This thesis is about the experiences of those who have lost their loved ones through suicide (called "suicide survivors"). Focusing on how they live their lives after the suicide and the unique features of their journeys, a methodology combining narrative and dramatic (applied theatre approach) is employed, including presenting the findings with narrative analysis. Jungian psychology serves as the theoretical basis for analysis and interpretation. With the aid of Papadopoulos' 'Trauma Grid' (TG) (Papadopoulos, 2007), the contributing factors to their experiences are explored, which include negative impacts, positive outcomes, and resilience. The central research question addresses the following: What are the unique features of suicide survivors' journeys and experiences? What contributes to the negative impacts, the positive 'and the unchanged? How can a combination of Jungian psychology and Papadopoulos' TG provide a theoretical framework to put the survivors' experiences in a unique perspective? How can the methodological principles of narrative and dramatic provide a platform for suicide survivors to tell stories which are true to their experiences? In what way do narrative and dramatic approaches provide an effective vehicle suitable for this type of bereavement? After gathering data and analysing the findings, the researcher has proposed a hypothesis of suicide complex that is responsible for the complexity of suicide. Suicide is a total problem, covering biological, psychological, sociological, and cultural factors. Although this complex explains the elevated suicidal risk for survivors, it also sheds light on the transmitting effect among the general public indirectly. To tackle the issue of reducing the suicide of survivors, the community and society need to collaborate together, helping survivors transform the tragic loss to positive growth.

A meta-analysis of event-related potential (ERP) studies between controls and high-OCD groups was conducted to examine whether there is a consistent relationship between differences in P300 amplitude and latency following exposure to OCD-related stimuli.After applying exclusion and inclusion criteria, 10 studies remained. The overall effect size for amplitudinal P300 differences was non-significant and results were heterogeneous, while the overall findings for latency were significant. There is therefore tentative evidence from this meta-analysis that reduced P300 latency is a neural correlate for late onset attentional bias in OCD. In the large scale study, a control group of low OCS participants ,was compared to nonclinical high OCS participants on dependent variables of event-related potential amplitude and response time. EEG differences in P100 and ipsilateral invalid negativity (IIN) were investigated as neural correlates of the facilitated attention and disengagement biases respectively. Significant differences were found between groups across IIN amplitude only, suggesting effortful disengagement only occurred in the high OCD groups under selected conditions. The implication is that delayed disengagement is the main attentional bias associated with OCD symptomatology.

A systematic review was undertaken to examine evidence of attentional bias in youth with clinical depression. A total of five studies were included in the review. An overview of these studies is provided, and a summary of their findings is included. Attentional bias was observed with sad stimuli in clinically depressed youth, albeit the direction of this bias was inconsistent with evidence supporting a bias towards and away from sad stimuli. Methodological limitations are discussed. The need for further research is highlighted in order to enhance our understanding of the role of attentional bias in clinical depression in youth. An eye tracking study was undertaken to explore alcohol attentional bias in an outpatient population attending addiction treatment services. The study aimed to test for the presence of attentional bias towards alcohol stimuli, predictors of attention towards alcohol stimuli, and explore predictors of outcome at a three month follow up. There was evidence of attentional bias towards alcohol stimuli in current drinkers and level of craving significantly predicted attention towards alcohol stimuli. Regarding outcome, level of craving predicted outcome in current drinkers, while trait mindfulness predicted outcome in currently abstinent individuals.

dyslexia. A literature review was conducted to provide an overview of the area of dyslexia in higher education, to include definitions, information on prevalence, relevant legislation and policy. Following this, recommendations are presented which identify gaps in the knowledge base and provide a direction for future research, specifically leading to the research questions to be addressed in the subsequent empirical paper. With a focus on hearing the voice of students with dyslexia through the use of semi-structured interviews, the present study utilised a Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis framework to add to the research concerned with the impact of first diagnosis of dyslexia in higher education, in particular on the sense of self concept, and to uncover particular strengths on the part of students who have 'made if to university despite not previously having received an official diagnosis of dyslexia. A key gap in the research that this paper aims to address is a focus on the experience of being assessed for dyslexia and the way in which the diagnosis was explained and fed back to students, as being a potential factor in terms of how the student perceives the diagnosis in either a positive or negative light; and the subsequent effect this may have on acceptance of the label of dyslexia, and on the issues of self-concept and future expectations. The aim of the critical appraisal paper is to discuss and justify the decisions made around the research design and methodology used in the present study. The issues of reliability and validity in relation to qualitative studies are discussed, as are implications for future research and professional practice resulting from the present research. The paper concludes with a personal reflection on the experience of the research process.

