The Lost Story of Clara Thompson: Love, “The Kiss” and Repair

Childhood trauma (CT), depression, and psychological pain are known predictors of suicidal ideation. Recent literature additionally highlights the importance of the attachment system. We aimed to predict suicidal ideation through CT, attachment, and psychological and social pain by using mediation models aiming to predict suicidal ideation through CT (predictor) and attachment (mediator). In the same models, we introduced psychological or social pain as a moderator of the relationship between attachment, CT, and suicidal ideation. We included 161 depressed patients and assessed depression, attachment, CT, suicidal ideation, psychological pain, and social pain. We found (1) a complete mediating effect of anxious attachment (a2b2 = 0.0035, CI95% = [0.0010; 0.0069]) on the relationship between CT on suicidal ideation, and (2) a significant complete conditional mediating effect of anxious attachment and psychological pain (index of moderated mediation VAS: 0.0014; CI95% = [0.0002; 0.0032]) but not social pain on the relationship between CT and suicidal ideation. Both models were controlled for history of suicidal attempt, depression severity, and sex. Our results suggest a developmental profile of suicidal ideation in mood disorder that is characterized by the presence of CT and insecure attachment, especially anxious attachment, that is sensitive to experiences of psychological pain. Nevertheless, we cannot conclude that avoidantly attached individuals do not present the same mechanism, as they may not disclose those ideas.

Current theories suggest that social and physical pain overlap in their neurological and physiological outcomes. We investigated how social and physical pain overlap in their psychological responses by testing the hypothesis that both social and physical pain would thwart satisfaction on four human needs, worsen mood, and increase desire to aggress. In Experiment 1, recalling an experience of social or physical pain produced overlapping effects in the form of thwarted self‐esteem and control needs and increased negative affect and desire to aggress. In Experiment 2, we induced social (Cyberball ostracism) or physical pain (cold pressor) within the laboratory session, and found that both pain types produced feelings of being ignored and excluded, and thwarted belonging, self‐esteem, control, and meaningful existence. Our results provide further support to pain overlap theories and indicate that social and physical pain cause common psychological consequences, resulting in new ways to understand and manage pain. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Objective Effective suicide prevention is hindered by a limited understanding of the neurobiology leading to suicide. We aimed to examine the association between changes in the experience of pain and disturbances in sleep quantity and quality in patients with elevated risk for suicide. Methods Three groups of adult depressed individuals, including patients following a recent suicide attempt (n = 79), patients experiencing current suicidal ideation (n = 131), and patients experiencing depression but no suicidal ideation or behavior in at least 6 months (n = 51), were examined in a case-control study for sleep quantity and quality, physical and psychological pain, pressure pain threshold, suicidal ideation, and recent suicidal behavior. Results Sleep quality, physical and psychological pain were positively associated with suicidal ideation severity. In both cases in which sleep quality was added to a model with either physical or psychological pain, physical or psychological pain became more significantly associated with suicidal ideation severity. Pressure pain threshold was elevated in patients suffering from any type of insomnia. There was no significant association between pressure pain threshold and suicidal ideation severity. Conclusions The impact of these findings lies in the identification of both psychological and physical pain, and sleep quality as potential biological mechanisms underlying suicidal risk. HIGHLIGHTS We assessed the association between pain and sleep quality in suicidal patients. Sleep quality, physical and psychological pain were associated with suicide risk. Pain perception may mediate the progression to suicidal behavior.

Can studies of pain help to bridge the gap between sensory and social impairments in autism?

This article refers to the topic of psychological (mental/emotional) and social pain in the prediction of suicidality (suicide and its associated behaviors) as an extraordinarily complex and pressing societal and adult educational challenge. The aim of this review article is to present a literature review of the current picture of the evidence regarding the impact of psychological and social pain on suicidal behavior as a societal and adult educational problem. Currently known biological factors are weak predictors of future suicidal behaviors. Psychological pain is a transdiagnostic significant predictive factor of suicidality, even in the absence of a diagnosed depression. Psychological pain has been rarely evaluated or examined in routine practice for suicide reduction. A valid tool to measure social pain is a necessary step in decreasing and minimizing rates of suicidal behavior in an at risk population of socially excluded adults. Additional practical implications for the impact of psychological and social pain on suicidality prediction in the settings of adult education are highly and urgently recommended. The hypothetical impact of different social factors (e.g., immigration status, gender, multiple psychoactive substance use as social norms, general self-efficacy) on the experience of psychological pain will be studied by mixed methods research in the field of sociology in an at risk population of socially excluded adults.

