Collective Traumatic Events Research Articles

'I am more stressed if my infection affects others': development of a COVID-19-related stress scale in older people and examination of its validity and associations with mental health risks.

COVID-19 was a collective traumatic event; however, different individuals may have perceived it differently. This study investigated what older people in a collective culture perceived as stressful during COVID-19 and examined how different stressors related to COVID-19 infection and mental health risks. Thirty-six participants from diverse backgrounds engaged in a three-round Delphi study to generate items for a COVID-19-related stress scale for older adults (CSS-OA). Subsequently, 4674 people (aged ≥60 years) participated in a cross-sectional telephone survey; interviewers collected their responses to CSS-OA and information about COVID-19 infection, depressive symptoms, anxiety, loneliness and demographics. Exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis were conducted on CSS-OA. A multiple indicator multiple cause (MIMIC) model was used to examine associations between CSS-OA and other measures. The Delphi process generated eight items, all secondary or tertiary stressors related to infection. Exploratory factor analysis revealed a three-factor model, and confirmatory factor analysis confirmed an excellent fit (comparative fit index = 0.99, root mean square error of approximation = 0.06). Pre-existing mental health conditions, having family members/friends infected with COVID-19, loneliness, anxiety and depressive symptoms were associated with higher stress. Conversely, self-infection with COVID-19, older age, being female and living alone were negatively associated with some domains of CSS-OA (all P < 0.05). The Delphi process enhanced our understanding of what older people perceived as stressful, much of which resulted from certain healthcare strategies and reflected cultural influences. These and the MIMIC results highlight the need to balance public health policies with respect to infectious diseases and older people's mental health and quality of life.

Loneliness During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Implications for Mental Health and Substance Use

Aim: Traumatic stressor events disrupt the normal daily functioning of individuals and groups, and the consequences of collective trauma magnify psychopathology and mental health issues. One overlooked mental health implication of traumatic stress is loneliness. The current study examines loneliness as a result of traumatic stress and its psycho-social correlates, including substance abuse and changes in daily health behaviors. Design: Cross-sectional, nationwide, online survey. Methods: This study was a cross-sectional, nationwide online survey that included 2,530 adults in the United States, 18-83 years old, and examined the associations between loneliness and psychosocial factors and substance use during the initial part of the COVID-19 pandemic. Results: Increased loneliness was associated with younger age, single marital status, and lower levels of education. Mental health disorders, including major depression, generalized anxiety, and somatization, were also associated with high levels of loneliness. Further, individuals with high levels of loneliness were more likely to report increased substance use, including alcohol and illicit drugs. Discussion: The findings of this study indicate that during times of collective traumatic events, high levels of loneliness are a risk factor for mental health and substance use. Further initiatives are warranted to create awareness and institute routine screenings for symptoms of loneliness to mitigate mental health distress and increases in substance abuse.

Exploratory factor analysis of shared trauma in psychiatric-mental health nurses using the Shared Trauma Professional Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (STPPG)

IntroductionThe Shared Trauma Professional Post Traumatic Growth Inventory (STPPG) was developed by Tosone et al. (2014) to help understand shared trauma (ST) in social workers. ST occurs when the healthcare professional and client both experience the same collective traumatic event. This inventory has been adapted for use with mental health nurses. A cross-sectional study of N = 552 mental health nurses was completed in the spring of 2023 to assess the feasibility of using the STPPG to explore shared trauma in mental health nurses. MethodsAn exploratory factor analysis was run for the STPPG using squared multiple correlations with the maximum likelihood method. ResultsThe alpha coefficient ranged from 0.82 to 0.89 for 2-factors and 0.73 to 0.89 for 3-factors. The results indicated that all correlations were significant among the total scales and subscales. All correlations were positive, ranging from 0.81 to 0.95 for two factors and 0.58 to 0.89 for three factors. ConclusionThe STPPG has confirmed a two-factor analysis for mental health nurses. The STPPG is a valid inventory to measure ST in mental health nurses and will allow the concept to be further studied.

COVID-19 post-traumatic stress disorder: the role of ACEs, alexithymia, and attachment in the Italian population.

