne-Marlowe Social Desirability Scale (SDS), the Lie Scale from the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-Revised (EPQ-R Lie), and the Readiness to Change (Anger) Questionnaire (RTC). IED study participants had lower SDS and lower EPQ-R Lie scores, while having higher RTC scores, compared with both HC and PC study participants.

What's eating the internet? Content and perceived harm of pro-eating disorder websites.

The internet is a popular tool for information dissemination and community building, serving many purposes from social networking to support seeking. However, there may be a downside to using some online support communities. For individuals with eating disorders (EDs), it is possible that certain online communities may reinforce the negative social aspects that encourage these disorders, rather than positive aspects that would facilitate treatment and recovery.