Background: Chronic pain conditions are pervasive, debilitating, and costly problems across the globe, yet medical treatments often fail to relieve the patients of pain. As a result, complementary treatments, such as yoga, are often used in an attempt to reduce pain and disability. Yoga seems to be effective in short-term relief of pain and, in some cases, helps alleviate psychological comorbidities associated with pain, such as depression and anxiety. The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the efficacy of an eight-week Forrest Yoga intervention on pain interference, pain severity, and psychological outcomes. Methods: Seventy-nine participants were randomly assigned to yoga or usual care and completed a battery of self-report assessments at baseline, mid-intervention (4-weeks), post-intervention (8-weeks), and follow-up (16-weeks). Measures of pain interference, pain severity, number of painful body parts, sensory and affective experience of pain, psychological flexibility, pain catastrophizing, fear of movement, depression and anxiety, and social support were included. Results: There were significant reductions in pain interference and activity avoidance in the yoga group compared to usual care post-intervention. Differences trended towards significance for pain severity and number of painful body parts. Compared to usual care, yoga participants showed significant early reductions in pain interference, pain severity, number of painful body parts, affective experience of pain, depression, overall fear of movement, and activity avoidance. Compared to usual care, these changes were not maintained at 16-weeks (2 months following the intervention). Conclusions: The yoga intervention provided some relief of pain and pain-related problems while the intervention was ongoing but did not provide sustained relief.

Shattered assumptions theory posits that each individual has a core set of assumptions about the world and the self, often termed the assumptive world which includes: the world is a benevolent place, the world is meaningful, and the self is worthy. Experiencing a traumatic event is believed to lead individuals to question these assumptions in light of the new contradictory information that causes the assumptive world to shatter, leaving the individual to rebuild a more negative perception of the world and themselves. This rebuilding of a fragile new set of core beliefs is believed to be a cause of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. Although shattered assumptions theory has been widely accepted in the field of trauma psychology, the shattering of the assumptive world has not been empirically supported due to measurement issues and poor research designs. The current study implemented a prospective design to assess a new measure of the individual’s assumptive world when there is an intervening trauma. In a college sample (N = 336), individuals who experienced a traumatic event over the course of the semester (n = 40) evidenced decreases in optimism in their assumptive worlds, in comparison to individuals who did not experience a traumatic event. The results suggest there is a limited shattering of the assumptive world for those who experienced a traumatic event. Applications, limitations and future directions are discussed.

Experts have argued that hoarding disorder occurs in part because hoarding behaviors help individuals avoid distress and feel positive emotions in the moment. For example, when people who hoard choose to save something rather than discard it, they may avoid feelings of anxiety, and when people who hoard acquire something new, they may feel excited. However, no previous studies have examined whether or not these changes actually occur in the moment. These processes could also potentially be altered by how individuals respond to their emotions in the moment. For example, individuals who hoard may have stronger emotional reactions, distinguish less between different emotions, tend to avoid their emotions more, or tend to be inattentive of their experience, which could change how their emotions in the moment affect their behavior. Therefore, this study examined whether or not the anticipated effects of hoarding behaviors on mood occurred, and whether or not there were differences between those with higher and lower hoarding scores on how they respond to their emotions, in a sample of 61 college students. Participants completed two online surveys one week apart, and responded to questions on their mobile phone throughout the week. As expected, the students with higher hoarding scores had stronger emotional reactions to stress, avoided their emotions more often, and were less attentive to their ongoing experience. Both those with higher hoarding scores and lower hoarding scores vi reported that they acquired new items primarily to feel good. However, acquiring, discarding, working with items, and looking for items did not change either group’s mood in the moment. Overall, these findings suggest that people who hoard do have differences in how they respond to their emotions, which could mean that treatments that target these responses may be useful for these people. They also show the importance of understanding why working to put yourself in a good mood through acquiring is problematic for some people and not others, and suggest that there may be a difference between how these behaviors are intended to perform and their actual results.