The COVID-19 pandemic is considered a collective traumatic event. Several studies have highlighted high levels of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms among the general population during the pandemic. The general aim of this research is to explore the role of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), alexithymia, and anxiety and avoidance attachment dimensions as risk factors that are making individuals more vulnerable to PTSD-COVID-related symptoms. The COVID-19-PTSD Questionnaire, 20-Item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), Adverse Childhood Experiences Questionnaire, and the Experiences in Close Relationships-Revised Form (ECR-R) were administered to 224 participants who were between 18 and 65 years of age, and residents of Italy. Socio-demographic variables were also collected. The data was collected between October 2021 and March 2022. The findings of the Spearman correlation analysis showed several significant associations between alexithymia, attachment dimensions, and PTSD symptoms related to COVID-19 diagnosis and age. A multivariable logistic regression model was performed using the COVID-19-PTSD total scores over/under the clinical cut-off as dependent variables and age, gender, anxiety and avoidance attachment scores, ACEs, and total alexithymia as independent variables, with alexithymia total score (B = .071; p = .001), ECR-R Anxiety (B = .034; p = .001) and ECR-R Avoidance (B = -.033; p = .024) showing to respectively increase and reduce the possibility of reporting clinical symptomatology. Emotional regulation and attachment have been shown to be risk factors for COVID-19 PTSD symptomatology. Focused intervention programs and emotional education can be useful tools for developing protective factors in the general population.

The Impact of Event Scale-Revised: Examining Its Cutoff Scores among Arab Psychiatric Patients and Healthy Adults within the Context of COVID-19 as a Collective Traumatic Event.

The Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R) is the most popular measure of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It has been recently validated in Arabic. This instrumental study aimed to determine optimal cutoff scores of the IES-R and its determined six subscales in Arab samples of psychiatric patients (N = 168, 70.8% females) and healthy adults (N = 992, 62.7% females) from Saudi Arabia during the COVID-19 pandemic as a probable ongoing collective traumatic event. Based on a cutoff score of 14 of the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale 8-items (DASS-8), receiver operator curve (ROC) analysis revealed two optimal points of 39.5 and 30.5 for the IES-R in the samples (area under the curve (AUC) = 0.86 & 0.91, p values = 0.001, 95% CI: 0.80-0.92 & 0.87-0.94, sensitivity = 0.85 & 0.87, specificity = 0.73 & 0.83, Youden index = 0.58 & 0.70, respectively). Different cutoffs were detected for the six subscales of the IES-R, with numbing and avoidance expressing the lowest predictivity for distress. Meanwhile, hyperarousal followed by pandemic-related irritability expressed a stronger predictive capacity for distress than all subscales in both samples. In path analysis, pandemic-related irritability/dysphoric mood evolved as a direct and indirect effect of key PTSD symptoms (intrusion, hyperarousal, and numbing). The irritability dimension of the IES-R directly predicted the traumatic symptoms of sleep disturbance in both samples while sleep disturbance did not predict irritability. The findings suggest the usefulness of the IES-R at a score of 30.5 for detecting adults prone to trauma related distress, with higher scores needed for screening in psychiatric patients. Various PTSD symptoms may induce dysphoric mood, which represents a considerable burden that may induce circadian misalignment and more noxious psychiatric problems/co-morbidities (e.g., sleep disturbance) in both healthy and diseased groups.

The Increased Alcohol and Marijuana Use Associated with the Quality of Life and Psychosocial Aspects: a Study During the Covid-19 Pandemic in a Brazilian University Community.

