Establishing the Contributions of Romantic Partners to Older Individuals’ Prescription Opioid Misuse
People tend to exhibit health behaviors similar to those around them, especially their romantic partners or spouses. Studies of the inter-spousal correlation in health status among married couples in later life found a tendency to share lifestyle behaviors such as diet, smoking, and exercise. To date, however, research had not examined the romantic relationship context of serious prescription behaviors at the time of the prescription of a new opioid medication, a key medical event that commonly precedes longer-term, problematic opioid use or misuse.
Dr. Lauren M. Papp, Jane Rafferty Thiele Professor in Human Ecology and Professor of Human Development & Family Studies at the University of Wisconsin- Madison, and her colleagues, used an MRI Grant to study this area of research.
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The Effects of A Brief Interconnectedness Meditation On Perceived Social Support, Emotional Reactivity, and Mental Health
Dr. Ilana Haliwa, Assistant Professor in the Psychology Department of Salve Regina University, is using an MRI Grant to test the feasibility, acceptability, and effectiveness of a brief interconnectedness meditation in improving perceived social support among college students.
Brief interconnectedness meditations have been found to promote feelings of connection; however, research has yet to explicitly test the effectiveness, feasibility, and acceptability of these among college students. This is critical, as despite reporting high rates of depression and utilization of mental health services, interventions among college students is low, in part due to lack or time and preference for self-help.
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Existential Isolation and Well-Being Among Persons In Residential Treatment Facilities
Cathy Cox, PhD, Professor and Director of Graduate Studies at Texas Christian University, and her colleagues, are using an MRI grant to explore whether persons scoring high on EI, as compared to their low scoring counterparts, report lower levels of treatment engagement, counselor rapport and satisfaction, and reduced emotional, psychological and social well-being.
Existential isolation (EI) is the feeling of being alone in one’s subjective experience of the world, along with an awareness that no one can completely understand another person’s worldview. Assessed as both a situational state or a dispositional trait, EI is related to diminished physical health and psychological well-being. Existentially isolated individuals, for example, report lower meaning in life, self-esteem, identity loss, less support for communal values and declines in personality traits such as conscientiousness and emotional stability.
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Dimensions of Couples' Relationship Functioning That Predict Mental Health
Couples raising an autistic child face additional challenges that may compromise both their relationships and their mental health; yet they are often neglected in couples’ research.
Chrystyna Kouros PhD, Professor in the Department of Psychology at SMU, and Naomi V. Ekas, PhD, Professor in the Department of Psychology at TCU, are using an MRI grant to explore the relationships of couples with either non-autistic or autistic children.
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Training Youth with Disruptive Behaviors as School-Based Peer Coaches
Stanley Huey, PhD, Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Southern California, and Katherine Galbraith, doctoral graduate student at University of Southern California, using an MRI grant, took a counterintuitive approach to remediating disruptive behaviors that deemphasizes the youth’s existing problems and focuses instead on training youth to help others. They developed a peer coach training model (PCT) which involves teaching positive skills to youth and encouraging them to influence their peers. The goal is to facilitate the development of new “helper” identities by having target youth serve as coaches for other youth. They built on the work of prior researchers that showed the benefits of “peer therapist training” for delinquent girls. That study found that training girls as “peer therapists” was more effective than alternative approaches at reducing recidivism.
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The relation between prenatal stress and infant negative emotionality: Buffering effects of maternal predictability
Stress exposure during pregnancy can program infants to adverse mental health outcomes later in life. Placental corticotrophin-releasing hormone (CRH), a stress responsive hormone regulated by the placenta, can be measured as an indicator of stress exposure during pregnancy.
Özlü Aran, MS, a sixth-year developmental psychology doctoral student at the University of Denver, hypothesizes that adverse developmental outcomes can be prevented via predictable and warm relationships with caregivers. She is using an MRI grant to study whether the association between higher levels of placental CRH due to stress and greater negative emotionality in infancy can be buffered through maternal predictability.
This study will be the first to test whether the association between higher levels of stress responsive placental CRH and greater negative emotionality in infancy can be buffered through maternal predictability.
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Integrating psychosis Recovery by Enabling Adult Carers at Home (psychosis REACH) in an early psychosis clinic
Psychosis typically develops during late adolescence and early adulthood. Due to its early onset, as well as the high likelihood of chronicity, psychosis is associated with diagnoses that are considered to be among the most disabling health conditions worldwide. Yet outcomes are greatly improved by intervening at the earliest possible point.
Psychosis REACH (Recovery by Enabling Adult Carers at Home) is a Family Intervention for psychosis that delivers both psychoeducation and evidence-based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for psychosis (CBTp)-informed skills to family caregivers in the community and can be delivered within a CSC setting. This approach was developed at the University of Washington under the leadership of Dr. Sarah Kopelovich in collaboration with leaders in the field of CBTp including Professor Douglas Turkington and Dr. Kate Hardy.
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Does positive parenting improve emotion regulation in at-risk youth across the transition to adolescence?
Rates of adolescent internalizing problems (especially anxiety and depressive symptoms) have increased over 40% in the past decade leading the US Surgeon General to declare a youth mental health crisis. There is an imminent public health need to study processes that mitigate risk for internalizing disorders prior to adolescence, an acute developmental inflection point for increased risk.
Dr. Bridget Callaghan, Assistant Professor, and Dr. Jennifer Somers, Postdoctoral Fellow, in the Department of Psychology at UCLA are using an MRI grant to add an important second year, longitudinal measure to an earlier study measuring youth psychopathology and child interaction in a recovery from conflict task.
