New Research From Clinical Psychological Science

Read about the latest research published in Clinical Psychological Science:

Do Measures of Posttrauma Factors Better Explain PTSD Severity Than Pretrauma Factors? An Empirical Reply to Ogle et al.

Peter G. van der Velden and Leontien M. van der Knaap

In a 2016 study, Ogle, Rubin, and Siegler examined how pre- and posttrauma factors contribute to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptomatology. They concluded that posttrauma factors accounted for severity of PTSD symptoms better than pretrauma factors. van der Velden and van der Knaap argue that content overlap between the predictor and outcome variables was not properly accounted for in this study. They demonstrate this by analyzing data from a study of trauma conducted in the Netherlands.

Commentary–Pre- and Posttrauma Predictors of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptom Severity: Reply to van der Velden and van der Knaap

Christin M. Ogle, David C. Rubin, and Ilene C. Siegler

Ogle, Rubin, and Siegler respond to the commentary by van der Velden and van der Knaap by arguing why the technique they used in the original study to account for potential conceptual overlap was sufficient. They also note that many differences between their original study and the study reported by van der Velden and van der Knaap leave any extrapolations based on this new analysis unsupported.

Negative Self-Referential Processing Predicts the Recurrence of Major Depressive Episodes

Joelle LeMoult, Katharina Kircanski, Gautam Prasad, and Ian H. Gotlib

At least half of the people who experience a major depressive episode will have a recurrence of symptoms. In this study, the researchers were interested in whether negative self-referential processing is a predictor of depression recurrence after controlling for other factors known to influence depression recurrence, such as the use of psychotropic medication, stressful life events, and baseline level of depressive symptoms. Women who had recurrent depression that was in remission completed a self-referential encoding task and were assessed for depression. The women were then followed for 3 years or until they experienced a recurrence of depression, at which point they reported negative life events that had occurred since the first testing session. Negative self-referential processing was associated with likelihood of depression recurrence, identifying this factor as a potential treatment target.

Preliminary Study of Genetic Variation in the Dopaminergic and Serotonergic Systems and Genome-Wide Additive Genetic Effects on Depression Severity and Treatment Response

Rohan H. C. Palmer, Christopher G. Beevers, John E. McGeary, Leslie A. Brick, and Valerie S. Knopik

In this study, the researchers used a recently developed bioinformatics technique (Genomic-Relatedness-Matrix Restricted Maximum Likelihood) to examine the extent to which variation in dopaminergic and serotonergic systems influenced genetic effects between pretreatment depression severity and treatment response in participants who were part of the Sequenced Treatment Alternatives to Relieve Depression study. The researchers found that many of the genetic effects were attributable to genes outside of the dopaminergic and serotonergic systems, leading to the suggestion that other genes play a larger role in contributing to pretreatment depression symptom severity and treatment response.