The primary practice adopted to reduce Covid-19 contamination is social distancing (SD). SD had significant consequences on alcohol/drug use, quality of life, and psychosocial aspects. In the university community specifically, SD produces a collective traumatic event with changes in the work routine by the suspension of presence. This study aims to identify and analyze the associations of increased alcohol and marijuana consumption on the quality of life and psychosocial aspects of the university community (students, professors, and technical and administrative staff) at a Brazilian public university during SD due to Covid-19 pandemic. This descriptive and cross-sectional study used an online questionnaire to obtain information from 2790 university community participants. Data were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics version 22. The analysis included descriptive associations performed using Spearman’s correlation coefficient and p < 0.05 was taken as statistically significant. The participants’ majority was 62% female, 95.4% students, 73% were 17–25 years old, 33.4% had income between 1 and 3 minimum wage, and 48% of the university community “totally adhered to SD.” The increased alcohol consumption during SD was associated with a worsening in quality of life (p = 0.001), health satisfaction (p = 0.015), the meaning of life (p = 0.040), ability to concentrate (p = 0.001), satisfaction with yourself (p = 0.029), and frequency of negative feelings (p = 0.001); in contrast, increased alcohol use improved satisfaction with peer support (p = 0.042), as well as increased marijuana use improved satisfaction with sex life (p < 0.001). The increased alcohol use was higher in women (30.5%) than in men (26.7%) and was negatively associated with more quality of life and psychosocial aspects among women than men. Students were the segment that presented the highest frequency of associations with increased alcohol and/or marijuana use in the three domains analyzed. This study innovated by associating increased alcohol and/or marijuana use with worsening quality of life and psychosocial aspects rather than evaluating them apart. Future studies must identify whether this association between increased alcohol use, mainly, and the worsening quality of life and psychosocial aspects during the SD period is maintained or improved with the return to face-to-face activities at the university, with particular attention to women and students. Psychologists and other mental health professionals should be called upon to develop interventions to meet emerging mental health needs.

Difficult heritage on social network sites: An integrative review

Social network sites (SNS) have recently become an active ground for interactions on contested and dissonant heritage, on the heritage of excluded and subaltern groups, and on the heritage of collective traumatic past events. Situated at the intersection between heritage studies, memory studies, Holocaust studies, social media studies and digital heritage studies, a growing body of scholarly literature has been emerging in the past 10 years, addressing online communication practices on SNS. This study, an integrative review of a comprehensive corpus of 80 scholarly works about difficult heritage on SNS, identifies the profile of authors contributing to this emerging area of research, the increasing frequency of publication after 2017, the prevalence of qualitative research methods, the global geographic dispersion of heritage addressed, and the emergence of common themes and concepts derived mostly from the authors ‘home’ fields of memory studies, heritage studies and (digital) media studies.

The Arabic Version of the Impact of Event Scale-Revised: Psychometric Evaluation among Psychiatric Patients and the General Public within the Context of COVID-19 Outbreak and Quarantine as Collective Traumatic Events.

The Coronavirus Disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic has provoked the development of negative emotions in almost all societies since it first broke out in late 2019. The Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R) is widely used to capture emotions, thoughts, and behaviors evoked by traumatic events, including COVID-19 as a collective and persistent traumatic event. However, there is less agreement on the structure of the IES-R, signifying a need for further investigation. This study aimed to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Arabic version of the IES-R among individuals in Saudi quarantine settings, psychiatric patients, and the general public during the COVID-19 outbreak. Exploratory factor analysis revealed that the items of the IES-R present five factors with eigenvalues > 1. Examination of several competing models through confirmatory factor analysis resulted in a best fit for a six-factor structure, which comprises avoidance, intrusion, numbing, hyperarousal, sleep problems, and irritability/dysphoria. Multigroup analysis supported the configural, metric, and scalar invariance of this model across groups of gender, age, and marital status. The IES-R significantly correlated with the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale-8, perceived health status, and perceived vulnerability to COVID-19, denoting good criterion validity. HTMT ratios of all the subscales were below 0.85, denoting good discriminant validity. The values of coefficient alpha in the three samples ranged between 0.90 and 0.93. In path analysis, correlated intrusion and hyperarousal had direct positive effects on avoidance, numbing, sleep, and irritability. Numbing and irritability mediated the indirect effects of intrusion and hyperarousal on sleep and avoidance. This result signifies that cognitive activation is the main factor driving the dynamics underlying the behavioral, emotional, and sleep symptoms of collective COVID-19 trauma. The findings support the robust validity of the Arabic IES-R, indicating it as a sound measure that can be applied to a wide range of traumatic experiences.

