A Pragmatic, Person-Centered View of Cannabis in the United States: Pursuing Care That Transcends Beliefs.

Background: Rates of cannabis use are increasing in the United States, likely as a result of changes in societal attitudes and expanding legalization. Although many patients report wanting to discuss the risks and benefits of cannabis use with their clinical providers, many providers hold conflicting beliefs regarding cannabis use and often do not engage patients in discussion about cannabis. This dilemma is underscored by the limitations imposed on cannabis related research, and lack of empirically based best-practice guidelines for clinicians when addressing cannabis use with patients.

COVID-19 News and Its Association With the Mental Health of Sexual and Gender Minority Adults: Cross-sectional Study.

Background: Sexual and gender minority (SGM; people whose sexual orientation is not heterosexual or whose gender identity varies from what is traditionally associated with the sex assigned to them at birth) people experience high rates of trauma and substantial disparities in anxiety and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Exposure to traumatic stressors such as news related to COVID-19 may be associated with symptoms of anxiety and PTSD.

Objective: This study aims to evaluate the relationship of COVID-19 news exposure with anxiety and PTSD symptoms in a sample of SGM adults in the United States.

Identifying the presence and timing of discrete mood states prior to therapy.

The present study tested a novel, person-specific method for identifying discrete mood profiles from time-series data, and examined the degree to which these profiles could be predicted by lagged mood and anxiety variables and time-based variables, including trends (linear, quadratic, cubic), cycles (12-hr, 24-hr, and 7-day), day of the week, and time of day. We analyzed ambulatory data from 45 individuals with mood and anxiety disorders prior to therapy. Data were collected four-times-daily for at least 30 days.

Affect Dynamics as Predictors of Symptom Severity and Treatment Response in Mood and Anxiety Disorders: Evidence for Specificity.

Studies of affect dynamics in psychopathology often focus on the prediction of broad constructs like subjective well-being and psychological health. Less is known about how fluctuation in affect over time relates to specific symptom measures (e.g.

Evidence for the Feasibility of Person-Specific Ecological Momentary Assessment Across Diverse Populations and Study Designs.

Clinical psychological science has seen an exciting shift toward the use of person-specific (idiographic) approaches to studying psychopathology and change in treatment at the level of the individual. One commonly used method in idiographic research is ecological momentary assessment (EMA). EMA offers a way to sample individuals intensively - often multiple times per day - as they go about their lives.

An idiographic statistical approach to clinical hypothesis testing for routine psychotherapy: A case study.

In order to develop more targeted, efficient, and effective psychotherapeutic interventions, calls have been made in the literature for greater use of idiographic hypothesis testing. Idiographic analyses can provide useful information regarding mechanisms of change within individuals over time during treatment. However, it remains unclear how clinicians might utilize idiographic statistical analyses during routine treatment to test clinical hypotheses, and in turn, guide treatment.

Open trial of a personalized modular treatment for mood and anxiety.

Psychosocial treatments for mood and anxiety disorders are generally effective, however, a number of treated individuals fail to demonstrate clinically-significant change. Consistent with the decades-old aim to identify 'what works for whom,' personalized and precision treatments have become a recent area of interest in medicine and psychology. The present study followed the recommendations of Fisher (2015) to employ a personalized modular model of cognitive-behavioral therapy.

Differential responses of positive affect, negative affect, and worry in CBT for generalized anxiety disorder: A person-specific analysis of symptom course during therapy.

Introduction: Research indicates that individuals with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) may experience deficits in positive affect (PA), and tend to dampen or intentionally suppress PA. Despite the presence of PA-related pathology in GAD, little is known about change in PA during GAD treatment.

Objective: This study examines changes in PA, negative affect (NA) and worry in seven participants during cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for GAD.

PTSD and Romantic Relationship Satisfaction: Cluster- and Symptom-Level Analyses.

Previous studies have demonstrated bidirectional associations between posttraumatric stress disorder (PTSD) and romantic relationship dissatisfaction. Most of these studies were focused at the level of the disorder, examining the association between relationship dissatisfaction and having a diagnosis of PTSD or the total of PTSD symptoms endorsed. This disorder-level approach is problematic for trauma theorists who posit symptom-level mechanisms for these effects.

Synesthesia in twins: incomplete concordance in monozygotes suggests extragenic factors.

Colored-sequence synesthesia (CSS) is a neurological condition in which sequential stimuli such as letters, numbers, or days of the week trigger simultaneous, involuntary color perception. Although the condition appears to run in families and several studies have sought a genetic link, the genetic contribution to synesthesia remains unclear. We conducted the first comparative twin study of CSS and found that CSS has a pairwise concordance of 73.