Emotional Responding and Adversity

The experience of emotions is a ubiquitous human experience, as is the experience of adversity. In the aftermath of an adverse life event, a variety of emotional experiences can occur. This chapter reviews the relationship between emotional responding and adversity within the science of emotion and resilience. Current literature on possible emotional responses to adversity are reviewed, including literature on both resilience and psychopathology. Multiple trajectories following the experience of various types of potentially traumatic events are outlined, including predictors for each of these trajectories. In addition, forms of psychopathology in emotional responding after adversity are discussed, including posttraumatic stress disorder, prolonged grief disorder, adjustment disorders, and other mental health conditions. Information regarding risk and resilience factors for each disorder are discussed, and evidence regarding treatment is briefly summarized.

Post-traumatic stress disorder among rural widows in Nsukka: risk factors and wellbeing domains

Losing a spouse to death is recognized as the most adverse life event that may increase the risk of depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other psychopathology with studies demonstrating that widows experienced more post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms than their non-widowed counterparts. Although the adverse effect of post-traumatic stress disorder may be stronger for widows in rural areas, the existing literature has shown the need for greater research on post-traumatic stress disorder experiences among vulnerable Igbo rural widows in Nsukka, South Eastern Nigeria. Against this backdrop, this study examined factors that predict post-traumatic stress disorder and the effect of post-traumatic stress disorder on the wellbeing domains of Igbo rural widows. Among the 177 participants, partner intimacy (β = .300, p < .001), cause of husband’s death (sudden vs. anticipated) (β = .183, p < .01), perceived social support (β = –.300, p < .001), number of surviving children at the time of husband’s death (β = .210, p < .01), and age of last child as at the time of husband’s death (β = .355, p < .01) all significantly predicted post-traumatic stress disorder. Domains of wellbeing most negatively affected by post-traumatic stress disorder included general life satisfaction (66.10%), family relationship (62.71%), and overall functioning (61.02%). The findings suggest that post-traumatic stress disorder among Igbo rural widows is a serious health concern that requires mental health professionals identifying high-risk rural widows early for intervention and developing programs aimed at educating and training rural community members on post-traumatic stress disorder and where to seek help on onset.

Optimistic amnesia: how online and offline processing shape belief updating and memory biases in immediate and long-term optimism biases

When people are confronted with feedback that counters their prior beliefs, they preferentially rely on desirable rather than undesirable feedback in belief updating, i.e. an optimism bias. In two pre-registered EEG studies employing an adverse life event probability estimation task, we investigated the neurocognitive processes that support the formation and the change of optimism biases in immediate and 24 h delayed tests. We found that optimistic belief updating biases not only emerged immediately but also became significantly larger after 24 h, suggesting an active role of valence-dependent offline consolidation processes in the change of optimism biases. Participants also showed optimistic memory biases: they were less accurate in remembering undesirable than desirable feedback probabilities, with inferior memories of undesirable feedback associated with lower belief updating in the delayed test. Examining event-related brain potentials (ERPs) revealed that desirability of feedback biased initial encoding: desirable feedback elicited larger P300s than undesirable feedback, with larger P300 amplitudes predicting both higher belief updating and memory accuracies. These results suggest that desirability of feedback could bias both online and offline memory-related processes such as encoding and consolidation, with both processes contributing to the formation and change of optimism biases.

No personality change following unemployment: A registered replication of Boyce, Wood, Daly, and Sedikides (2015)

The involuntary loss of paid employment represents an adverse life event that has been suggested to lead to personality change. However, previous research has reported highly contradictory findings. Therefore, a replication of Boyce, Wood, Daly, and Sedikides (2015) is presented. These authors originally identified nonlinear changes in openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. Using data from the German National Education Panel Study (N = 5,005), we examined the impact of unemployment on personality change across three years. Latent change analyses indicated no effect of job loss on any Big Five trait. Moderating effects of unemployment duration or gender were not found. Even analyses accounting for potential selection effects led to comparable results. Thus, personality seemed invariant despite changes in employment status.

Grief & Personal Growth: Reflection from Quran, Hadith and Modern Medicine

Grief has been defined as the reaction towards loss with typical symptoms including sadness, anger, guilt, yearning, regret, loneliness, numbness and positive feelings related to individual’s personal experience. Grief has been postulated to occur when a safe and secure bond has been threatened. This loss can be an opportunity for personal growth. It is growth that emerges from difficult life events. It may occur during or after the process of grieving. We reviewed three cases related to grief and personal growth. Three cases were described where grief and personal growth were observed. Each case occurred in different situations. These different situations were; an adult child and caregiver of patient with dementia, a widow who loss her husband from drowning, and a cancer survivor who experienced psychological and spiritual growth from the loss and adverse life event. As a comparison three stories taken from the Quran and Hadith were analyzed to reflect on the three case discussions. The Quran and Hadith have mentioned stories of personal growth emerging from difficulties. The completeness of Islamic creed has never neglected the spiritual component in treating medical, physical and psychological illnesses. Islamic spirituality facilitates and enhances personal growth in the aftermath of any physical and psychological tribulations. It is important to merge the spiritual aspects of grief from Islamic perspective, as to aid those suffering from grief to attain personal and spiritual growth.