Psycho-autistic trauma of laura deighton in torey l. hayden’s overheard in a dream

Laura's autistic son Conor, whose ramifications have caused so much suffering, has irreversibly upset her. This paradigm commonly use theories of trauma's influence on the human psyche to examine an individual's experience of a collective traumatic event in a book, making a link between people's experiences and cultural groupings, or between the personal and public worlds. Trauma is an incomprehensible occurrence that shatters identity and eludes normal remembrance and narrative representation, and it has impacted the psyche of Laura, the protagonist. Conor's mood swings and oddities cause chaos in their lives, and they can't seem to get away from them. Conor's emotional instability eventually leads to her turbulent existence, which has an emotional and psychological consequence that cannot be rationalized. The narrative swiftly transitioned from a clinical case study of an autistic kid to a weird dream world in which the child's mother lived as a youngster. Torgon, her fictional character, is characterised by her awestruck visions, which cause her to get increasingly excited. Her strange behaviour was prompted by her recollections of her children and the sorrow of their existence.

The Role of Psychology in Media During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross-National Study.

Dealing with COVID-19 and with the preventative measures that have been taken to mitigate the transmission of the virus causing the pandemic has posed a great challenge to the population. While psychologists have expertise with regard to preventive behavior change and to dealing with the mental health impact of measures, their expertise needs to be effectively communicated to the public. Mass media play a critical role in times of crisis, in many cases being the only source of information. While most research focuses on the importance of information content as a factor affecting psychological responses to a collective traumatic event, the way information is framed in the media is likely to influence the way health professionals are perceived as trustworthy. This study aimed to analyze the media framing of information from psychology during the COVID-19 pandemic in six countries from America and Europe, identifying the most recurrent topics in the news (n news items = 541) related to psychology and mental health. In all six countries the media address the psychological needs of the population, which vary depending on the imposed restrictions. The news content is influenced by the scientific sources used by the media. While the most prevalent topics focus on psychological risk and the need to seek mental health care, the least prevalent topics relate to counseling and behavioral guidelines for managing the psychological consequences of the pandemic. The study findings provide insight into how psychological knowledge contributes to the understanding and mitigation of COVID-19 consequences in different countries and identified fields where psychologists were consulted to respond to a health emergency. They also show a preference to consult other experts when searching for contextual or more macro-social explanations of critical situation.

EVALUATING A GRASSROOTS INITIATIVE IN A GLOBAL DISASTER: MENTAL HEALTH TIPS CIRCULATED DURING THE EARLY STAGES OF THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC

In March 2020, the United Kingdom was placed under its first national coronavirus lockdown. This significantly reduced people’s access to factors associated with good mental health, such as work and physical activity. This work describes the process of evaluating one psychologist’s response to the early stages of lockdown - the development and circulation of daily mental health tips. These used Jahoda’s latent deprivation (1982) theory to promote psychological wellbeing amongst recipients. Collective traumatic events such as the coronavirus pandemic require timely and evidence-based responses, and research suggests that offering psychological intervention at the wrong time can be harmful (Roseet al., 2003). The community initiative described in the present work was therefore evaluated in terms of its reach and utility. This was achieved through an online questionnaire (n = 14), and additional information from people in regular receipt of the mental health tips (n = 6). The unique backdrop of the early stages of the global pandemic resulted in considerable challenges to evaluating this initiative, especially with regards to some of the design decisions taken. These challenges are reflected on here, resulting in recommendations for researchers who may wish to conduct similar projects in the future.

Prise en charge médico-psychologique immédiate aux urgences des personnes adultes victimes d’agression sexuelle : revue systématique de la littérature

