Publications by authors named "Emily J Mellen"
The Psychosocial Consequences of Sexual Violence Stigma: A Scoping Review.
Trauma Violence Abuse
October 2024
Article Synopsis
- Scholars have been studying the stigma linked to sexual violence (SV) and its potential impact on mental health issues like anxiety and depression.
- A scoping review of 62 studies showed that SV is widely considered a stigmatized condition by both perpetrators and survivors, with evidence supporting this perception.
- The review also highlighted various negative psychosocial effects associated with SV stigma, while pointing out gaps in the research, such as inconsistent measurement of stigma and a lack of consideration for additional stigma-related concepts.
Sexual violence (SV) is a stigmatized form of trauma, yet the stigma experiences of those reporting SV are often assumed rather than explicitly measured. We adapted a measure that quantified three key features of SV stigma across three levels: negative self-image (individual), disclosure concerns (interpersonal), and concerns about public attitudes (structural). We administered this measure to a population-based sample of Swedish young adults ( = 453) who reported a history of either sexual assault (SA) or intimate partner sexual violence (IPSV).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Research suggests six motives for exposing oneself to painful reminders of a trauma outside of a therapeutic context (self-triggering). These include provoking arousal, escaping emotional numbness, self-punishment, controlling symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), making meaning of one's trauma, and generating an experience that matches one's emotions. The goal of the current study is to examine if these motives subserve broader functions of self-triggering behavior that differentially relate to PTSD symptoms.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: This study compared brain energy metabolism, as measured by cerebral concentrations of glutamate (Glu), glutamine (Gln), and N-acetyl aspartate (NAA), in older age bipolar depression (OABD) to that of psychiatrically healthy comparison subjects using proton (H) magnetic resonance spectroscopy imaging at 4-Tesla. Metabolite levels were assessed in OABD subjects before and after 8 weeks of lamotrigine therapy with the goal of determining relationships between cerebral energy metabolism, depression symptom severity, and changes in depression symptom response.
Methods: Individuals (n = 21, mean age: 62.