2,166 results match your criteria: "Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences[Affiliation]"

Background: In a world confronted with new and connected challenges, novel strategies are needed to help children and adults achieve their full potential, to predict, prevent and treat disease, and to achieve equity in services and outcomes. Australia's Generation Victoria (GenV) cohorts are designed for multi-pronged discovery (what could improve outcomes?) and intervention research (what actually works, how much and for whom?). Here, we describe the key features of its protocol.

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Psychologically informed practice is a structural framework originating in physiotherapy, that aids clinicians to identify, consider, and address the psychological factors related to chronic conditions and their management. Hearing loss is a chronic condition associated with a variety of psychosocial impacts, and psychological factors are known to heavily influence the engagement, adherence, and success of hearing rehabilitation. This framework could provide a structured method to manage these factors by using evidence-based psychological theory and applications.

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Evaluation of an 8-week telehealth cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) program for adults with muscle dysmorphia: A pilot and feasibility study.

Body Image

December 2024

InsideOut Institute for Eating Disorders, Charles Perkins Centre, The University of Sydney, Camperdown, NSW, Australia; Sydney Local Health District, NSW Health, Sydney, NSW, Australia.

Muscle dysmorphia (MD) is a psychological disorder defined by a pathological belief that one lacks muscularity and has excess body fat. To date, treatment research on MD has been sparse. We conducted a pilot feasibility and acceptability study investigating the preliminary efficacy of an 8-week telehealth cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) intervention for adults with diagnosed MD.

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Depression is a heterogeneous and complex psychological syndrome with highly variable manifestations, which poses difficulties for treatment and prognosis. Depression patients are prone to developing various comorbidities, which stem from different pathophysiological mechanisms, remaining largely understudied. The current study focused on identifying comorbidity-specific phenotypes, and whether these clustered phenotypes are associated with different treatment patterns, clinical manifestations, physiological characteristics, and prognosis.

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A complex bidirectional relationship exists between sleep and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Previous research reporting a strong association between sleep and PTSD has largely examined older military veteran populations, with military-related confounders potentially magnifying this effect. Less is known whether this association remains strong in younger civilian adults.

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Background: This study aimed to (1) summarise research on the impact of peer support interventions aimed at improving psychosocial functioning among cancer survivors, and (2) identify key components for developing a support intervention for patients with a rare cancer living in rural, regional or remote areas.

Methods: A comprehensive search of EMBASE, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, CINAHL, and the Cochrane Library identified papers that examined peer support interventions: (i) for rare cancer patients, or (ii) for those living in rural, regional or remote locations, or (iii) that provided support online or via telehealth. After screening, data on study characteristics, intervention components and impact on psychosocial functioning were extracted.

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Background: Strong evidence supports the benefits of exercise following both cardiovascular disease and cancer diagnoses. However, less than one-third of Australians who are referred to exercise rehabilitation complete a program following a cardiac diagnosis. Technological advances make it increasingly possible to embed real-time supervision, tailored exercise prescription, behavior change, and social support into home-based programs.

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Purpose: To explore the impact of family-centred service education on the knowledge, attitudes, self-efficacy, and practice of service providers working in paediatric disability.

Materials And Methods: The review was conducted in accordance with the Joanna Briggs Institute methodology for scoping reviews. The search strategy was completed in seven electronic databases.

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Autism is a neurodevelopmental difference associated with specific autistic experiences and characteristics. Early models such as Weak Central Coherence and Enhanced Perceptual Functioning have tried to capture complex autistic behaviours in a single framework, however, these models lacked a neurobiological explanation. Conversely, current neurobiological theories of autism at the cellular and network levels suggest excitation/inhibition imbalances lead to high neural noise (or, a 'noisy brain') but lack a thorough explanation of how autistic behaviours occur.

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Developing an extended process model of emotion regulation in PTSD.

Behav Res Ther

January 2025

Phoenix Australia-Centre for Posttraumatic Mental Health, Department of Psychiatry, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia.

Emotion regulation is a topic of growing interest in the field of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Despite the field's concentrated efforts in this area, the research has not matched advancements in the general emotion regulation literature, which have proposed more holistic models to understanding to how individuals identify and respond to emotions. In looking at emotion regulation in PTSD, this paper reviews the current state of the literature using the Extended Process Model proposed by Gross (2015).

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Background: There has been a resurgence of research into the potential therapeutic benefits of psychedelics for neuropsychiatric disorders. Classic psychedelics, such as psilocybin, exert complex effects on higher cognitive functions such as perception and awareness, but their impact on motor function remains unexplored. Moreover, there is a theoretical rationale for using psychedelics to promote motor retraining in certain neuropsychiatric conditions associated with motor dysfunction.

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Introduction: Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) is a disabling condition that can affect adolescents during a vulnerable period of development. The underlying biological mechanisms for ME/CFS remain unclear and have rarely been investigated in the adolescent population, despite this period representing an age peak in the overall incidence. The primary objective of this is to provide a foundational set of biological data on adolescent ME/CFS patients.

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Seeing is believing: How front-of-pack food imagery shapes parents' perceptions of child-oriented snack foods.