IntroductionIt seems that sexual violence has a greater impact on mental health (consequences like post-traumatic stress disorder, major depressive disorder, alcohol use disorder, suicidal thoughts, suicide attempts) than any other form of traumatic event. One of the challenges public health instances have to face is how to provide medico-psychological care from an early stage. When it comes to dealing with traumatic collective events, immediate medico-psychological care protocols have been widely formalized. The purpose of our study is to determine whether this first care is usually applied to adults who are victims of sexual assault. MethodA systematic review was conducted using the Pubmed, PsycINFO and SUDOC databases. ResultsOut of 2173 articles, 24 were selected. There seems to be a consensus on a few points regarding how to take psychological care of sexual assault victims as soon as they are admitted in the ER. For the victims’ reception, all professionals dealing with victims of sexual assault should be specifically trained to do so. Multi-professional care should be coordinated and those interventions should be centralized, in one single place. Initially, It's essential to collect the risk factors that could trigger post-traumatic stress disorder, assess the signs of acute distress and assess the risk of suicide. Psychological interventions for victims of collective traumatic events (interventions as Psychological First Aid or the interventions of the Cellules d’Urgence Médico-Psychologique in France) should be applied to sexual assault victims. These acts consist in having an empathetic and non-judgmental attitude, while at the same time aiming to restore an immediate sense of security and control. These also include assessing and ensuring the future security of the patient, assessing and promoting social support and finally assessing and addressing his potential needs. Moreover, it's necessary to inform the patient about the symptoms associated to stress, their possible evolution and the available care ressources. However, regarding specific care, there is no agreement on the systematic intervention of a professional specialist in mental health and no agreement on the drug treatments to be employed. The technique of Defusing is only mentioned in one publication. As for systematically referring patients after emergencies to mental health services, opinions are divided. ConclusionMany aspects of the immediate medico-psychological care usually offered to victims of collective traumatic events is recommended for victims of sexual assault provided that the medical staff or team of caregivers receive appropriate training. The ER would also highly benefit from an organization in which gynecologists, legal doctors, psychiatrists, social and judicial actors would collaborate towards a comprehensive support of patients. It seems important to be able to offer comprehensive patient support, like a Case Management, in the short and medium term (support on the medical, social and legal aspects which would take into account the evolution particular to each case) and to assess the effectiveness of these devices. It also seems important to continue evaluating the impact of interventions and drug treatments used in practice on the prevention of post-traumatic stress disorder.

COVID-19 Pandemic as a Traumatic Event and Its Associations with Fear and Mental Health: A Cognitive-Activation Approach.

The COVID-19 global pandemic still represents a major threat with detrimental health consequences. Analyzing the psychological outcomes, COVID-19 could be interpreted as a collective traumatic event that can generate symptoms related to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Considering this, the purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to investigate the relationship between intrusive thoughts and fear related to the COVID-19 pandemic and between intrusive thoughts and mental health; second, to test the mediating role of hyperarousal and avoidance in these two relationships. In order to reach these aims, the present study investigated these relationships and tested a mediation model in two cross-sectional studies in Italy. Altogether, 627 individuals and 495 workers completed an online survey for study 1 and study 2, respectively. Mediation analyses were performed via the SPSS macro PROCESS; the significance of total, direct, and indirect effect was tested via bootstrapping. The results showed that within the PTSD framework, hyperarousal compared with avoidance mediated the relationship between intrusion and the analyzed outcomes. In conclusion, the present study provided empirical evidence for the influence of hyperarousal on individual consequences such as fear of COVID-19 and mental health. Research, as well as theoretical and practical implications, are discussed.

Public reassurance following a collective trauma event: a scoping review of the evidence to inform police practice

PurposeThis paper examines the empirical research on police reassurance following a collective trauma event (CTE).Design/methodology/approachUsing a scoping review methodology, this paper sought to establish the extent, range and nature of published literature on policing responses to collective traumatic events, and to identify key features of this form of direct practice. Included papers needed to focus on police responses oeassurance with the public related to events (pre-or post) that could be regarded as collective trauma events by nature or scale. Searches were conducted using the Web of Science, SCOPUS and PsychINFO databases for literature published between January 2000 and December 2019.FindingsFourteen articles met the inclusion criteria. The key themes identified: (1) measuring the impact of reassurance and community policing; (2) community attitudes to policing and social disorder/critical events; (3) police workforce responses to traumatic events; and (4) interventions to support police to respond to their community.Research limitations/implicationsFuture research needs to examine the elements that create a robust organisational infrastructure that can withstand the demands of policing in ordinary and extraordinary times. Fundamental to the studies in this review is the relationship between the police agencies and the community. The nature of this relationship and how it can be strengthened to ameliorate the negative impact of CTEs in communities needs further exploration.Originality/valueThis paper provides important findings that can inform future reassurance policing practice and research.

