Multidisiplinary Research Priorities for the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Call for Action for Mental Health Science
Emily Holmes et.al.
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Abstract: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is having a profound effect on all aspects of society, including mental health and physical health. We explore the psychological, social, and neuroscientific effects of COVID-19 and set out the immediate priorities and longer-term strategies for mental health science research. These priorities were informed by surveys of the public and an expert panel convened by the UK Academy of Medical Sciences and the mental health research charity, MQ: Transforming Mental Health, in the first weeks of the pandemic in the UK in March, 2020. We urge UK research funding agencies to work with researchers, people with lived experience, and others to establish a high level coordination group to ensure that these research priorities are addressed, and to allow new ones to be identified over time. The need to maintain high-quality research standards is imperative. International collaboration and a global perspective will be beneficial. An immediate priority is collecting high-quality data on the mental health effects of the COVID-19 pandemic across the whole population and vulnerable groups, and on brain function, cognition, and mental health of patients with COVID-19. There is an urgent need for research to address how mental health consequences for vulnerable groups can be mitigated under pandemic conditions, and on the impact of repeated media consumption and health messaging around COVID-19. Discovery, evaluation, and refinement of mechanistically driven interventions to address the psychological, social, and neuroscientific aspects of the pandemic are required. Rising to this challenge will require integration across disciplines and sectors, and should be done together with people with lived experience. New funding will be required to meet these priorities, and it can be efficiently leveraged by the UK's world-leading infrastructure. This Position Paper provides a strategy that may be both adapted for, and integrated with, research efforts in other countries.
Promoting Well-Being and Gerotranscendence in an Art Therapy Program for Older Adults
Raquel Chapin Stephenson
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Abstract: This article describes a community art therapy program that was designed to promote health and well-being in old age. Observations of diverse participant interactions in the nondirec- tive therapy studio over the course of 6 years revealed the benefits of art making and how it may influence well-being during the process of advancing age. Program goals that evolved over time were to (a) foster artistic identity, (b) activate a sense of purpose and motivation, (c) use art as a bridge to connect with others, and (d) support movement toward the attainment of gerotran- scendence. The theory of gerotranscendence serves as a partic- ularly appropriate theoretical framework to understand aging and art therapy with older adults.
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Growth Mindset Tempers the Effects of Poverty on Academic Achievement
Susana Claro, David Paunesku, Carol S. Dweck
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Abstract: Two largely separate bodies of empirical research have shown that academic achievement is influenced by structural factors, such as socioeconomic background, and psychological factors, such as students’ beliefs about their abilities. In this research, we use a nationwide sample of high school students from Chile to investi- gate how these factors interact on a systemic level. Confirming prior research, we find that family income is a strong predictor of achievement. Extending prior research, we find that a growth mindset (the belief that intelligence is not fixed and can be de- veloped) is a comparably strong predictor of achievement and that it exhibits a positive relationship with achievement across all of the socioeconomic strata in the country. Furthermore, we find that students from lower-income families were less likely to hold a growth mindset than their wealthier peers, but those who did hold a growth mindset were appreciably buffered against the del- eterious effects of poverty on achievement: students in the lowest 10th percentile of family income who exhibited a growth mind- set showed academic performance as high as that of fixed mindset students from the 80th income percentile. These results suggest that students’ mindsets may temper or exacerbate the effects of economic disadvantage on a systemic level.
