Publications by authors named "Stephen Suss"

Background: Mindfulness meditation is ubiquitous in health care, education, and communities at large. Mindfulness-Based Interventions (MBIs) are the focus of hundreds of NIH-funded trials given the myriad health benefits associated with this practice across multiple populations. Notwithstanding, significant gaps exist in how mindfulness concepts are measured using currently available self-report instruments.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Understanding the developmental trajectories for recognizing facial expressions is important for a better understanding of development of psychiatric disorders. In this study, we examined the recognition of emotional and neutral facial expressions in 93 typically developing adolescents and adults. The Emotion Intensity Rating task required participants to rate the intensity of emotional expression in happy, neutral, and sad faces on a scale from 1 to 9.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Understanding how working memory recovers after a concussion is crucial for better clinical outcomes and guiding return-to-activity decisions, especially in adolescents.
  • A study using fMRI scanned 45 concussed adolescents soon after their injury and again at six months, alongside 32 healthy control adolescents, while they performed memory tasks with different emotional distractions.
  • Results showed that while the concussed adolescents improved in speed and accuracy by six months, they demonstrated less activation in key brain areas (LIFG) compared to controls, indicating potential adjustments in brain function post-concussion.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Diabetes distress among adolescents with type 1 diabetes has been associated with suboptimal diabetes outcomes, including lower quality of life, increased diabetes self-management challenges, and suboptimal glycemic outcomes.

Objective: This study examined the feasibility and acceptability of a scalable self-led mindfulness-based intervention to reduce diabetes distress in adolescents with type 1 diabetes.

Methods: Adolescents (N=25) aged between 14 and 18 years diagnosed with type 1 diabetes completed a baseline assessment.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Adolescence represents a window of vulnerability for developing psychological symptoms following concussion, especially in girls. Concussion-related lesions in emotion regulation circuits may help explain these symptoms. However, the contribution of sex and pubertal maturation remains unclear.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Sleep problems are common after concussion; yet, to date, no study has evaluated the relationship between sleep, white matter integrity, and post-concussion symptoms in adolescents. Using self-reported quality of sleep measures within the first 10 days of injury, we aimed to determine if quality of sleep exerts a main effect on white matter integrity in major tracts, as measured by diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging (dMRI), and further examine whether this effect can help explain the variance in post-concussion symptom severity in 12- to 17.9-year-old adolescents.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Following concussion, adolescents often experience vestibular and ocular motor symptoms as well as working memory deficits that may affect their cognitive, academic and social well-being. Complex visual environments including school activities, playing sports, or socializing with friends may be overwhelming for concussed adolescents suffering from headache, dizziness, nausea and fogginess, thus imposing heightened requirements on working memory to adequately function in such environments. While understanding the relationship between working memory and vestibular/ocular motor symptoms is critically important, no previous study has examined how an increase in working memory task difficulty affects the relationship between severity of vestibular/ocular motor symptoms and brain and behavioural responses in a working memory task.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Concussion among adolescents continues to be a public health concern. Yet, the differences in brain function between adolescents with a recent concussion and adolescents with no history of concussion are not well understood. Although resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can be a useful tool in examining these differences, few studies have used this technique to examine concussion in adolescents.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: US military veterans have disproportionately high rates of diabetes and diabetes-related morbidity in addition to being at risk of comorbid stress-related conditions. This study aimed to examine the effects of a technology-supported mindfulness intervention integrated into usual diabetes care and education on psychological and biobehavioral outcomes.

Research Design And Methods: Veterans (N=132) with type 1 or 2 diabetes participated in this two-arm randomized controlled efficacy trial.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Concussion symptoms in adolescents typically resolve within 4 weeks. However, 20 - 30% of adolescents experience a prolonged recovery. Abnormalities in tracts implicated in visuospatial attention and emotional regulation (i.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: The purpose of the study was to explore an understanding of the psychosocial-behavioral impact of diabetes self-management among veterans with diabetes.

Methods: Twenty-six veterans participated in 1 of 9 focus groups that were conducted following a group diabetes self-management education class and prior to a mindfulness intervention as part of a feasibility pilot study. Discussions were guided by open-ended questions that addressed the overarching research question, "How do attitudes and experiences with diabetes inform psychosocial-educational approaches to diabetes self-management education and care for veterans?" Focus groups were audio-recorded and transcribed.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF