Cannabis use and social anxiety disorder in emerging adulthood: Results from a nationally representative sample.

Cannabis use and social anxiety disorder (SAD) are prevalent during emerging adulthood. Previous work has demonstrated that SAD is related to cannabis use in adults; however, less is known about what correlates relate to this association in emerging adults. A subsample of individuals ages 18-25 years old from the NESARC-III (N = 5194) was used to (a) evaluate the association between cannabis use and SAD and (b) examine what correlates may be associated with cannabis use and SAD in emerging adulthood.

Do all obsessions contradict personal values to the same degree? A pilot investigation.

Although much is known about how intrusive thoughts become obsessions, the factors that determine which particular thoughts do so is not. The degree to which intrusions are personally significant may be such a determinant. Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is heterogeneous; thus, it is possible that contradictions of personal values may play a varying role in the development of obsessions depending on which OCD symptoms manifest and may change differentially following treatment.

"There is always a waitlist": The experiences of perinatal women randomized to a waitlist condition in a trial evaluating a novel online self-directed intervention for perinatal anxiety.

Background: Pregnant and postpartum women are at a heightened risk for the development or worsening of mental health problems, with elevated rates of mood and anxiety disorders noted across studies. Timely access to mental health supports is critical during the perinatal period (spanning pregnancy to 1 year postpartum), to mitigate potential negative impacts on mother and child. In general adult populations, a small body of research has highlighted the association between being waitlisted for mental health services with a deterioration in mental health.

Examining Anxiety Treatment Information Needs: Web-Based Survey Study.

Background: Several treatments for anxiety are available, which can make treatment decisions difficult. Resources are often produced with limited knowledge of what information is of interest to consumers. This is a problem because there is limited understanding of what people want to know when considering help for anxiety.

Novel Analysis Identifying Functional Connectivity Patterns Associated with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a prevalent psychiatric disorder that can result from experiencing traumatic events. Accurate diagnosis and optimal treatment strategies can be difficult to achieve, due to the heterogeneous etiology and symptomology of PTSD, and overlap with other psychiatric disorders. Advancing our understanding of PTSD pathophysiology is therefore critical.

Responsibility, probability, and severity of harm: An experimental investigation of cognitive factors associated with checking-related OCD.

The cognitive model of compulsive checking (Rachman, 2002) proposes that perceptions of responsibility, seriousness of harm and probability of harm interact to promote checking behaviour. We examined these factors in an ecologically valid experimental paradigm. Two groups of participants (participants with OCD who compulsively check and undergraduate controls) were assigned to a high or low responsibility condition, and then checked objects representing: (a) high seriousness of harm (stove burners), (b) low seriousness of harm (light bulbs), (c) high probability of harm (functional burners and bulbs), and (d) low probability of harm (non-functional burners and bulbs).

Do anxiety websites have the answers people are looking for?

Unlabelled: OBJECTIVES AND METHODS: A wealth of online anxiety information exists but much of it is not evidence-based or well-balanced. This study evaluated anxiety websites (N = 20) on readability, quality, usability, visual design, and content.

Results: Overall, websites were of reasonable quality but only half were considered understandable according to the PEMAT usability scale (70% cutoff value).

The Treatment Acceptability/Adherence Scale: Moving Beyond the Assessment of Treatment Effectiveness.

It is becoming more broadly recognized that beyond effectiveness, the acceptability of interventions for anxiety disorders is an important consideration for evidence-based practice. Although advances in treatments for anxious psychopathologies have demonstrated that cognitive-behavioural interventions are more desirable than other types of psychotherapy or pharmacotherapy, there continue to be problems with adherence and dropout. It has been suggested that low treatment acceptability may be partially responsible for high dropout rates.

A novel cognitive intervention for compulsive checking: Targeting maladaptive beliefs about memory.

Background And Objectives: Compulsive checking is one of the most common symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Recently it has been proposed that those who check compulsively may believe their memory is poor, rather than having an actual memory impairment. The current study sought to develop and assess a brief cognitive intervention focused on improving maladaptive beliefs about memory, as they pertain to both checking symptoms and memory performance.

The mediating role of disgust sensitivity and thought-action fusion between religiosity and obsessive compulsive symptoms.

Psychological theories of obsessions and compulsions have long recognised that strict religious codes and moral standards might promote thought-action fusion (TAF) appraisals. These appraisals have been implicated in the transformation of normally occurring intrusions into clinically distressing obsessions. Furthermore, increased disgust sensitivity has also been reported to be associated with obsessive compulsive (OC) symptoms.

When more is less: doubt, repetition, memory, metamemory, and compulsive checking in OCD.

Memory and metamemory phenomena associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have received much attention in literature dedicated to a better understanding of the doubt and repetition associated with obsessions and compulsions. Following previous work on repeated checking among nonclinical participants, we asked participants to repeatedly turn on, turn off and check a real kitchen stove (n = 30 compulsive checkers diagnosed with OCD and n = 30 non-clinical undergraduates), or a real kitchen faucet (n = 30 non-clinical undergraduates) in a standardized, ritualized manner, in two connected experiments. Results indicated that following repeated relevant checking, both clinical and nonclinical participants reported significantly reduced memory confidence, vividness and detail; those who completed repeated irrelevant checking did not.

Diminished confidence in prospective memory causes doubts and urges to check.

Background And Objectives: Correlational research has demonstrated links between prospective memory and checking compulsions. These findings suggest that negative beliefs and diminished confidence in prospective memory may contribute to intrusive doubts that tasks were not completed and ultimately to checking behavior. The present study represents the first experimental test of the hypothesis that diminished confidence in prospective memory causes increased doubt and urges to check.

Believe in yourself: Manipulating beliefs about memory causes checking.

One of the most common compulsions in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is repeated checking. Although individuals often report that they check to become more certain, checking has been shown to have the opposite effect - increased checking causes increased uncertainty. However, checking may also be thought of as beginning because of memory uncertainty.

Don't even think about checking: mental checking causes memory distrust.

Compulsive checking occurs in both physical and mental forms and is a common symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Though there has been much recent attention devoted to research on physical checking, mental checking has been largely neglected. Previous research has reliably found that repeated physical checking reduces memory confidence, vividness and detail, while memory accuracy remains relatively unaffected.

Conditioned flavor avoidance as a measure of withdrawal in rats chronically exposed to a caffeine solution.

Rats were given 21 days of chronic oral caffeine. A novel flavor (Maintenance CS) was then paired with the continuation of caffeine, and a second flavor (Withdrawal CS) was paired with caffeine removal. Rats avoided the Withdrawal CS, and drank more of the Maintenance CS in a two-bottle test, suggesting that removing caffeine had induced withdrawal.

An olfactory biconditional discrimination in the mouse.

Male CD-1 mice were given a biconditional discrimination task with four odors; A, B, C, and D. Mice were presented with odor compounds AC+, BD+, BC-, AD- for thirteen days. Pieces of odorized filter paper were placed in the bottom of odor pots and covered with bedding.