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NIH funded research investigates how physicians communicate implicit bias when they interact with Hispanic patients during a clinical visit.
Studies suggest that if negative attitudes and stereotypes are automatically activated when a provider encounters a stigmatized patient, they can affect nonverbal forms of bias like how long the provider spends with the patient, the extent to which the provider dominates the conversation and expresses positive affect (Hagiwara et al., 2020).
Dr. Jeff Stone, University Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Arizona received support from the Mental Research Institute to conduct research and investigate how physicians communicate implicit bias when they interact with Hispanic patients during a clinical visit.
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Promoting healthy and supportive couple relationships through sustainable, evidence-based program delivery
Maintaining a healthy and supportive couple relationship can be a trying endeavor for many couples, with national estimates suggesting as many as one-third of marriages are distressed, a statistic that may be a conservative estimate at present given the challenges many couples are facing in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. The presence and prevalence of this distress is nontrivial, as unmitigated relationship distress forecasts a variety of negative outcomes for individuals, their families, and the broader community.
In response to the prevalence of relationship distress across the country and its negative effect on adults and children, a myriad of relationship education and intervention programs have been developed…
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The Nurturing Connections Intervention for Mother-Infant Dyads
The perinatal period is a critical phase in the lives of mothers and infants. Numerous studies have shown that perinatal mood and anxiety disorders (PMADs) are the most common risks associated with childbirth. PMADs and related psychosocial stressors may result in significant impairment in maternal and infant functioning as well as disturbances in the quality of the mother-infant relationship.
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Thank You
We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your continued interest in MRI and to give you some news on our grants…
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Preventing Postpartum Depression Via an Online, Self-study Approach for Couples at Elevated Risk
Postpartum depression (PPD) affects about 12% of women and is a strong risk factor for paternal PPD, which affects about 9% of men. The negative consequences of untreated parental PPD for infants’ wellbeing persist through childhood and adolescence and include a range of mental health, relational and cognitive problems.
Yunying (Annie) Le, PhD, Research Assistant Professor in the department of Psychology at the University of Denver, is using an MRI grant to address this gap with an important study. Her project has two research aims.
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Evaluating Promoting Resilience in Self-Management (PRISM) in Community Settings
Drs. Carissa D’Aniello-Heyda, Associate Professor of Community, Family and Addiction Services at Fairfield University, Rachel Tambling, Professor of Human Development and Family Sciences at the University of Connecticut and Beth Russell, Associate Professor of Human Development and Family Sciences at the University of Connecticut used an MRI grant in a pilot study to test whether the PRISM Program can relieve caregiver anxiety, depression, perceived stress and burden…
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Culturally Adapting Relationship Education for Latino Sexual Minority Men
Latino sexual minority men (LSMM) face mental health, substance use, and sexual health disparities, partially driven by minority stress. They also face significant, intersectional cultural challenges to forming healthy, strong romantic and sexual relationships with other men. These challenges are, in part, related to their intersecting Latino and sexual minority identities (e.g., family rejection, internalized stigma, scarce culturally salient role models for healthy dating, cultural norms regarding race and ethnicity among gay and bisexual men, substance use norms among sexual minority men).
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Narcissism and Romantic Relationship Functioning: The Mediating Roles of Coercive and Collaborative Theories of Power
MRI recently awarded $25,000 to support Dr. Virgil Zeigler-Hill’ s project titled “Narcissism and Romantic Relationship Functioning: The Mediating Roles of Coercive and Collaborative Theories of Power.” Dr. Zeigler-Hill is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Psychology at Oakland University in Michigan. The goal of this research was to gain a better understanding of how individuals with narcissistic personality features perceive and respond to issues surrounding power dynamics in their romantic relationships.
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Possible Selves in Midlife Women: Toward a more diverse understanding of social and contextual factors related to risk for disordered eating
Most eating disorders (ED) research has focused on young women. This has left other vulnerable groups largely overlooked, such as middle-aged women and those from minority backgrounds. Leslie Frazier, PhD, Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Florida International University, and her team, are using an MRI grant to address this gap in the literature and to better understand the extent and the nature of eating disorder risk in menopausal women. Their research will develop and test a theoretically driven model of the influences of biopsychosocial, intra- and interpersonal and sociocultural factors that may impact culturally diverse middle- aged women’s self-perceptions, body image, emotional regulation and risk for ED’s.
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Couples in Conflict: Bridging the Systemic Divide
Dr. Nathan Hardy was given a grant from Mental Research Institute to develop and then test a systemic relationship education program against the traditional behavioral-based method of relationship education.
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Hope Through Strengths Results
Results, based upon clinic data from the Summer of 2022, suggest that the Hope Through Strengths protocol successfully reduces psychological distress while simultaneously increasing the hope and well-being of clients. This is a vital step in demonstrating the clinical efficacy of strength-based interventions.
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Dyadic analyses of relational processes among Mozambique couples
Matthew A. Diemer, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology and Professor of Education at the University of Michigan received an MRI grant to examine relational processes more closely and deeply in couples (i.e., male partner processes impacting female partner processes, and vice versa) in Mozambique, via a dyadic structural equation modeling (SEM) approach. Dr. Diemer repurposed existing measures of partner support, trust in medical professionals, and internalized HIV stigma – which were developed and validated in North America – to the Mozambican context. He hypothesized they, along with partner empathy, are likely important mediators of the relationships between the HoPS+ intervention (which emphasizes male partner involvement) and key child and maternal health outcomes. Because Mozambique has one of the highest rates of HIV infection in the world, this work holds the potential to address this critical problem.
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