Publications by authors named "Margraf J"

Background: The potential of telehealth psychotherapy (ie, the online delivery of treatment via a video web-based platform) is gaining increased attention. However, there is skepticism about its acceptance, safety, and efficacy for patients with high emotional and behavioral dysregulation.

Objective: This study aims to provide initial effect size estimates of symptom change from pre- to post treatment, and the acceptance and safety of telehealth dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) for individuals diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD).

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Background: This paper reports on the outcomes of a proof-of-principle study for the Exposure Therapy Consortium, a global network of researchers and clinicians who work to improve the effectiveness and uptake of exposure therapy. The study aimed to test the feasibility of the consortium's big-team science approach and test the hypothesis that adding post-exposure processing focused on enhancing threat reappraisal would enhance the efficacy of a one-session large-group interoceptive exposure therapy protocol for reducing anxiety sensitivity.

Methods: The study involved a multi-site cluster-randomized controlled trial comparing exposure with post-processing (ENHANCED), exposure without post-processing (STANDARD), and a stress management intervention (CONTROL) in students with elevated anxiety sensitivity.

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Background: The Personalized Advantage Index (PAI) shows promise as a method for identifying the most effective treatment for individual patients. Previous studies have demonstrated its utility in retrospective evaluations across various settings. In this study, we explored the effect of different methodological choices in predictive modelling underlying the PAI.

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Article Synopsis
  • Vibrational spectroscopy is a key method for analyzing molecular structures, and this study looks at improving how accurately we can predict gas-phase infrared (IR) spectra using advanced computational techniques.
  • A new approach combines harmonic vibrational frequencies and molecular dipole moment calculations, allowing flexibility in how we determine IR intensities.
  • The study tests various methods, including semiempirical models and machine learning potentials, to find an efficient protocol for predicting IR spectra, with a focus on enhancing the accuracy of existing low-cost computational methods.
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Background: Clinical diagnoses determine if and how therapists treat their patients. As misdiagnoses can have severe adverse effects, disseminating evidence-based diagnostic skills into clinical practice is highly important.

Objective: This study aimed to develop and evaluate a blended learning course in a multicenter cluster randomized controlled trial.

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Anhedonia, the loss of interest in and pleasure from previously enjoyable activities is a core symptom of depression and presents a major challenge to treatments. Interventions involving positive mental imagery generation have been suggested to reduce anhedonia. However, it is not clear whether the imagery component of such interventions is crucial for these effects.

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Here, we investigated the association of different emotion regulation (ER) indices with symptom severity across a large transdiagnostic sample of patients with emotional disorders (cross-sectional approach) and the predictive validity these ER indices have for the outcome of routine care CBT (longitudinal approach). We assessed the trait-like use of adaptive (reappraisal) and maladaptive (suppression, externalizing behaviors) ER strategies via questionnaire as well as the situational ability to regulate emotions with an experimental ER paradigm. Psychopathology was assessed dimensionally using the depression, anxiety, and stress scale.

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Objective: This study aimed to investigate the efficacy of two internet-delivered psychological treatments for hypoactive sexual desire dysfunction (HSDD) in women: internet-based cognitive behavioral sex therapy (iCBST) and internet-based mindfulness-based sex therapy (iMBST).

Method: Women with HSDD were randomly assigned to one of three groups: iCBST, iMBST, or a waitlist control group. The interventions consisted of eight modules delivered via an e-health platform with e-coach support to enhance adherence.

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Article Synopsis
  • Anxiety disorders impact brain connectivity, but how this varies among different types of anxiety disorders (like panic disorder and social anxiety disorder) isn't fully understood due to limited studies.
  • Researchers examined the brain connectivity of 439 anxiety disorder patients and 105 healthy controls using resting-state fMRI, finding notable differences in connectivity patterns, especially in panic disorder and agoraphobia patients.
  • The study revealed that panic disorder patients had increased connectivity in brain regions linked to emotion regulation, unlike those with social anxiety disorder or specific phobia, suggesting the potential for personalized treatment approaches based on these neurological differences.
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Anhedonia, or a deficit in the liking, wanting, and seeking of rewards, is typically assessed via self-reported "in-the-moment" emotional and motivational responses to reward stimuli and activities. Given that mental imagery is known to evoke emotion and motivational responses, we conducted two studies to investigate the relationship between mental imagery use and self-reported anhedonia. Using a novel Reward Response Scale (adapted from the Dimensional Anhedonia Rating Scale, DARS; Rizvi et al.

