Publications by authors named "Matthew Gallagher"

Article Synopsis
  • - Black individuals who smoke experience higher rates of tobacco-related health issues, which are influenced by stress related to their minority status and anxiety sensitivity (AS).
  • - A study tested a smartphone app, the Mobile Anxiety Sensitivity Program for Smoking (MASP), designed to help Black smokers with high AS quit smoking and reduce their AS.
  • - The trial with 24 participants showed high app usage, excellent retention, good participant feedback, and a significant reduction in anxiety sensitivity, with 25% of participants achieving short-term smoking abstinence.
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  • This study examines the effectiveness of SAFE-T, a telehealth-based sleep intervention, for toddlers and preschoolers in foster care compared to a control group receiving Sleep Education Support.
  • A total of 45 caregivers participated, and assessments were conducted before, immediately after, and three months after the intervention, using parent-reported sleep diaries.
  • Results showed that children in the SAFE-T group experienced significant improvements in sleep duration, fewer nighttime awakenings, and better emotional and behavior outcomes, with these benefits largely maintained over time.
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  • The COVID-19 pandemic made many people feel stressed and anxious about their health, but hope and optimism helped some people cope better.
  • A study looked at 788 adults in the U.S. during early 2020 to see how hope and optimism affected their stress and wellbeing.
  • The results showed that hope and optimism helped people feel less stressed and worried, with optimism being especially important for staying positive during tough times.
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Background: African American/Black (hereafter referred to as Black) persons who smoke constitute a tobacco disparities group in the United States. Within the Black population, female smokers experience a disproportionate percentage of these disparities and are less likely to quit cigarettes than their male counterparts. Two factors implicated in female smokers' relatively worse quit success are (1) motives to smoke to reduce negative affect and (2) expectancies that smoking will reduce negative affect.

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There is preliminary evidence that the anticonvulsant medication Zonisamide (ZON) may be an effective, well-tolerated treatment for alcohol use disorder (AUD). However, further evaluation of its efficacy for treating patients with AUD is needed, and much remains unknown about ZON's therapeutic mechanisms. The present study aimed to evaluate the efficacy and tolerability of ZON in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized trial.

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There is widespread empirical evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to elevated risk of mental and physical health symptoms and decreased quality of life. The present investigation sought to examine if individual differences in anxiety sensitivity was associated with mental health, psychosomatic, and well-being among a sample of US adults during a 6-month period early in the COVID-19 pandemic. Employing longitudinal research methodology, we tested the hypothesis that the anxiety sensitivity global factor would be related to increased risk of anxiety, depression, fatigue, and lower well-being.

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This meta-analytic review is an update to the first meta-analysis of battering interventions (Babcock et al., 2004) and includes 59 studies that evaluated treatment efficacy for domestically violent men and women. The outcome literature of controlled quasi-experimental and experimental studies was reviewed to test the relative impact of Duluth, cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), and novel types of treatment on subsequent recidivism of violence.

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Background: Black adults who smoke and have HIV experience immense stressors (eg, racial discrimination and HIV stigma) that impede smoking cessation success and perpetuate smoking-related health disparities. These stressors also place Black adults who smoke and have HIV at an increased risk of elevated interoceptive stress (eg, anxiety and uncomfortable bodily sensations) and smoking to manage symptoms. In turn, this population is more likely to smoke to manage interoceptive stress, which contributes to worse HIV-related outcomes in this group.

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Importance: Evidence-based treatments for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) exist, but all require 8 to 15 sessions and thus are less likely to be completed than brief treatments. Written exposure therapy (WET) is a brief and efficacious treatment that has not been directly compared with prolonged exposure therapy (PE), a more time-intensive, exposure-based treatment.

Objective: To determine whether WET is noninferior to PE in treating PTSD among veterans.

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Objective: More than 550 million people speak Spanish and, yet, psychometric data on psychological instruments in Spanish lags. Given evidence of significant traumatic exposure and distress among Spanish speakers, the aim of the current study was to examine the factor structure of the Impact of Events Scale-Revised (IES-R), in a large sample of Spanish-speaking adults.

Method: Participants ( = 725) were university students living in Latin America ( = 21.

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Objective: Gratitude and hope are well-established predictors of well-being and buffers against posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and anxiety symptoms. However, scarce literature exists that investigates these relationships in a Hispanic/Latino sample. The current study investigates gratitude's and hope's relationship to PTSD and anxiety symptoms and different domains of well-being in trauma-exposed Hispanic/Latino young adults at a large southern university.

