Objective: Posttraumatic embitterment disorder (PTED) comprises a stress-related response to a negative life event that violates the belief system of the individual. Characteristic symptoms involve repeated intrusive thoughts, emotional arousal when reminded of the event, and decreases in well-being.
Method: Within the scope of the present study, embitterment was treated as a continuous rather than categorical concept, and we investigated its psychological and brain structural correlates in a sample of healthy older adults.
Results: We found a negative association between the PTED self-rating score and self-reported well-being, life satisfaction, and future time perspective and a positive association with loneliness, perceived stress, chronic strain, and external control beliefs. We found no significant association between embitterment and brain regions that have been associated with stress exposure and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)-hippocampus and the medial prefrontal cortex. This may emphasize the fundamental difference between PTED and PTSD. In a whole-brain analysis, we found a positive correlation between embitterment and gray matter volume in the precuneus and white matter volume in the bilateral uncinate fasciculus.
Conclusions: The precuneus and uncinate fasciculus are brain regions that have been related to episodic memory retrieval, matching well to the symptoms of intrusive thoughts and an overwhelming preoccupation with the event that caused the PTED. Further longitudinal research is needed to unravel whether these structural correlates represent preconditions or rather the consequence of embitterment. (PsycINFO Database Record
Download full-text PDF |
Source |
|---|---|
| http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/tra0000287 | DOI Listing |
Publication Analysis
Top Keywords
Similar Publications
Identification of Behavioral, Clinical, and Psychological Antecedents of Acute Stimulant Poisoning: Development and Implementation of a Mixed Methods Psychological Autopsy Study.
JMIR Form Res
January 2025
Center on Substance Use and Health, San Francisco Department of Public Health, San Francisco, CA, United States.
Background: Despite increasing fatal stimulant poisoning in the United States, little is understood about the mechanism of death. The psychological autopsy (PA) has long been used to distinguish the manner of death in equivocal cases, including opioid overdose, but has not been used to explicitly explore stimulant mortality.
Objective: We aimed to develop and implement a large PA study to identify antecedents of fatal stimulant poisoning, seeking to maximize data gathering and ethical interactions during the collateral interviews.
Symptom Profiles and Intensive Treatment Outcomes in Sexual Minority and Heterosexual Patients With OCD.
Behav Ther
January 2025
School of Psychology, University of Ottawa.
Sexual minority (SM) individuals appear to be at greater risk for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Despite this, little is known about OCD presentation and treatment outcomes among SM individuals. Although some research has suggested that SM individuals may be more likely to endorse intrusive thoughts related to violence/sex/religion compared to heterosexual individuals, extant literature has neglected to examine potential differences across different SM groups, a notable limitation given the apparent differences in the types of minority stress that each group experiences and the unique health disparities affecting each group.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA Warm Water Immersion Intervention for Symptoms of PTSD in Military Veterans: A Qualitative Descriptive Study.
Can J Nurs Res
January 2025
Research and Development, VA Southern Nevada Healthcare System, Las Vegas, NV, USA.
Background: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a substantial problem for Veterans and active members of armed forces across the globe, resulting in debilitating mental and physical comorbidities. Evidence-based treatments have demonstrated some success; however, many Veterans remain symptomatic mandating the urgent need for innovative treatment strategies.
Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore the lived experience of military Veterans with PTSD symptoms who participated in a therapeutic warm water immersion intervention aimed at reducing their symptoms.
Mapping patterns of thought onto brain activity during movie-watching.
Elife
January 2025
Department of Psychology, Queens University, Kingston, Canada.
Movie-watching is a central aspect of our lives and an important paradigm for understanding the brain mechanisms behind cognition as it occurs in daily life. Contemporary views of ongoing thought argue that the ability to make sense of events in the 'here and now' depend on the neural processing of incoming sensory information by auditory and visual cortex, which are kept in check by systems in association cortex. However, we currently lack an understanding of how patterns of ongoing thoughts map onto the different brain systems when we watch a film, partly because methods of sampling experience disrupt the dynamics of brain activity and the experience of movie-watching.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDoes ruminating about the previous night's drinking during a hangover predict changes in heavy episodic drinking? A two-wave, 30-day prospective study.
Psychol Addict Behav
January 2025
Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Dalhousie University.
Objective: We examined whether hangover-related rumination-repeatedly dwelling on negative aspects of yesterday's drinking while hungover the following morning-predicts changes in three dimensions of heavy episodic drinking (HED) over time.
Method: = 334 emerging adults (aged 19-29) from three Eastern Canadian universities who had recently experienced a hangover completed online self-report questionnaires at baseline (Wave 1) and 30 days later (Wave 2; 71.6% retention).
Want AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?
Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!