Benefit Finding in Cardiac Patients: Relationships with Emotional Well-Being and Resources after Controlling for Physical Functional Impairment

Benefit finding (BF) is defined as the individual’s perception of positive change as a result of coping with an adverse life event. The beneficial effects of BF on well-being could be because BF favors the improvement of resources like self-efficacy, social support and effective coping. The main objective of this longitudinal 8 week study was to explore, in a sample of cardiac patients (n = 51), the combined contribution of BF and these resources to the positive affect. Moreover, we wanted to check whether these resources were derived from BF or, on the contrary, these resources were antecedents of BF. Results showed that after controlling for functional capacity, only effective coping could predict the positive affect at Time 1 (β = .32, p < .05), while the BF predicted it at Time 2 (β = .23, p < .001). Only social support predicted BF (β = .26, p < .05), but not the opposite. We discussed the desirability of promoting these processes to improve the emotional state of cardiac patients.

The impact of positive reappraisal on positive (and negative) emotion among older adults

ABSTRACTBackground:Positive reappraisal is an important cognitive strategy for older adults associated with wide-ranging improvements in psychological well-being. However, little is known about the relationship between positive reappraisal and positive and negative emotion, anxiety and depression, and whether positive reappraisal is associated with continued increases in positive emotion over time.Methods:In the first study, 61 participants aged 62 to 88 years (M = 72, SD = 5.8) completed current measures of cognitive emotion regulation, positive emotion, negative emotion, anxiety and depression regarding their most distressing aging-related adverse life event, and rated (retrospectively) positive reappraisal use at the time of the stressor. Utilizing a longitudinal design, in a second study 60 participants aged 62 to 88 years (M = 71.2, SD = 5.7) completed the same measures for a recent adverse life event and repeated the measures 3 and 6 months later.Results:In the first study, positive reappraisal reported for both time periods was significantly correlated with current positive emotion, but not negative emotion with mixed findings for anxiety and depression, and positive reappraisal use increased with time since stressor onset. In the second study, positive reappraisal was significantly correlated with positive emotion and significantly predicted positive emotion from 3-month to 6-month follow-up, and was related to anxiety and depression but not general negative emotion.Conclusions:These findings indicate that positive reappraisal is related to positive emotion but not consistently with negative emotion, and continues to be beneficial over time in older adults who have experienced a stressor.

Social adversity and suicide

The World Health Organization estimates about 1.5 million deaths by suicide per year worldwide by 2020. We will discuss how social adversity and psychological/social pain interact in this model and help to better understand suicidal process at individual level.Émile Durkheim [1] viewed suicide as a social fact. According to his theory the variations in suicidal rate on a macro-level could also be explained by society-scale phenomena rather than individual's feelings and motivations. In the 21st century, three major points have to be highlighted to underline a possible relationship between economic crisis and suicide:– suicide rate of employees is becoming more similar to the suicide rate of workers while working conditions are getting worse;– increase of suicide rate for young working men was observed since 1970, i.e. the beginning of oil crisis;– suicides in workplace occur, sometimes serial suicides in (inter)national companies. Nowadays, suicidal acts may be best understood within a stress-vulnerability model, where it is assumed that only vulnerable patients, when submitted to environmental stressors, will kill themselves.At the individual level, the transition to the suicidal act is usually precipitated by psychosocial stress. Nearly all suicide victims have experienced at least one or more adverse life event within 1 year of death (concentrated in last few months). Interpersonal conflict was at the greatest risk of suicidal act [2]. Being excluded or rejected signals a threat for which reflexive detection in the form of pain and distress is adaptive for survival [3]. Thus, we assume that social pain should be considered as a subtype of psychological pain emerging from the threat of affiliation. Unbearable pain, particularly psychological pain, is a frequent theme of suicide notes. Thus, suicidal acts should be considered as the expression of an attempt to escape from this psychological suffering.

The Risk of Using Antidepressants During Pregnancy: Serious Concern or Much Ado about Little?

Perinatal psychiatric disorders are a leading cause of maternal morbidity, they transmit across generations and may pose the first adverse life event for a child. The myth that pregnancy is “protective” in terms of mental health has long been refuted and it is now well established that the incidence of depression during pregnancy is at least as high when compared to other phases in a woman's lifetime. Moreover, depression during pregnancy has been associated with a number of adverse outcomes both for the mother and the baby. Untreated depression during pregnancy is also one of the strongest predictors of a subsequent postpartum depression.Data on the “relative safety” of antidepressants during pregnancy are accumulating but at the same time sporadic, at times inconsistent reports on potential risks associated with their use are cause for concern. Recognizing the limitations of our knowledge regarding the “relative safety” of antidepressants during pregnancy it is paramount to weigh the risk of not treating vs. the benefit of treating in each case.We report here on more than 400 pregnant women at risk for depression seen at our clinic. One third of these women received antidepressants during different phases of their pregnancies and the outcome/well-being of their babies assessed. There were no significant increases in long-term untoward outcomes in these babies.We also demonstrated in a smaller subpopulation that the use of antidepressants has a “positive” effect on both neuroendocrine and neurophysiological parameters, using the cortisol awakening response and heart rate variability as biological markers.