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Background: Anxiety disorders are highly prevalent and debilitating conditions that show high comorbidity rates in adolescence. The present article illustrates how Unified Protocol for Transdiagnostic Treatment of Emotional Disorders in Adolescents (UP-A) was adapted for Iranian adolescents with anxiety disorders.

Methods: A total of 54 adolescents with comorbid anxiety disorders participated in a randomized, waitlist-controlled trial of group weekly sessions of either UP-A or waitlist control (WLC).

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In 2017, Hurricane Harvey flooded more than 300,000 buildings causing an estimated $125 billion in damages and resulting in 68 deaths (National Hurricane Center). This actual or threatened loss of life and physical harm led many to report negative effects on mental well-being and greater mental illness. However, many individuals have been able to experience similar adverse events without a significant negative impact on their mental health and well-being.

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Objective: Firefighters represent an understudied population with high rates of chronic exposure to stress and potentially traumatic events. Thus, there is a need to identify modifiable resilience factors to address posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms (PTSD) and chronic pain in firefighters to inform prevention and intervention efforts.

Methods: The current sample included 155 firefighters (93.

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Background: Electronic cigarette (ECIG) use has become a popular method for nicotine delivery. Combustible cigarette (CC) cessation or reduction are the primary reasons for ECIG uptake among adults. Yet, most CC smokers who initiate ECIG use do not fully transition from CC to ECIG, despite intending to quit CC completely.

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Pain tolerance, defined as the ability to withstand physical pain states, is a clinically important psychobiological process associated with several deleterious outcomes, including increased pain experience, mental health problems, physical health problems, and substance use. A significant body of experimental work indicates that negative affect is associated with pain tolerance, such that increased negative affect is associated with pain tolerance. Although research has documented the associations between pain tolerance and negative affect, little work has examined these associations over time, and how change in pain tolerance is related to changes in negative affect.

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Black smokers demonstrate higher nicotine dependence and experience higher rates of smoking-related diseases and mortality relative to European American/White smokers. A potential factor relevant to race-specific smoking health disparities may be smoking motives (i.e.

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Higher emotional capital is associated with enhanced positive emotions, social relationships, social capital and human capital. The present study developed and evaluated a personal emotional capital questionnaire for adolescents (PECQ-A) that assessed 10 components of this capital. The PECQ-A was administrated to two samples of Iranian 15-year-olds from two Iranian cities (1 = 600, 2 = 300, total = 900) recruited using multistage random cluster sampling.

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Background: Clear health disparities have emerged in the rates of COVID-19 exposure, hospitalization, and death among Black, Hispanic, and American Indian (BHAI) individuals, relative to non-Hispanic White (NHW) individuals. BHAI populations have been disproportionately affected by lower behavioral health access and heightened negative mental health outcomes during the pandemic.

Objective: This project directly addresses health disparities in access to behavioral health care during the COVID-19 pandemic among BHAI populations via an adaptation of the established, initially validated, low-cost, mobile app Easing Anxiety Sensitivity for Everyone (EASE) among individuals with symptoms of elevated anxiety or depression or both.

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Black individuals who smoke in the United States experience health disparities related to tobacco use (e.g., greater nicotine dependence, less success in quitting smoking) and interoceptive distress (e.

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Objective: The Memory for Intentions Test (MIsT) is a clinical measure of prospective memory that has strong evidence for convergent, discriminative, and ecological validity. This study uses a conceptual replication design to evaluate the latent structure of the MIsT in two parallel samples who commonly experience prospective memory deficits: older adults and people living with HIV disease.

Participants And Methods: Study participants included 303 people with HIV disease (ages 18-67) and 267 community-dwelling older adults (ages 50-91).

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Background: Black smokers have greater difficulty in quitting and higher rates of smoking-related diseases and disabilities than the general population. The smoking disparities experienced by this group are, in part, a consequence of multiple chronic life stressors (eg, racial discrimination) that engender increased exposure to interoceptive stress symptoms (eg, anxiety), which can ultimately lead to smoking as a means of immediate emotion regulation.

Objective: This study aimed to culturally adapt and initially test a novel mobile intervention (ie, Mobile Anxiety Sensitivity Program for Smoking [MASP]) that targets anxiety sensitivity (AS; a proxy for difficulty and responsivity to interoceptive stress) among Black smokers.

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Objective: A hypermentalizing impairment, or tendency to overattribute mental states to others, has been identified among individuals with borderline personality disorder. However, associations between hypermentalizing and other disorders call into question the specificity of this impairment to borderline personality disorder. This study aimed to evaluate the relative strength of the association between hypermentalizing and borderline personality disorder compared with other disorders and to assess the impact of moderators on the relationship between hypermentalizing and psychopathology.

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