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The self in art therapy–Brain-based assessment of the drawing process
Yu Shiou Lin, Peter Hartwich, Annemarie Wolff, Mehrshad Golesorkhi, Georg Northoff
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Abstract: Art therapy plays important role in classical psychological assessment as it allows expressing the subject’s senseof self. However, its effectiveness and validity could be impeded by lack of relationship to the patients’neuronalchanges in their brain. The aim of our theoretical-empirical paper is to propose a novel brain-based quantitativeobjective measurement of the self and how it shapes the drawing process. We discuss recent data that how theautocorrelation window (ACW) is related to the temporal continuity of self in current neuroscience and furtherdevelop a method to use ACW to measure the temporal continuity of the drawing process, probing it in two casestudies. As expected, the schizophrenic subject shows lower ACW values compared to the healthy subject andreflects the well-known deficit in the temporal continuity of the self in schizophrenia. We concluded that ACWand eventually other measures of the brain’s spatiotemporal structure might be able to serve as objective markersof the self in the drawing process. As our approach connects brain, self, and drawing process, it provides the theoretical basis for the future development of a brain-based assessment of the self in the drawing process and art therapy
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Happiness Is Everything, or Is It? Explorations on the Meaning of Psychological Well-Being
Carol D. Ryff
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Abstract: Reigning m easures of psychological well-being have little theoretical grounding, despite an extensive literature on the contours of positive functioning. A spects of well-being derived from this literature (i.e., self-acceptance,positive relations with others, autonomy, environmental mastery, purpose in life, and personal growth) were operationalized. Three hundred and twenty-one men and women, dividedamongyoung,middle-aged,and olderadults,rated themselvesonthesemeasuresalongwith six instrum ents prom inent in earlier studies (i.e., affect balance, life satisfaction, self-esteem, m orale, locus of control, depression). Resultsrevealed that positive relations with others, autonomy, purpose in life, and personal growth were not strongly tied to prior assessment indexes, thereby supporting the claim that key aspects of positive functioning have not been represented in the empirical arena. Furthermore, age profiles revealed a more differentiated pattern of well-being than is evident in prior research.
Art therapy in art museums: Promoting social connectedness and psychological well-being of older adults
Rose Bennington, Amy Backos, Jennifer Harrison, Arnell Etherington Reader, Richard Carolan
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Abstract: This study aimed to identify the therapeutic benefits of utilizing the art museum, in art therapy programs,with older adults. Eight older adults participated in docent tours with an art making component at the[BLINDED FOR REVIEW] Museum in California. This study explored the phenomenological perspective ofthe older adults visiting the museum and aimed to understand how the experience may have impactedtheir well-being and sense of social support. Participant’s art, journals, and researcher’s observations wereanalyzed along with measures of psychological well-being, social connectedness and support. Emergentthemes in the art and writing were aligned with De Botton and Armstrong’s (2013) seven functionsof art. Results indicated the opportunity to explore emotions, thoughts, and memories safely within agroup increased participant’s well-being and allowed for social connections. Furthermore, the art createdreflected the seven functions of art, suggesting these may be useful for the layperson when visitingmuseums. This study supports previous research, recommending museum visits and art therapy witholder adults.
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Father Involvement, Paternal Sensitivity, and Father-Child Attachment Security in the First Three Years
Geoffrey L. Brown, Sarah C. Mangelsdorf, Cynthia Neff
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Abstract: To reach a greater understanding of the early father-child attachment relationship, this study examined concurrent and longitudinal associations among father involvement, paternal sensitivity, and father-child attachment security at 13 months and 3 years of age. Analyses revealed few associations among these variables at 13 months of age, but involvement and sensitivity independently predicted father-child attachment security at age 3. Moreover, sensitivity moderated the association between involvement and attachment security at 3 years. Specifically, involvement was unrelated to attachment security when fathers were highly sensitive, but positively related to attachment security when fathers were relatively less sensitive. Father involvement was also moderately stable across the two timepoints, but paternal sensitivity was not. Furthermore, there was significant stability in father-child attachment security from 13 months to 3 years. Secure attachment at 13 months also predicted greater levels of paternal sensitivity at 3 years, with sensitivity at age 3 mediating the association between 13 month and 3 year attachment security. In sum, a secure father-child attachment relationship a) was related to both quantity and quality of fathering behavior, b) remained relatively stable across early childhood, and c) predicted increased paternal sensitivity over time. These findings further our understanding of the correlates of early father-child attachment, and underscore the need to consider multiple domains of fathers’ parenting and reciprocal relations between fathering behavior and father-child attachment security.
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Social Networks in Later Life: Weighing Positive and Negative Effects on Health and Well-Being
Karen S. Rook
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Abstract: Social networks provide a mix of positive and negative experiences. Network members can provide help in times of need and day-to-day companionship, but they can also behave in ways that are inconsiderate, hurtful, or intrusive. Researchers must grapple with these dualities in order to develop a comprehensive understanding of how social network ties affect health and well-being. This article provides an overview of research that has examined the health-related effects of positive and negative aspects of social network involvement. If focuses on later life, a time when risks for declining health and for the loss or disruption of social relationships increase.
