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PloS One 2022According to the World Health Organization, pandemic fatigue poses a serious threat for managing COVID-19. Pandemic fatigue is characterized by progressive decline in...
According to the World Health Organization, pandemic fatigue poses a serious threat for managing COVID-19. Pandemic fatigue is characterized by progressive decline in adherence to social distancing (SDIS) guidelines, and is thought to be associated with pandemic-related emotional burnout. Little is known about the nature of pandemic fatigue; for example, it is unclear who is most likely to develop pandemic fatigue. We sought to evaluate this issue based on data from 5,812 American and Canadian adults recruited during the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Past-year decline in adherence to SDIS had a categorical latent structure according to Latent Class Analysis, consisting of a group adherent to SDIS (Class 1: 92% of the sample) and a group reporting a progressive decline in adherence to SDIS (i.e., pandemic fatigue; Class 2: 8% of the sample). Class 2, compared to Class 1, was associated with greater pandemic-related burnout, pessimism, and apathy about the COVID-19 pandemic. They also tended to be younger, perceived themselves to be more affluent, tended to have greater levels of narcissism, entitlement, and gregariousness, and were more likely to report having been previously infected with SARSCOV2, which they regarded as an exaggerated threat. People in Class 2 also self-reported higher levels of pandemic-related stress, anxiety, and depression, and described making active efforts at coping with SDIS restrictions, which they perceived as unnecessary and stressful. People in Class 1 generally reported that they engaged in SDIS for the benefit of themselves and their community, although 35% of this class also feared they would be publicly shamed if they did not comply with SDIS guidelines. The findings suggest that pandemic fatigue affects a substantial minority of people and even many SDIS-adherent people experience emotionally adverse effects (i.e., fear of being shamed). Implications for the future of SDIS are discussed.
Topics: Adult; Humans; United States; Pandemics; COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; Latent Class Analysis; RNA, Viral; Canada; Fatigue; Burnout, Professional
PubMed: 36355709
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0276791 -
The British Journal of Clinical... Nov 2022Rumination and worry have been implicated in the onset, severity, maintenance and relapse risk of depression and anxiety disorders. Despite this, little research has...
OBJECTIVES
Rumination and worry have been implicated in the onset, severity, maintenance and relapse risk of depression and anxiety disorders. Despite this, little research has examined individuals' personal experiences of these processes. This study investigates how individuals experience these processes, which will provide insight into these common features of mental disorders and inform the development of an online intervention specifically targeting rumination and worry.
DESIGN
An online qualitative survey was conducted to gain insight into people's personal definitions, experiences with and understandings of rumination and worry.
METHODS
Participants answered open- and close-ended questions about their personal understanding of rumination and worry, typical thought content, triggers, frequency, duration and coping strategies. Participant responses were coded into themes. Participants also completed self-report questionnaires of depression, anxiety and stress and repetitive negative thinking.
RESULTS
Two hundred and seven adults completed the online survey (76% female; mean age = 28.2 years, range = 17-71), 51% of whom reported previously experiencing depression and anxiety. All participants were familiar with the concept of worry, whereas 28% of participants indicated they had never heard of rumination. Participants reported most commonly ruminating and/or worrying about personal relationships, past mistakes, negative experiences and conversations/social interactions. The most commonly reported triggers for rumination and/or worry were social situations/interpersonal interactions (25%) and negative events/experiences (24%). Distraction was the most common coping strategy (48%); however, 21% reported being unable to stop themselves from ruminating and/or worrying.
CONCLUSIONS
The results provide a unique insight into the personal experiences and understandings of rumination and worry of potential end users of treatment programs targeting these processes.
Topics: Adolescent; Adult; Aged; Anxiety; Anxiety Disorders; Cognition; Female; Humans; Male; Middle Aged; Pessimism; Surveys and Questionnaires; Young Adult
PubMed: 35411619
DOI: 10.1111/bjc.12367 -
Domes : Digest of Middle East Studies 2023This study aims to examine people's optimistic and pessimistic perceptions of the government's capacity, intention, and performance during and after the lockdowns...