Although research has advanced understanding of the mechanisms underlying PTSD, identifying shame as playing a role in posttraumatic stress symptoms, much remains unknown about the mechanisms that link trauma, shame and posttraumatic stress symptoms. To aid theoretical understanding and the development of appropriate therapies, a systematic search of the literature on shame and posttraumatic stress symptoms was conducted. Twelve articles met inclusion criteria and their quality was assessed against predetermined quality indicators. Higher levels of shame were significantly associated with greater posttraumatic stress symptoms. Effect sizes were moderate to high. The review lends support to the argument that shame plays a significant role in creating and/or maintaining the sense of on-going threat associated with posttraumatic stress symptoms and should be considered when designing interventions. The Impact of Inter-Parental Conflict, Parental Mental Health, the Parent-Child Relationship and Features of the Conflict on Child Well-Being. Path analysis was employed to explore the relationship between inter-parental conflict and child well-being mediated by parental mental health and the parent-child relationship. The moderating roles of type of conflict, child as cause of conflict, and nature of conflict resolution were also examined. The sample consisted of 5337 nine-year old children involved in the Growing up in Ireland study. Analyses indicated that child well-being was largely unrelated to parental mental health, type of conflict, child as cause of conflict and conflict resolution. Inter-parental conflict significantly predicted child well-being for fathers only, mediated by the father-child relationship. The parent-child relationship, and in particular parent-child conflict, exerted the greatest effect on the model.

Contamination fear features prominently in obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), but little is known about its various subtypes. In addition to the better-recognised contact contamination, feelings of dirtiness can occur in the absence of physical contact with a contaminant; this is referred to as mental contamination. Morphing fear, or a fear of being tainted by negative characteristics of others, is conceptualised as a type of mental contamination. This thesis investigates different contamination fears in OCD with the goal of understanding their phenomenology and aetiology, aiding in assessment, and advancing treatment Part I of this thesis focuses on the aetiology and reduction of contamination fears. Retrospective interviews with 30 clinical OCD participants with contamination concerns revealed the majority believed their onset was due to learning events. Negative learning experiences were found to be a viable determinant in contact contamination fear acquisition in an experiment using 76 non-fearful non-clinical participants. Another experiment gave some indication that contact contamination fears can be reduced though positive or neutral learning experiences in a non-clinical analogue sample with significant contamination fears (n = 55). Of interest in Part 11 of this thesis is the assessment and treatment of morphing fear. A questionnaire was developed to help assess for the presence and degree of morphing fear, with the aim to be useful in further research and clinical practice. Approximately 1263 participants were used in the development of the measure; the questionnaire was tested on a control and self-reported OeD group and was found to have good psychometriC properties. A novel cognitively-based CBT intervention for morphing fear was successful in reducing symptom severity of an OCD sufferer in a Single-case quasi-experimental design.

Part 1 of the thesis reviews the literature on the measurement of mentalization in adult clinical populations. As mentalization is a broad multi-faceted term, the search incorporates the related concepts of Theory of Mind (ToM) and Emotional Intelligence (EI) as these have been widely operationalised. The review presents a framework for different types of measures, including performance-based tasks and self-report questionnaires, and considers their relative psychometric strengths. It finds an absence of any one measure that covers the breadth of the mentalization construct, however, a set of recommendations are made for an optimal approach using currently available tools. Part 2 presents an empirical study of the relationship between mentalizing capability and severity of Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) in an offender sample. The results show that some specific mentalizing measures were able to modestly predict severity of ASPD. These were the ability to take the perspective of another person, the ability to read mental states from the ‘eyes’ and a general inability to mentalize. These findings suggest that a greater understanding of mentalizing capacities in people with ASPD may support improved risk assessment and clinical treatments. The study’s limitations are considered and its implications for further research and practice. Part 3 presents a critical appraisal of the process of undertaking this research. It describes some of the challenges to joint working across the NHS and the Criminal Justice System. It considers how the use of psychometric assessment can be improved in an ASPD/offender population. It builds on the literature review to recommend how the operationalisation of mentalization can be further enhanced.