In this chapter, the effects of childhood trauma on mental and physical pain are explored. The chapter begins with a discussion regarding the relationship between physical and psychological pain in the context of trauma. Subsequently, a focus is given to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) with regard to their defining principles, correlates with other social determinants of health, and their effects on psychological and physical pain. Within this discussion, it is clear that the effect of ACEs frequently leads to subsequent pain, which can manifest in a number of different disorders and diseases. This often stems from the way that these early traumas have effects on an individual’s biology, psychology, and social capacities. Finally, the chapter explores pain-based interventions, including primary, secondary, and tertiary strategies, and it highlights an array of interventions that health care providers must consider to improve the mental and physical health of individuals with both experiences of pain and childhood trauma.

Attachment and negative affect on mental health and pain experience patients with Multiple Sclerosis: Mediated by coping strategies and loneliness

Aim: The present study attempted to explore the traumatic experiences of patients with bipolar disorder (BD), uncover the prevalence frequency of psychological pain and associated suicidal ideation among them, and investigate the relationships between these variables. Materials and Methods: Sixty BD type I patients and 60 healthy controls were included in the study. We collected the data using The Sociodemographic Information Form, The Traumatic Experience Checklist (TEC), The Beck Scale for Suicidal Ideation (BSSI), The Visual Analogue Scale (VAS), The Psychache Scale (PS), The Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), and The Young Mania Rating Scale (YMRS). Results: The findings showed that the patient group scored significantly higher on the scales than the control group (p < 0.05). Their PS total score was significantly predicted by the TEC composite scores of emotional neglect (β = -4.289, p = 0.001), emotional abuse (β = -3.798, p = 0.002), physical abuse (β = -4,000, p = 0.001), sexual abuse (β = -4.175, p = 0.002), sexual harassment (β = -2.941, p = 0.017), and trauma (β = 4.063, p = 0.001) score. And the patients’ TEC total score significantly predicted their BSSI score (β = 0.191, p = 0.013). Conclusion: Overall, compared to the healthy controls, the BD patients had more traumatic experiences, felt greater psychological pain even in the remission period, and experienced more severe suicidal ideation. In addition, while the number of trauma significantly predicted the severity of suicidal ideation, its type and severity significantly predicted psychological pain. Ultimately, the processes and causes of mental suffering among BD patients, a risk group for suicide, should always be under the spotlight even during the remission period.

The interplay between childhood trauma, hopelessness, depressive symptoms, and mental pain in a large sample of patients with severe mental disorders: A network analysis.

While the relationship between narcissism and empathy has been well-researched, studies have paid less attention to empathic accuracy, i.e., appreciating the precise strength of another person's emotions, and self-other distinction, in terms of the disparity between affective ratings for self and other in response to emotive stimuli. Furthermore, empathic responses may vary depending on whether the pain is physical or social. We investigated empathic accuracy, affective empathy, and the distinction between pain, emotion and intensity ratings for self and other, in high (n = 44) and low (n = 43) narcissism groups (HNG and LNG, respectively) selected from 611 students, in response to both types of pain. Participants watched six videos where targets expressed genuine experiences of physical and social pain, and rated the perceived affect and pain experienced by the person in the video and their own empathic emotional responses. The HNG displayed lower affective empathy and empathic accuracy than the LNG for both pain types. Within the HNG there was higher empathic accuracy for social vs. physical pain, despite reduced affective empathy for social pain, in contrast to the LNG. In addition to this paradox, the HNG demonstrated greater differences between ratings for the self and for target others than the LNG, suggesting that narcissism is associated with higher self-other distinction in response to viewing other people describing social pain.