EMDR Integrative Group Treatment for Female Adolescents Victims of Sexual Abuse with Complex Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

Bu çalışmanın amacı daha önce afet ve savaş ilişkili travmalarda kullanılmış olan Grup EMDR Protokolünün, Karmaşık Travma Sonrası Stres Bozukluğu (TSSB) olan kız ergenlerde depresyon ve travma skorlarına etkisinin olup olmadığını araştırmaktır. Araştırma bu alanda ergenlerde yapılmış ilk çalışmadır. Bu amaçla 13 kız ergene iki grup halinde 3 seans Grup EMDR protokolü uygulanmıştır. Olgular daha önce cinsel istismara uğrayan ve en az 6 aydır standart medikal tedaviler uygulanan vakalardır. Olgulara çalışma öncesinde ve seanslar tamamlandıktan 1 ay sonra Çocuklar için Travma Sonrası Stres İndexi ve Çocuklar için Depresyon Ölçeği uygulanmıştır. Olguların yaş ortalaması 16 (min:14 max: 17) idi. Olgulardan %84,6'si (n:11)' ü daha önce birden fazla travmatik olay yaşamıştı. Depresyon skorları ortalaması terapi öncesinde 19 (±6,4) terapi sonrası 1. ay takibinde 11,4 (±5,5), Travma sonrası stres indexi skorları terapi öncesinde 53,5 (±7,5 ), terapi sonrası 1. ay takipte 39,34 (±8,6) olarak bulunmuştur. Hem depresyon hem de travma skorlarında terapi öncesi ile sonrası arasında istatistiksel olarak anlamlı fark saptanmıştır. Karmaşık TSSB bireyin hayatını birçok yönden etkileyen bir psikiyatrik bozukluktur. Standart psikotrop medikasyon travma sonrası stres belirtilerini azaltmada kısmi etkiye sahip olmakla birlikte yeterli etkiye sahip değildir. Grup terapisi daha çok toplu travmatik olaylarda kullanılmış olmakla birlikte bu çalışma ile birlikte Karmaşık TSSB' lerde de kullanılabileceği gösterilmiştir..

Psychoanalysis and social violence: Civilization and Its Discontents revisited

Does psychoanalysis have the conceptual and clinical tools to understand social violence and collective traumatic events? How does social violence impact on the psyche? How can any social violence ...

Resignificaciones sociales del silencio y socialidad de la escucha en Ciudad de México. Memoria, historia y sentidos en el México contemporáneo

En este texto se problematiza la noción de “silencio” y sus usos metafóricos para asistir la movilización de afectos entre los habitantes de Ciudad de México. El argumento toma como premisa que la escucha es una experiencia integral (corporal, cognitiva, y senso-afectiva) y una forma de “inscripción en la consciencia y la memoria” (Rivas, 2019; Gallagher, 2016). Seguidamente, se formulan diversas reflexiones al respecto de cómo momentos coyunturales en la historia reciente de Ciudad de México pueden estar moldeando las formas de escuchar, así como de percibir y significar el silencio entre los habitantes de la ciudad capital. Esta referencia a momentos coyunturales implica la consideración de instancias de traumas colectivos, sean estos por causas sociales o naturales, que acaban por ligarse a la memoria colectiva y la historia local de la Ciudad de México. En particular, se describen las reacciones socio-afectivas al terremoto que tuvo lugar en 2017; y su relación senso-perceptual con los seísmos del año 1985 y con dos trágicas masacres estudiantiles ocurridas en 1968 y más recientemente en 2014. Los eventos aludidos han sido de una magnitud afectiva tal que han requerido de un reacomodo sensorial para nombrar lo vivido y, sobre todo, para poder dar sentido a lo perdido, a lo ausente, a lo desaparecido. Estas formas de nombrar –o mejor dicho de no-nombrar– las ausencias, pero sí de performar el dolor que generan, permiten hablar de una reformulación de los significados en torno al referente “silencio”. La propuesta consiste en explorar formas performáticas de la cultura, suponiendo que las modalidades de escucha e interpretación de la díada escucha/silencio en los distintos momentos históricos aludidos permiten conocer los usos afectivos del silencio, la performatividad de la escucha y la función de ambos en el procesamiento colectivo del trauma.