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A Longitudinal Examination of Toddlers' Behavioral Cues as a Function of Substance-Abusing Mothers' Disengagement
Hannah F. Rasmussen, Jessica L. Borelli, Cindy Decoste, and Nancy E. Suchman
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Abstract: As a group, substance-abusing parents are at risk for maladaptive parenting. The association between substance abuse and parenting may result, in part, from parents’ emotional disengagement from the parent–child relationship, which makes perceiving and responding to children’s cues more challenging. In this study, we examined whether substance-abusing mothers’ levels of disengagement from their relationship with their children (ages 2–44 months), operationalized in two different ways using parenting narratives (representational and linguistic disengagement), prospectively predicted children’s engagement and disengagement cues during a structured mother–child interaction. Within a sample of 29 mothers, we tested the hypotheses that greater maternal disengagement at Time 1 would predict a decrease in children’s engagement and an increase in children’s disengagement at Time 2. Results indicated that representational disengagement predicted a decrease in children’s engagement cues whereas linguistic disengagement predicted an increase in children’s disengagement cues. Results provide partial support for a reciprocal, iterative process in which mothers and children mutually adjust their emotional and behavioral disengagement with one another.
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Decline in Life Satisfaction in Old Age: Longitudinal Evidence for Links to Distance from Death
Denis Gerstorf, Nilam Ram, Christina Röcke, Ulman Lindenberger, Jacqui Smith1
Abstract: Using 12-year longitudinal data from deceased participants of the Berlin Aging Study (N = 414; 70–103 years at first occasion; M = 87 years) askew examined if and how old and very old individuals exhibit terminal decline in reported life satisfaction at the end of life. Relative to distance from birth (i.e., chronological age), distance to death was associated with steeper average decline per year. Distance to death accounted for more variance in interindividual differences in life satisfaction change than did age. By applying change-point growth models to mortality-related change, we identified a time point about four years prior to death at which decline showed a two-fold increase in steepness relative to the pre-terminal phase. For the oldest old (85+ years at baseline), a three-fold increase was observed. Established mortality predictors such as sex, comorbidities, risk for dementia, and intellectual functioning accounted for only small portions of interindividual differences in mortality-related change in life satisfaction. We conclude that late-life changes in subjective well-being are related to mechanisms predicting death and suggest routes for further inquiry.
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Early-Life Socioeconomic Disadvantage and Metabolic Health Disparities
Camelia Hostinar, Kharah Ross, Edith Chen, Gregory Miller
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Objective—A quarter of the world’s population suffers from metabolic syndrome (MetS). MetS prevalence stratifies by socioeconomic status (SES), such that low SES is associated with higher MetS risk. The present study examined the relative roles of early-life SES and current SES in explaining MetS risk.
Methods—Participants (N = 354, ages 15–55, M = 36.5 years, SD = 10.7; 55% female; 72.9% White, 16.9% Asian, 10.2% other) were evaluated for SES and MetS. All were in good health, defined as free of chronic medical illness and acute infectious disease. Using occupational status as a proxy for SES, we recruited roughly equal numbers of participants with low-low, low-high, high-low and high-high combinations of early-life and current SES. We used the International Diabetes Federation definition for MetS using race- and sex-specific cut-offs for waist circumference, triglyceride levels, HDL cholesterol, blood pressure, and HbA1c levels.
Results—Analyses revealed a main effect of low early-life SES on increased MetS risk according to three separate definitions. They included the traditional MetS diagnosis (OR=1.53, CI=1.01–2.33, p=.044), the number of MetS components for which diagnostic thresholds were met (OR=1.61, CI=1.10–2.38, p=.015), and a continuous indicator of metabolic risk based on factor analysis, F(1,350)=6.71, p=.010, partial η2=.019. There was also a significant interaction of early- life SES and current SES in predicting MetS diagnosis (OR=1.54, CI=1.02–2.34). Main effects of current SES were non-significant in all analyses.
Conclusions—These findings suggest MetS health disparities originate in childhood, which may be an opportune period for interventions