inadequacy. When negative outcomes fall far below one’s standards of the ideal self and aspirations, and outcomes are attributed to the self, that person experiences mental pain. The basic emotion in mental pain is, thus, self-disappointment. Shneidman [5] defined psychache as an acute state of intense psychological pain associated with feelings of guilt, anguish, fear, panic, angst, loneliness and helplessness. The primary source of severe psychache ‘is frustrated psychological needs’ [6] . Psychache is the mental pain of being perturbed [7] . Perturbation refers to one’s inner turmoil, or being upset or mentally disturbed [7] . Bolger [8] defined emotional pain as a state of ‘feeling broken’ that involved the experience of being wounded, loss of self, disconnection, and critical awareness of one’s more negative attributes. Essential characteristics of emotional pain were described as a sense of loss or incompleteness of self and an awareness of one’s own role in the experience of emotional pain [8] . Orbach et al. [9, 10] have defined mental pain as ‘a wide range of subjective experiences characterized as a perception of negative changes in the self and its function that is accompanied by strong negative feelings’. Intense ‘unbearable’ mental (psychological) pain is defined as an emotionally based extremely aversive feeling which can Mental pain is no less real than other types of pain related to parts of the body, but does not seem to get adequate attention. A major problem is the lack of agreement about its distinctive features, conceptualization and operational definition. I will examine some suggested descriptions of mental pain, its association with psychiatric disorders and grief, its assessment and the implications that research in this field may entail.

Social pain is a common experience that has potent implications for health. However, individuals differ in their sensitivity to social pain. Recent evidence suggests that sensitivity to social pain varies according to a biological factor that modulates sensitivity to physical pain: resting (tonic) blood pressure. The current studies extended this evidence by testing whether blood pressure relates to sensitivity to imagined (Study 1: N = 762, 51% female adults) and acute (Study 2, preregistered: N = 204, 57% female adults) experiences of social pain and whether associations extend to general emotional responding (Studies 1–3; Study 3: N = 162, 59% female adults). In line with prior evidence, results showed that higher resting blood pressure was associated with lower sensitivity to social pain. Moreover, associations regarding blood pressure and sensitivity to social pain did not appear to be explained by individual differences in general emotional responding. Findings appear to be compatible with the interpretation that social and physical pain share similar cardiovascular correlates and may be modulated by convergent interoceptive pathways.

"He was not interested in pain": The experience of pain in child sexual abuse as conveyed by adult survivors.

Pain is a fundamental part of the human condition. It aids survival, indicates threats to bodily integrity, and forms a part of life-transitions and rites of passage from childbirth to death. Pain is experienced within a sociocultural context and attracts a constellation of different meanings – pain as damage, a sign of effort, or pain as cleansing or purifying, such as in religious practice. This thesis advances a novel approach to the human experience of pain as a functional part of our social world. Pain is conceptualised with a biopsychosocial approach, in which pain is seen as more than nociception. Four key frontiers in the social psychological understanding of pain are broached: revisiting how physical pain may relate to the experience of social rejection or ostracism (hurt feelings); how social groups can affect our experience of pain; and how sharing pain and enjoyment can bring us closer to others in our social world – but may also turn others away. I examine these focal areas with a conceptualisation of pain underpinned by the biopsychosocial model, where pain can be viewed as an experience that is biological, psychological, and social in nature, and which must incorporate these key components to be fulsomely understood. In detail, Chapter 1 introduces the thesis with an overview of the literature along with the aims and scope of the work. Next Chapter 2 is a theoretical chapter which reviews the literature on physical and social pain overlap theory and offers a new synthesis of the relationship between physical and social pain. In essence, the overlap concept binds social pain with the tangibility of physical pain and promises a unified understanding of pain and suffering. However, fMRI evidence now casts doubt on the posited neural basis of overlap. This thesis proposes a conceptualisation of pain overlap that reconnects with the principles of a biopsychosocial approach, and supports recognition of convergence as well as overlap. By unpacking the antecedents, cognitions, and emotions that are associated with each pain, the question of overlap versus difference can be better understood. Chapter 3 is an empirical examination of how groups can affect our experience of pain. The chapter presents the findings of an fMRI study into the impact of social group memberships on the experience and communication of pain. This research shows fMRI and behavioural evidence that salient group memberships facilitate pain communication. Furthermore, to the extent that people reported more pain in response to salient social groups stimuli, we found corresponding changes in brain activation in areas associated with pain experience (insula and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex). This suggests an adaptive response to pain, whereby modulating pain communication in line with salient group memberships may produce a relative reduction in pain-associated brain activation. Chapters 4 and 5 turn the spotlight on pleasure and enjoyment alongside pain. These chapters provide field and experimental evidence that sharing pain and enjoyment can help people feel more connected and serve important identity functions by revealing who we are (Chapter 4), but that pain and pleasure also invite adverse moral judgements (Chapter 5). Chapter 4 presents the findings of a field study at a cold-water mass swim in Tasmania, Australia. Experiencing intense pleasure and pain during the swim was associated with larger increases in self-revelation from pre- to post-swim, which in turn predicted enhanced identification with others over the course of the event. Chapter 5 reports 2 experimental studies with large online samples, in which participants made moral judgements about individuals portrayed to be enjoying pain. Targets who enjoyed pain were consistently considered less moral and more immoral than no-pain controls. These experiments suggest that in unlocking any psychosocial gains from pain and enjoyment, people may also need to be wary of observers’ moral judgements. In sum, this thesis advances theoretical and empirical understanding of pain; by examining how pain may bring benefits, and how pain may influence, and be influenced by, psychosocial factors. Within this research lies an important overarching theme: there are many perspectives on the phenomenon of pain, and social psychology has an important role to play within the broader scientific effort toward understanding pain.