The science of psychotherapy is reliant on various research designs to provide evidence for and bolster the efficacy of therapeutic interventions, techniques, and packages. Among the therapeutic orientations with ample evidence of support is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT; Hayes et al., 1999). The creators of ACT propose targeting psychological flexibility, broadly defined as engaging with personal values with no regard of the presence of unwanted and undesired experiences. The Life Skills Modules protocol was developed to provide graduate student trainees with a simple and accessible tool to provide effective ACT treatment clients from the local community seeking treatment at the Southern Illinois University Clinical Center. The results of the study indicates that the clients improved in psychological flexibility, inflexibility, and symptoms of anxiety and depression, though this improvement is not explained by number of sessions nor completion of the protocol. Additionally, improvement in flexibility and inflexibility accounted for a significant portion of the variance in the improvement in symptoms as well. Flourishing did not improve within the clients. This study, while being marred with significant limitations, supports the ACT model of change of targeting psychological flexibility and inflexibility as being important towards improvement in treatment. The results of the study do not indicate the use of the protocol is the explicit cause of improvement. Discussion of the results and limitations are provided.

Sexual trauma is linked to adverse health outcomes (e.g., D’Andre et al., 2011). Given the negative sequelae of sexual trauma, exploration of factors that influence the relation between sexual trauma and health outcomes is crucial. Current literature suggests that psychological flexibility and inflexibility may be factors in promotion of individuals’ health or pathology (e.g., Gloster et al., 2017). The current study sought to explore the variability in psychological flexibility and inflexibility among participants and the potential moderating effects of psychological flexibility and inflexibility on the relation between sexual trauma and both mental and physical health outcomes. Moderation analyses failed to support significant moderation effect of psychological flexibility on either physical or mental health outcomes. However, psychological inflexibility did significantly moderate the relationship between sexual trauma and emotional wellbeing b = 5.50 t(247) = 2.69 p < 0.01 such that sexual trauma significantly predicts worse emotional wellbeing at high levels of psychological inflexibility. Similarly, in the model examining the potential moderating effect of psychological inflexibility on the relationship between sexual trauma and physical functioning, the interaction was significant, b = 7.51 t(248) = 2.13, p < 0.05, suggesting possible moderation. However, after further probing, psychological inflexibility did not significantly moderate the relationship between sexual trauma and physical functioning at any level. Additionally, t-test results suggest that regardless of a sexual trauma history, participants do not significantly differ in their levels of psychological flexibility or inflexibility. However, within moderation models both psychological flexibility and psychological inflexibility predicted physical and mental health outcomes, further supporting the association between resiliency and psychological flexibility and the link between inflexibility and worsened health outcomes. Findings suggest that interventions that promote psychological flexibility and target inflexibility may be important health promotion factors among both survivors of sexual trauma and non-traumatized populations.

No description available.

This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of an applied mental health course in a university setting in reducing distress and symptoms of depression and increasing levels of psychological flexibility. As university psychological services are unable to meet the need of their students, other methods of treatment must be explored. Participants in the study are comprised of those who chose to enroll in a student development course aimed at increasing psychological flexibility and introducing basic psychoeducation as well as various university students who elected to participate. Depressive symptoms and psychological flexibility were measured pre-, mid-, and twice post-test in both the experimental and control groups. Split-plot Analysis of Variance and Covariance were conducted to explore outcomes. Results suggest that the psychoeducational course effectively reduces symptoms of depression and levels of psychological flexibility were increased for participants within the course. However, levels of distress were not significantly affected by the course. Further research to increase generalizability and affirm results is necessary.

No description available.

This study aimed to contribute to the understanding of playing through distress and painduring athletic training and competition by investigating athletes’ psychological flexibilityand psychosocial responses to pain. This quantitative study consisted of two parts: (1) anonline survey (explicit measures) consisting of the Personalized Psychological FlexibilityIndex (PPFI) and the behavioural subscale of the Avoidance-endurance Questionnaire(AEQ). (2) an Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP-Athlete) that was specificallydeveloped for this project, to assess patterns of psychologically flexible responses todiscomfort and pain responses in a homogeneous sample of athletes’. Twenty-nine malefootball players that were pain-free with no injuries completed the survey, and 15 of themalso completed the challenging IRAP-Athlete. The results showed that athletes reportedhigher frequencies of endurance responses to pain as compared to avoidance responses, andhigher levels of acceptance towards discomfort when pursuing a goal relevant to theirtraining. The IRAP-Athlete seems to be a promising tool that can be used to further exploreathletes’ responses to distress.

No description available.