This study aims to examine people's optimistic and pessimistic perceptions of the government's capacity, intention, and performance during and after the lockdowns declared in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. An online survey was administered in Jordan and responses were collected from a convenience sample of 1245 citizens during April and May 2020. Descriptive statistics, factor analysis, and multiple regression reveal the following findings: (a) people expressed high levels of pessimism and low levels of trust and satisfaction concerning the government's intention, capacity, and performance, (b) people perceived the government to be a complex, multi-faceted entity rather than a homogeneous entity, and (c) in assessing government performance, people considered the following dimensions: totality of government, institutions of public administration, high-ranking public officials, and ordinary, public sector employees.
PubMed: 36721430
DOI: 10.1111/dome.12284 -
Behavioral Ecology : Official Journal... 2022Individuals differ in the way they judge ambiguous information: some individuals interpret ambiguous information in a more optimistic, and others in a more pessimistic...
Individuals differ in the way they judge ambiguous information: some individuals interpret ambiguous information in a more optimistic, and others in a more pessimistic way. Over the past two decades, such "optimistic" and "pessimistic" cognitive judgment biases (CJBs) have been utilized in animal welfare science as indicators of animals' emotional states. However, empirical studies on their ecological and evolutionary relevance are still lacking. We, therefore, aimed at transferring the concept of "optimism" and "pessimism" to behavioral ecology and investigated the role of genetic and environmental factors in modulating CJB in mice. In addition, we assessed the temporal stability of individual differences in CJB. We show that the chosen genotypes (C57BL/6J and B6D2F1N) and environments ("scarce" and "complex") did not have a statistically significant influence on the responses in the CJB test. By contrast, they influenced anxiety-like behavior with C57BL/6J mice and mice from the "complex" environment displaying less anxiety-like behavior than B6D2F1N mice and mice from the "scarce" environment. As the selected genotypes and environments did not explain the existing differences in CJB, future studies might investigate the impact of other genotypes and environmental conditions on CJB, and additionally, elucidate the role of other potential causes like endocrine profiles and epigenetic modifications. Furthermore, we show that individual differences in CJB were repeatable over a period of seven weeks, suggesting that CJB represents a temporally stable trait in laboratory mice. Therefore, we encourage the further study of CJB within an animal personality framework.
PubMed: 35812364
DOI: 10.1093/beheco/arac040 -
Biology Letters Mar 2021The role of telomerase reverse transcriptase has been widely investigated in the contexts of ageing and age-related diseases. Interestingly, decreased telomerase...
The role of telomerase reverse transcriptase has been widely investigated in the contexts of ageing and age-related diseases. Interestingly, decreased telomerase activities (and accelerated telomere shortening) have also been reported in patients with emotion-related disorders, opening the possibility for subjective appraisal of stressful stimuli playing a key role in stress-driven telomere shortening. In fact, patients showing a pessimistic judgement bias have shorter telomeres. However, in humans the evidence for this is correlational and the causal directionality between pessimism and telomere shortening has not been established experimentally yet. We have developed and validated a judgement bias experimental paradigm to measure subjective evaluations of ambiguous stimuli in zebrafish. This behavioural assay allows classification of individuals in an optimistic-pessimistic dimension (i.e. from individuals that consistently evaluate ambiguous stimuli as negative to others that perceive them as positive). Using this behavioural paradigm we found that telomerase-deficient zebrafish () were more pessimistic in response to ambiguous stimuli than wild-type zebrafish. The fact that individuals with constitutive shorter telomeres have pessimistic behaviours demonstrates for the first time in a vertebrate model a genetic basis of judgement bias.
Topics: Animals; Pessimism; Telomerase; Telomere; Telomere Shortening; Zebrafish
PubMed: 33726560
DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2020.0745 -
Proceedings of the National Academy of... Aug 2019There is now recognition that a population's overall level of well-being is defined not just by income and wealth. Where we live and who we interact with are likely to...