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  • Germany and the EU have seen over 1.6 million refugees since 2014, with many facing challenges like discrimination, poor living conditions, and mental health issues, especially among parents.
  • The study aims to improve mental health in refugee parents through a randomized controlled trial involving 188 participants, providing a 10-week intervention focused on parenting skills and mental health support, compared to standard treatment.
  • The research is ethically approved and will assess outcomes at multiple stages, running from February 2019 to July 2025, to evaluate both parental and child mental health improvements.
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Most people experience positive involuntary mental imagery (IMI) frequently in daily life; however, evidence for the importance and effects of positive IMI is largely indirect. The current study adapted a paradigm to experimentally induce positive IMI in participants' daily lives. This could in turn provide a means to directly test positive IMI's effects.

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Employees' work satisfaction and mental health are crucial for an organization's productivity. The current experimental study on employees (N = 278) from different professional sectors and workplaces in Germany investigated how to improve both by changes of daily non-work-related smartphone use time and physical activity time. For one week, the smartphone group (N = 73) reduced its daily smartphone use by one hour, the physical activity group (N = 69) increased its daily physical activity by 30 minutes, the combination group (N = 72) followed both interventions, the control group (N = 64) did not change its behavior.

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We present an efficient first-principles based method geared toward reliably predicting the structures of solid materials across the Periodic Table. To this end, we use a density functional theory baseline with a compact, near-minimal min+s basis set, yielding low computational costs and memory demands. Since the use of such a small basis set leads to systematic errors in chemical bond lengths, we develop a linear pairwise correction, available for elements Z = 1-86 (excluding the lanthanide series), parameterized for use with the Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof exchange-correlation functional.

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Background: Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is one of the most prevalent psychological disorders and generally co-occurs with elevated shame levels. Previous shame-specific interventions could significantly improve outcomes in social anxiety treatments. Recent review suggests that integrating a more direct shame intervention could potentially increase the effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy.

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The density functional tight-binding (DFTB) approach allows electronic structure-based simulations at length and time scales far beyond what is possible with first-principles methods. This is achieved by using minimal basis sets and empirical approximations. Unfortunately, the sparse availability of parameters across the periodic table is a significant barrier to the use of DFTB in many cases.

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The current study investigated how students' private in-class use of technical devices is associated with teachers' mental health. Data of 361 teachers from primary and secondary schools in Germany were assessed via online surveys. The present cross-sectional results show a positive association between burden caused by the students' private in-class use of technical devices and teachers' depression symptoms.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The ENIGMA Anxiety Working Group studied brain structural differences between individuals with specific phobias and healthy participants, focusing on subtypes of phobias like animal and blood-injection-injury (BII) while examining how these differences relate to symptom severity and age.
  • - A total of 1,452 participants with phobias and 2,991 healthy subjects were analyzed, revealing that those with phobias exhibited smaller subcortical volumes and varying cortical thickness, especially noted in adults rather than youths.
  • - The results indicate that brain alterations in specific phobias are more significant than in other anxiety disorders, revealing distinct neural underpinnings linked to fear processing across different phobia types, highlighting a
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Objective: Research suggests that some therapists achieve better outcomes than others. However, an overlooked area of study is how institution differences impact patient outcomes independent of therapist variance. This study aimed to examine the role of institution and therapist differences in adult outpatient psychotherapy.

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Data-based predictions of individual Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) treatment response are a fundamental step towards precision medicine. Past studies demonstrated only moderate prediction accuracy (i.e.

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  • Liquid metal catalysts, particularly liquid copper, have become important in efficiently synthesizing high-quality graphene through chemical vapor deposition, but the catalytic processes behind this are not well understood.
  • This study combines experimental observations and computational modeling to analyze how graphene grows on the liquid copper catalyst, particularly focusing on the effect of pressure ratios and temperatures on growth rates and shapes of graphene flakes.
  • Findings suggest that the growth mechanisms differ from those on solid catalysts, with factors like precursor attachment and availability playing key roles in enhancing graphene quality due to the unique properties of the liquid state.
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Introduction: In the present cross-sectional study, we investigated whether reasons for smartphone use are similar to those of social media use. Also, we explored links between reasons of smartphone use and mental health variables (problematic smartphone use, FOMO, depression symptoms, and life satisfaction) in Germany during the COVID-19 lockdown period.

Methods: Overall, 571 smartphone users (Mage = 31.

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This article introduces neural graph distance embedding (nGDE), a method for generating 3D molecular geometries. Leveraging a graph neural network trained on the OE62 dataset of molecular geometries, nGDE predicts interatomic distances based on molecular graphs. These distances are then used in multidimensional scaling to produce 3D geometries, subsequently refined with standard bioorganic forcefields.

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Depression, anxiety and stress symptoms cause substantial psychological and economic burdens around the globe. To mitigate the negative consequences, the negative symptoms should be identified at an early stage. Therefore, the implementation of very brief valid screening tools in mental health prevention programs and in therapeutic settings is advantageous.

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