IntroductionThe stress-diathesis model, which indicates an interaction between vulnerability and stress factors is the most acceptable paradigm to explain suicide.ObjectivesTo assess the association between suicidal behavior, early trauma, and psychological pain among women undergoing psychiatric treatment for a major depression episode.MethodsIt was a cross-sectional study approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the State University of Health Sciences of Alagoas (UNCISAL) - Brazil (approval number: 14689219.1.0000.5011). The final sample of 48 women was obtained through non-probabilistic, convenience, and consecutive sampling. Data were collected from depressed adult women undergoing outpatient psychiatric treatment in public services in the State of Alagoas, Brazil. The instruments used included a sociodemographic questionnaire prepared exclusevly for this research, modules A, B, and C of the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview (M.I.N.I.7.0.2), the Beck Depression Inventory II (BDI-II), the Psychache Scale (PAS); and the Childhood Trauma Quetionnaire (CTQ). Data were analyzed using SPSS 22. After performing the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, Student´s t tests were conducted for parametric analyses. Statistical significance was established at a p-value less than 0.05ResultsThe mean age of the total sample was 42.5 years old. 89.6% presented suicidal behavior. 62.5% of the women had major depression and 37.5% had bipolar disorder diagnosis. BDI-II scores were significantly higher among depressed women with suicidal behavior (27.9 ±13.4 vs.16.6 ±6.9; p value:0.04). BDI-II scores were also significantly higher in both passive (29.4±12.6 vs. 13.4±8.5; p value:0.01) and active (31.4±12.2 vs. 18.0±11.3; p value<.01) suicide ideation groups compared to depressed women who did report these thoughts. Psychological pain scores were also hihger in both passive (46.0±12.8 vs. 34.8±14.6; p value:0.03) and active (47.7±12.4 vs. 38.1±12.7; p value:0.02) suicide ideation groups. Women with active suicide ideation were also more prone to report a history of childhood physical neglect compared to those women who did not report active suicide ideation in the last 30 days (12.5±4.6 vs. 9.2±4.0; p value:0.02).ConclusionsThe present study aimed to investigate the association between suicidal behavior, childhood trauma, and psychological pain in depressed women undergoing treatment in outpatient psychiatric public services. The results indicated that suicidal ideation (both passive and active) was associated with a more severe depressive episode and higher scores of psychological pain, demonstrating that psychological pain is an indicator of acute suicide risk in depressed women even when they are undergoing psychiatric treatment. Effectively identifying and addressing psychological pain can play a pivotal role in reducing or mitigating the risk of suicidal behavior.Disclosure of InterestNone Declared