There is now recognition that a population's overall level of well-being is defined not just by income and wealth. Where we live and who we interact with are likely to be equally important in our overall levels of satisfaction with our lives. This thinking has stimulated studies of subjective well-being, or happiness, at both national and local scales. These studies suggest that where you live does matter, although it is health and family status that have the most direct effects on well-being. In this study, we use a detailed dataset on well-being from the China Household Finance Survey to reexamine well-being across China, where profound socioeconomic changes are taking place. The study controls for self-reported health and examines subjective well-being across extensive and varied Chinese urban and rural environments. We find that the earlier pessimism about China's well-being, which emphasized declining happiness, may be misplaced. We make two contributions: first, we show a rising level of subjective well-being, and second, we show that there is a narrowing gap in well-being across different social indicators. Methodologically, we bring in the perspectives of both social capital and geographic context.
Topics: China; Happiness; Humans; Personal Satisfaction; Regression Analysis; Societies
PubMed: 31371499
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1902926116 -
Scientific Reports Mar 2023Low socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with higher rates of emotional disorders in childhood and beyond. Here we assessed one possible contributor to this...
Low socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with higher rates of emotional disorders in childhood and beyond. Here we assessed one possible contributor to this disparity, a cognitive bias in the interpretation of negative events, in a group of 341 9-year-olds (49% female, 94% White) ranging widely in SES. This cognitive bias, known as pessimism in the attributional style literature, is the tendency to interpret negative events as persistent (Stable) and pervasive (Global). It was found to be more common among lower SES children (effect sizes = 0.18-0.24 depending on SES measures: income to needs ratio, proportion of poverty from birth to age 9, and parental educational attainment). Moreover, persistent, pervasive adversity in children's lives predicted this bias and mediated the SES-pessimism link. Pessimistic attributional style, in turn, was related to childhood emotional problems and mediated the relation between SES and these problems. Finally, evidence for serial mediation of the SES-mental health problems relationship was found via persistent, pervasive adversity and pessimism, respectively.
Topics: Humans; Child; Female; Male; Mental Health; Pessimism; Social Class; Poverty; Cognition
PubMed: 36997593
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-32482-y -
Frontiers in Public Health 2023Suicide is the tenth leading cause of death in the United States and continues to be a major public health concern. Suicide risk is highly prevalent among individuals...
INTRODUCTION
Suicide is the tenth leading cause of death in the United States and continues to be a major public health concern. Suicide risk is highly prevalent among individuals with co-occurring substance use disorders (SUD) and mental health disorders, making them more prone to adverse substance use related outcomes including overdose. Identifying individuals with SUD who are suicidal, and therefore potentially most at risk of overdose, is an important step to address the synergistic epidemics of suicides and overdose fatalities in the United States. The current study assesses whether patterns of suicidality endorsement can indicate risk for substance use and overdose.
METHODS
Latent class analysis (LCA) was used to assess patterns of item level responses to the Concise Health Risk Tracking Self-Report (CHRT-SR), which measures thoughts and feelings associated with suicidal propensity. We used data from 2,541 participants with SUD who were enrolled across 8 randomized clinical trials in the National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network from 2012 to 2021. Characteristics of individuals in each class were assessed, and multivariable logistic regression was performed to examine class membership as a predictor of overdose. LCA was also used to analyze predictors of substance use days.
RESULTS
Three classes were identified and discussed: Class (1) Minimal Suicidality, with low probabilities of endorsing each CHRT-SR construct; Class (2) Moderate Suicidality, with high probabilities of endorsing pessimism, helplessness, and lack of social support, but minimal endorsement of despair or suicidal thoughts; and Class (3) High Suicidality with high probabilities of endorsing all constructs. Individuals in the High Suicidality class comprise the highest proportions of males, Black/African American individuals, and those with a psychiatric history and baseline depression, as compared with the other two classes. Regression analysis revealed that those in the High Suicidality class are more likely to overdose as compared to those in the Minimal Suicidality class ( = 0.04).