The work presented in this thesis aimed to investigate attentional processing of threat in anxious individuals and its relationship to the clinical anxiety symptom of hypervigilance. Four experimental chapters report a total of nine experiments. The first three experiments (chapters 2 and 3) describe a novel paradigm designed to measure attention bias to threat in a way which overcomes limitations of previous paradigms and which differentially measures engagement and disengagement stages of attention bias. No differences in performance were seen between high and low traitanxious individuals. Instead a general behaviour pattern was seen in which shifting location of attention aids disengagement from negative content. Additionally, adapting the task to a training paradigm demonstrated that both engagement and disengagement processes play causative roles in emotional reactivity. The series of experiments reported in chapter 4 investigated pre-conscious processing of (threat-related) traits in non-emotional faces. Highly trustworthy, untrustworthy and dominant faces (relative to neutral) took longer to reach awareness. Furthermore, the size of this effect was related to observers’ personality traits showing that preconscious evaluation of social dimensions arises from interactions between stimulus features and observer-specific traits. British war veterans showed the same effect for trustworthy faces but altered effects for faces varying in dominance traits. Finally, two eye-tracking experiments reported in chapter 5 captured hypervigilance in war veterans with and without PTSD. Veterans freely viewed photographs of neutral street scenes and a correlation was found between reported severity of hypervigilance and both number of saccades and duration of fixations. In a second experiment PTSD symptom related differences were seen in eye movements recorded whilst veterans walked London streets, although these did not match those see in the laboratory task. Overall, this thesis shows that multiple stages of processing are implicated in threat biases and that such biases in attention extend to traits other than anxiety. Additionally, anxiety-related alterations in behaviour are seen even in the absence of objective threat suggesting that preferential threat processing is only part of the picture.

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a severe and complex disorder, historically believed to be ‘untreatable’. This view has been challenged through the success of various therapies in enabling individuals with this diagnosis to create ‘a life worth living’. However despite this progress little is known about how or why these treatments work. This thesis aims to contribute to this understanding through exploring the role of mentalization in BPD. Part 1 is a literature review which critically assesses studies investigating the processes that potentially underlie therapeutic change in BPD treatments. It reveals a lack of any research meeting the criteria for concluding a component of therapy a mechanism of change, but finds evidence for a link between therapeutic alliance and clinical outcome. One suggested explanation for this finding is the development of mentalization within a secure therapeutic relationship. Part 2 is an empirical research paper which further explores the contribution of mentalization to BPD. It investigates whether symptom severity in BPD is associated with performance on a battery of tasks measuring different dimensions of mentalizing ability. It also explores whether the current sample share similar impairments in mentalizing to participants in a previous study (Newbury-Helps,2011) with a diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder (ASPD). The results contradicted hypotheses, finding no evidence for a relationship between BPD severity and mentalizing impairments, and revealing significant differences between mentalizing in BPD and ASPD samples. Possible reasons for these findings are discussed, along with their implications for future clinical practice and research. This study was conducted as part of a joint project (Perera, 2012). Part 3 critically appraises this work. The experience of developing and conducting the thesis is examined and retrospective improvements to the study are suggested, along with ideas for future research, in light of the practical and personal challenges encountered throughout the process.

Accurate action perception plays an important role in social interaction enabling us to identify and appropriately respond to the behaviour of others. One such response is automatic imitation, the reflexive copying of observed body movements. Action perception is associated with activity in posterior brain areas, which feed into the Mirror Neuron System (MNS), a network of regions that has been associated with imitation and which is under the regulatory control of frontal brain areas. The fMRI study described in Chapter 2 demonstrated that in healthy adults, action perception can be subdivided into objective and subjective components which are primarily associated with activity in different brain areas. Chapter 3 demonstrated that activity in MNS areas, as measured by MEG, comprises an automatic motoric simulation of the kinematics of observed actions. Chapters 2 and 3 therefore enhance knowledge of the neural mechanisms of action perception in the typical brain. Previous studies have linked Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC) with action perception and imitation impairments. Chapters 4 and 5 demonstrated that adults with ASC exhibit atypical action perception which is likely due to difficulties with subjective processing (i.e. knowing what a ‘natural’ human movement should look like) rather than with objective visual processing of human motion. Chapter 6 reported a lack of imitation in ASC: whereas typical adults imitated human movements more than robot movements, individuals with ASC failed to imitate. Chapter 7 suggested that problems with imitation in ASC may relate to difficulties with the control of imitation: whereas control participants show increased levels of imitation when in a positive social frame-of-mind individuals with ASC did not. Chapters 4 to 7 have implications for ASC. They suggest that atypical imitation may be due to atypical sensory input to the MNS (i.e. impaired action perception) and/or atypical control of imitation.