We investigated the relationships between trauma, depression, and pelvic pain severity in patients with chronic pelvic pain. Previous research has demonstrated that pelvic pain is associated with trauma history (e.g., physical and sexual abuse). As one potential mechanism of this relationship, trauma may lead to increased susceptibility to pain by...
Health literacy has been shown to be a key component of patient understanding of medical diagnoses, adherence, and self-efficacy. Limited health literacy has been associated with a number of negative outcomes— including more severe illness, increased use of emergency services, and mortality. The concept of mental health literacy has arisen...
Recent studies have begun to examine white matter connectivity aberrations in psychiatric populations, such as major depressive disorder. Several studies have found reduced white matter integrity (WMI) in depressed samples, though the location of this reduction is not clear. Incorporating symptom measures of depression severity and rumination may allow for...
Background: Evidence supporting a bidirectional relationship between depression and recurrent cardiovascular disease (CVD) appears strong, but there remains a need to better characterize the role of depression in CVD risk and cardiovascular health (CVH) promotion, especially in the context of comorbid risk factors such as cigarette smoking. In the present...
Loneliness, Stress, and Depression over the Transition to Adulthood: Interpersonal and Physiological Pathways Leah Darrah Doane During the transition into adulthood, youth experience substantial stressful changes as they navigate shifts in their interpersonal, familial, educational and economic domains of life. This dissertation aims to understand how the unique experiences of...
Behavioral activation (BA) trains depressed clients to engage in more positive activities in order to increase their experience of pleasure and accomplishment, thereby reducing depression. Recent research suggested that BA might be as effective in treating depression as current leading treatments, such as cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and antidepressant medication (Jacobson,...
Background: The tripartite model (Clark & Watson, 1991) has been used to represent the substrates of general distress in both depression and anxiety (Negative affectivity [NA]), while also characterizing specific features of decreased positive affectivity (PA) in depression and increased physiological hyperarousal (PH) in anxiety. Core affect characterizes affect by...