CONCLUSION
Suicidality is an essential factor to consider when building strategies to screen, identify, and address individuals at risk for overdose. The integration of detailed suicide assessment and suicide risk reduction is a potential solution to help prevent suicide and overdose among people with SUD.
Topics: Male; Humans; United States; Suicidal Ideation; Suicide; Latent Class Analysis; Depression; Substance-Related Disorders
PubMed: 37261240
DOI: 10.3389/fpubh.2023.1150062 -
Animals : An Open Access Journal From... Mar 2021The humane treatment of animals suggests that they should be housed in an environment that is rich in stimulation and allows for varied activities. However, even if... (Review)
Review
The humane treatment of animals suggests that they should be housed in an environment that is rich in stimulation and allows for varied activities. However, even if one's main concern is an accurate assessment of their learning and cognitive abilities, housing them in an enriched environment can have an important effect on the assessment of those abilities. Research has found that the development of the brain of animals is significantly affected by the environment in which they live. Not surprisingly, their ability to learn both simple and complex tasks is affected by even modest time spent in an enriched environment. In particular, animals that are housed in an enriched environment are less impulsive and make more optimal choices than animals housed in isolation. Even the way that they judge the passage of time is affected by their housing conditions. Some researchers have even suggested that exposing animals to an enriched environment can make them more "optimistic" in how they treat ambiguous stimuli. Whether that behavioral effect reflects the subtlety of differences in optimism/pessimism or something simpler, like differences in motivation, incentive, discriminability, or neophobia, it is clear that the conditions of housing can have an important effect on the learning and cognition of animals.
PubMed: 33807367
DOI: 10.3390/ani11040973 -
Bio-protocol Feb 2022In this protocol, we describe for the first time a judgment bias paradigm to phenotype the way zebrafish assess ambiguous stimuli. We have developed and validated a...
In this protocol, we describe for the first time a judgment bias paradigm to phenotype the way zebrafish assess ambiguous stimuli. We have developed and validated a protocol for a judgment bias test based on a Go/No-go task, and performed using a half radial maze. After a habituation phase, fish are trained to discriminate between two reference arms [positive (P) and negative (N)]. For this purpose, they experience a positive event (food reward in P), when presented with a specific location/color cue, and a negative event (chasing with net in N), when presented with a different location/color cue. Acquisition of the discrimination learning between P and N is revealed by the latencies to enter the experimental arms of the behavioral maze being significantly lower for the P arm than for the N arm. Once zebrafish are able to discriminate between P and N arms, their latency to enter other maze arms spatially located between P and N [(Near Positive (NP), Ambiguous (A) = half-way between P and N, and Near Negative (NN)] is analyzed. Latencies (L) to enter NP, A and NN maze arms are interpreted as indicating the individual expectancy to experience a reward/punishment on each of them. A judgment bias score (JBS) is calculated from the latencies to enter the P, N, and A arms for each fish [JBS = (L-L)*100/(L-L)], based on which fish can be classified into an optimistic/pessimistic axis. A JBS below 50 indicates that fish perceive the ambiguous stimulus as a positive one (optimistic bias), while JBS above 50 indicates that fish perceive the ambiguous stimulus as a negative one (pessimistic bias). However, for classification criteria, it could be advantageous to use the method of selecting extreme phenotypes (, upper and lower quartiles of the JBS), since JBS in zebrafish falls into a bimodal distribution (unpublished data). Therefore, this protocol provides a unique, inexpensive, and effective alternative to other methods of measuring affective states in zebrafish that might be of great interest to a broad target audience and have a large number of applications. Graphic abstract: Flow chart of the judgment bias protocol in zebrafish.
PubMed: 35340287
DOI: 10.21769/BioProtoc.4327