Appetite

February 2025

Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia; Empirica Research, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Electronic address:

Child-oriented snack foods often display front-of-pack images suggesting they are natural or wholesome, yet many of these products are ultra-processed and nutrient poor. This study investigated parent's perceptions in response to common forms of front-of-pack food imagery on child-orientated snacks. An online experiment comprising four between-subjects food image conditions (no image; food photo; food cartoon; cartoon of children gardening) and two within-subjects snack type conditions (fruit; vegetable) was conducted with N = 800 Australian adult parents/guardians of children aged 4-10 years.

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Background: To date, over 1.3 billion videos with the hashtag #bodyneutrality have been viewed on TikTok. Despite this, little existing literature has unpacked how body neutrality is conceptualised on TikTok.

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Article Synopsis
  • The thalamus's structural vulnerabilities in mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) are not well-explored, prompting this study to investigate thalamic subnuclei volume shortly after mTBI.
  • Participants, including mTBI patients and trauma control individuals, underwent MRI scans to analyze thalamic subregion volumes and neurite orientation parameters in the early recovery phase.
  • Results indicated increased gray matter volume in specific thalamic subregions in mTBI patients compared to controls, suggesting potential issues with myelin repair processes post-injury.
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Article Synopsis
  • The study aimed to create a prioritized list of research themes and essential data points related to mental health issues in children and adolescents presenting to emergency departments (ED).
  • A Delphi survey involving various stakeholders, including clinicians and patients, was conducted to gather and prioritize these research themes and data points.
  • The final results highlighted 71 key items, focusing on safety in the ED, the effectiveness of mental health spaces, follow-up care, and important data like risk factors and behavioral disturbances.
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Background: Evidence suggests that illness perceptions held by people living with multiple sclerosis (MS) impact affective distress and physical health outcomes. In a randomized controlled trial, we developed 2 MS Online Courses-the standard care course and the intervention course (IC). The IC was adapted from an evidence-based lifestyle program.

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Article Synopsis
  • * A new online social therapy platform has been developed to support young people with MDD through peer networking, therapeutic content, and various human supports, aiming to prevent relapses alongside traditional treatments.
  • * This study will conduct a randomised controlled trial with 255 participants aged 14-27, tracking outcomes like depressive relapse and psychological symptoms over 18 months to assess the effectiveness of the new intervention compared to enhanced usual care.
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Myopia (short-sightedness) is the most common ocular disorder. It generally develops after over-exposure to aberrant visual environments, disrupting emmetropization mechanisms that should match eye growth with optical power. A pre-screening of strongly associated myopia-risk genes identified through human genome-wide association studies implicates efemp1 in myopia development, but how this gene impacts ocular growth remains unclear.

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Background: Biopsychosocial changes during adolescence are thought to confer risk for emotion dysregulation, and in particular, anxiety disorders. However, there are substantial gaps in our knowledge about the biological mechanisms underlying anxiety during adolescence, and whether this contributes to the higher prevalence in females. The Puberty and NeuroDevelopment in Adolescents (PANDA) study aims to examine links between biological (sex hormones, cortisol) and social environmental factors and brain function during adolescence, with a focus on key processes (emotion regulation, fear learning) identified as relevant for the development of anxiety disorders.

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The course of depressive symptoms over midlife.

Menopause

December 2024

Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia.

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Article Synopsis
  • This study compared treatment outcomes in anorexia nervosa (AN) and bulimia nervosa (BN) based on different severity indicators from DSM-5 and ICD-11 among 628 female participants seeking treatment.
  • Results indicated significant differences in treatment outcomes for ICD-11 severity groups, particularly showing that participants with 'dangerously low BMI' had worse outcomes than those with 'significantly low BMI'.
  • The findings highlight the limitations of relying on a single severity measure and call for more comprehensive assessments and future research to evaluate the effectiveness of these indicators in relation to biological and psychological factors.
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Adding planning strategies to an experiential and conceptual knowledge-based intervention: Does it help to reduce sedentary time?

Psychol Sport Exerc

November 2024

Faculty of Psychology in Wroclaw, SWPS University, Wroclaw, Poland; Melbourne Centre for Behavior Change, Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia. Electronic address:

Article Synopsis
  • The study aimed to reduce sedentary time by comparing two approaches: one focused on knowledge alone and the other combining knowledge with action planning and coping strategies.
  • A total of 603 participants aged 11-86 were involved, and their sedentary behaviors were tracked using accelerometers at multiple points in time.
  • Results indicated a small but significant decline in sedentary time overall, but no added benefit was found from incorporating action planning and coping techniques into the intervention.
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Data-Driven Cutoff Selection for the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 Depression Screening Tool.

JAMA Netw Open

November 2024

Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health, McGill University, Montréal, Québec, Canada.

Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates how using small datasets to select an optimal cutoff score for the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) can lead to inaccurate results.
  • Researchers evaluated whether data-driven methods for cutoff selection resulted in scores that were significantly different from the true population optimal score and if these methods produced biased accuracy estimates.
  • Findings showed that many small studies frequently failed to identify the correct optimal cutoff score, particularly in smaller samples, leading to an overestimation of test sensitivity.
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