Publications by authors named "Richard Zinbarg"

Anxiety and depression are associated with impaired emotion regulation (ER). Recently, a novel construct named ER diversity has been proposed to assess the diversity in ER strategy use. Low ER diversity, particularly under stressful circumstances, may be a transdiagnostic vulnerability factor for anxiety and depression.

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There are well-established theoretical and empirical foundations for a negative association between trait positive affectivity and anxiety symptoms in anxiety disorders and a positive association between trait negative affectivity and anxiety symptoms, respectively. However, no previous meta-analysis systematically estimated to what extent trait positive and negative affectivity are associated with anxiety symptoms in anxiety disorders. The aim of this study was to conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis to obtain an evidence-based estimate of the associations between trait positive and negative affectivity with anxiety symptoms in anxiety disorders.

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Objective: The purpose of this randomized controlled trial was to test the effects of an online, coached mindfulness intervention on momentary negative affect (mNA) for youth with high levels of trait negative affectivity.

Method: Participants were 111 youth ages 12 to 17 years old ( = 14.17, = 1.

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Internalizing psychopathology is associated with abnormalities in heart rate variability (HRV). Lower HRV that reflects reduced parasympathetic nervous system activity has been observed in depressive and anxiety disorders. Existing studies predominantly used categorical rather than dimensional approaches, the latter of which better addresses clinical comorbidity and heterogeneity.

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Background: Epigenetic modifications, including DNA methylation (DNAm), can play a role in the biological embedding of early-life adversity (ELA) through serotonergic mechanisms. The current study examines methylation of the CpG island in the promoter region of the stress-responsive serotonin transporter gene (SLC6A4) and is the first to jointly assess how it is influenced by ELA severity, timing, and type-specifically, deprivation and threat.

Methods: We use data from 627 Youth Emotion Project study participants, recruited from two US high schools.

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Background: Pavlovian fear paradigms involve learning to associate cues with threat or safety. Aberrances in Pavlovian fear learning correlate with psychopathology, especially anxiety disorders. This study evaluated symptom dimensions of anxiety and depression in relation to Pavlovian fear acquisition and generalization.

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Article Synopsis
  • The prediction error account of delusions explains some unfounded beliefs, like paranoia, but struggles with different types of delusions.
  • Research comparing two cognitive tasks shows that higher paranoia is linked to excessive learning behavior in one task, while non-paranoid beliefs impact learning in a specific way without general learning issues.
  • Findings indicate distinct learning deficits in paranoia and non-paranoid beliefs, suggesting different mechanisms at play in how these delusions develop and affect behavior.
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Objective: In a randomized clinical trial, we evaluated whether the STIC (Systemic Therapy Inventory of Change) measurement and feedback system (MFS), the first MFS to explicitly integrate the family systems perspective, improved outcomes in individual, couple and family therapy.

Method: Nine hundred and seventy clients seeking individual, couple or family therapy, entered therapy with 93 therapists at four sites in the Chicago metropolitan area. All therapists were trained with the STIC and participated in both Treatment as Usual (TAU) and TAU with the STIC (STIC).

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Dimensional models of psychopathology may provide insight into mechanisms underlying comorbid depression and anxiety and improve specificity and sensitivity of neuroanatomical findings. The present study is the first to examine neural structure alterations using the empirically derived Tri-level Model. Depression and anxiety symptoms of 269 young adults were assessed using the Tri-level Model dimensions: General Distress (transdiagnostic depression and anxiety symptoms), Anhedonia-Apprehension (relatively specific depression symptoms), and Fears (specific anxiety symptoms).

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Background: Severe, chronic stress during childhood accentuates vulnerability to mental and physical health problems across the lifespan. To explain this phenomenon, the neuroimmune network hypothesis proposes that childhood stressors amplify signaling between peripheral inflammatory cells and developing brain circuits that support processing of rewards and threats. Here, we conducted a preliminary test of the basic premises of this hypothesis.

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  • Processing speed dysfunction is a key characteristic of psychosis and can predict who is at high risk for developing it, necessitating the adaptation of assessment tools from traditional methods to computerized formats.
  • A study involving 92 individuals at clinical high risk and 60 healthy controls showed strong correlations between traditional and computerized processing speed tasks, with notable differences in performance between groups with progressive and persistent symptoms.
  • The findings suggest that while the traditional paper tasks highlight impairments across different levels of risk, the computerized version is more effective in identifying issues specifically in individuals exhibiting worsening symptoms, indicating potential differences in sensitivity and mechanisms of assessment.
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Purpose: Poor sleep is associated with short-term dysregulation of mood and is a risk factor for major depressive disorder (MDD). This study examines whether objectively measured sleep in late adolescence prospectively predicts major depressive episode (MDE) onset in early adulthood as well as whether daily affect mediates this association.