Becoming "Teletherapeutic": Harnessing Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP) for Challenges of the Covid-19 Era.

The covid-19 pandemic raises substantial challenges for the practice of psychotherapy. The rapid changes in the personal experiences of both clients and therapists, and the required adaptations in the therapeutic setting, affect the therapeutic relationship and its process. We examine common challenges observed through supervision of therapists and peer group discussions, viewing them in light of reports of previous collective traumatic events. Consequently, we introduce major premises and techniques borrowed from Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy as they may apply to teletherapy. These interventions aim to maintain and strengthen the intimacy and safety of the therapeutic attachment relationship, essential for processing actual experiences of emotions and creating affective changes. We explicate the rationale and the clinical application of these relational and experiential interventions, and organize them through a comprehensive model. The model visually illustrates the matching of therapeutic interventions to the handling of the psychological upheavals triggered by the changes imposed by the pandemic, particularly the move to teletherapy. In addition to theoretical and practical suggestions, which could be adapted to various models of therapy, we present a brief clinical case demonstrating the application of the suggested therapeutic thinking and interventions.

ResilienCity: Resilience and Psychotic-Like Experiences 10 Years After L'Aquila Earthquake.

An earthquake hit the city of L’Aquila in central Italy in 2009, leaving the city completely destroyed and 309 casualties. Unexpectedly, lower rates of psychotic experiences in persons affected by the earthquake compared to non-affected persons were found 10 months after the earthquake. The very long-term impact of a natural disaster on the prevalence of psychotic experiences deserves more in-depth detailing. The Authors examined resilience and psychotic experiences in a university student sample of 494. No effect of direct exposure to the earthquake (odds ratio = 0.64, 95%CI [0.37, 1.11]), material damages (odds ratio = 0.86, 95%CI [0.60, 1.23]), psychological suffering (odds ratio = 1.06, 95% CI [0.83, 1.36]), or global impact severity (odds ratio = 0.92, 95%CI [0.76, 1.12]) on psychotic experiences was detected. Resilience levels did not differ between affected and non-affected persons. Resilience showed a strong protective effect on psychotic experiences (odds ratio=0.38, 95% CI [0.28, 0.51]. The protective effect of the RSA factor “Perception of Self” was significantly stronger in individuals affected by the earthquake compared to non-affected subjects. Being affected by an earthquake is not a risk factor for psychotic experiences in a university student sample, as no direct effect of the earthquake was detected after 10 years after the event. Resilience is confirmed as a strong protective factor for psychotic experiences irrespectively of large collective traumatic events. Extension of these results to a general population sample could provide interesting insights into recovery from natural disasters.

Collective Trauma and Mental Health Hospitalization Rates Among Children in New York State, 1999–2013: Age, Period, and Cohort Effects

Mental health hospitalization rates among U.S. children have been increasing locally and nationally in recent decades. Children in New York State (NYS) have also witnessed several collective traumatic events during the last two decades including the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks (9/11), the Great Recession, and Hurricane Sandy (2012) and its aftermath. Decomposition of these rates into age, period, and cohort effects may help elucidate how large-scale collective traumatic events may be driving time trends. This study examined age-period-cohort effects in children and youth mental health hospitalizations in NYS from 1999-2013. Age effects followed a linear trend from age 5 years, B = -2.76, 95% CI [-3.48, -2.03)] up to age 15 years, B = 1.62, 95% CI [1.52, 1.73]. The largest period effects were noted in 2004, B = 0.36, 95% CI [0.28, 0.45], and in 2013, B = 0.31, 95% CI [0.15, 0.47], approximately 3 years after 9/11 and the Great Recession, respectively. The largest birth cohort effect was noted for children born in 1992-1995 (range: 0.29 for children born in 1992-0.27 for children born in 1995), suggesting that the birth cohorts who experienced the 9/11 attacks during middle childhood and the Great Recession during puberty are at increased risk of mental health hospitalizations compared to other birth cohorts.