Sharper minds: Feasibility and effectiveness of a mental health promotion package for university students targeting multiple health and self-care behaviours.

Objective: This study assessed the feasibility and effectiveness of the Sharper Minds package, a mental health intervention designed for university students, co-developed with student input. The program included a weekly self-monitoring e-tool and/or a short course targeting six self-care areas: physical activity, diet, sleep, music to aid study, mood regulation, and social connection.

Method: A non-randomised controlled trial involved 433 undergraduate students in three conditions: control, one-intervention (either e-tool or course), and two-intervention (both e-tool and course).

Prolonged grief reactions and help-seeking in bereaved adults during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted many care systems limiting bereaved peoples' ability to access social, community, and professional support. This study investigated help-seeking of people living with probable prolonged grief disorder (PGD) to identify challenges and facilitators of care, with the aim of informing bereavement practice and policy recommendations.

Methods: Participants (N = 786; 96.

A challenge to identity: Identity processing style and moral injury.

Moral injury is a potentially deleterious mental health outcome that can result from exposure to morally challenging events. Treatment of moral injury is currently hindered by incomplete understanding of its underlying mechanisms. Theories of adaptation posit that maintaining a coherent sense of self while realigning one's sense of self with reality aids in adaptation following a disruptive life event.

When we fail to live up to our own standards: the relationship between self-discrepancy and moral injury.

Background: Moral injury is a potentially debilitating outcome of exposure to events involving transgressions against an individual's moral code. It is often observed in the context of PTSD; however, treatments that do not differentiate the two are often ineffective for moral injury, suggesting different mechanisms contribute to the conditions. The most widely accepted model of moral injury proposes an important role for self-discrepancy processes in generating and maintaining event-related distress, but this has yet to be examined.

A pilot study of the role of the BDNF Val66Met polymorphism in response to exercise-augmented exposure therapy for posttraumatic stress disorder.

Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) is implicated in extinction learning, which is a primary mechanism of exposure therapy for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Brief aerobic exercise has been shown to promote BDNF release and augment extinction learning. On the premise that the Val allele of the BDNF Val66Met polymorphism facilitates greater release of BDNF, this study examined the extent to which the Val allele of the BDNF polymorphism predicted treatment response in PTSD patients who underwent exposure therapy combined with aerobic exercise or passive stretching.