Methods: The present study draws on subjective and objective sleep data, ecological momentary assessment, and diagnostic data from the longitudinal Youth Emotion Project to examine whether: a) short sleep predicts dysregulated ecological momentary assessment-measured mood the next day; b) sleep predicts depressive episodes over the subsequent 5 years; and c) dysregulated daily moods mediate the associations between short sleep and later MDD.

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Negative or stressful life events are robust risk factors for depression and anxiety. Less attention has been paid to positive aspects of events and whether positivity buffers the impact of negative aspects of events. The present study examined positivity and negativity of interpersonal and non-interpersonal episodic life events in predicting anxiety and depressive symptoms in a sample of 373 young adults.

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: The Systemic Therapy Inventory of Change (STIC) is a systemic measurement feedback system that provides therapists with feedback regarding the multidimensional clinical change in individual, couple, and family therapy. The STIC Intersession scales include Individual Problems and Strengths (IPS), Relationship with Partner (RWP), Family/Household (FH), and Child Problems and Strengths (CPS). They are administered to clients before each therapy session.

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Introduction: Threat learning and extinction processes are thought to be foundational to anxiety and fear-related disorders. However, the study of these processes in the human brain has largely focused on a priori regions of interest, owing partly to the ease of translating between these regions in human and non-human animals. Moving beyond analyzing focal regions of interest to whole-brain dynamics during threat learning is essential for understanding the neuropathology of fear-related disorders in humans.

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A main goal in translational neuroscience is to identify neural correlates of psychopathology ("biomarkers") that can be used to facilitate diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment. This goal has led to substantial research into how psychopathology symptoms relate to large-scale brain systems. However, these efforts have not yet resulted in practical biomarkers used in clinical practice.

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This study aimed to characterize within-person pre-COVID-19 and coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) transdiagnostic anxiety and depression symptom trajectories in emerging adults and determine the roles of neuroticism and behavioral activation in predicting these COVID-19-related changes. We recruited a sample of 342 emerging adults (aged 18-19 at baseline) who were screened on neuroticism and behavioral activation and completed symptom questionnaires on multiple occasions before and after the start of the pandemic. We examined estimates of the symptom factors of General Distress, Anhedonia-Apprehension, and Fears at each wave.

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Introduction: Paranoia is a common and impairing psychosis symptom, which exists along a severity continuum that extends into the general population. Individuals at clinical high-risk for psychosis (CHR) frequently experience paranoia and this may elevate their risk for developing full psychosis. Nonetheless, limited work has examined the efficient measurement of paranoia in CHR individuals.

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  • Chronic interpersonal stress is linked to anxiety and depression, and the study proposes that irritability plays a key role in understanding this connection, potentially mediating the relationship between stress and these internalizing symptoms.
  • The research involved a six-year study of 627 adolescents to analyze how irritability and chronic interpersonal stress affect anxiety and depression, and some findings supported the idea that irritability could mediate these effects.
  • However, the study had limitations, such as overlapping symptom measurements and a need for better validation of the irritability measure, indicating the need for focused interventions targeting both chronic stress and irritability to better address mental health issues.
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Depression and anxiety are associated with abnormalities in brain regions that process rewards including the medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC), the ventral striatum (VS), and the amygdala. However, there are inconsistencies in these findings. This may be due to past reliance on categorical diagnoses that, while valuable, provide less precision than may be required to understand subtle neural changes associated with symptoms of depression and anxiety.

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Background: Elevated defensive responding, through startle reflex (SR) and skin conductance response (SCR), may contribute to onset and maintenance of depression and anxiety. Most work examining SR and SCR has predicted psychiatric diagnoses. There is a paucity of research examining links between SR or SCR and dimensional measures of psychopathology.

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Depression and anxiety are highly prevalent psychological disorders; our understanding of these conditions remains limited. Efforts to explain anxiety and depression have been constrained in part by binary classification systems. Dimensional approaches to understanding psychopathology may be more effective.

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Early-life adversity is a major risk factor for psychopathology, but not all who experience adversity develop psychopathology. The current study evaluated whether the links between child and adolescent adversity and depression and anxiety were described by general benefits andor buffering effects of interpersonal support. Data from 456 adolescents oversampled on neuroticism over a 5-year period were examined in a series of discrete-time survival analyses to predict subsequent disorder onsets.

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