Use Of Maladaptive Cognitive Strategies Research Articles

The relationship between distress tolerance regulation, counterfactual rumination, and PTSD symptom clusters

BackgroundDistress tolerance (DT) and rumination both influence the development and maintenance of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, few studies have investigated these constructs simultaneously. We investigated whether the regulation dimension of DT was associated with PTSD symptom clusters (intrusions, avoidance, negative alternations in cognitions and mood, alterations in arousal and reactivity), and whether counterfactual rumination (CFT) mediated these relationships. MethodsThis cross-sectional study sampled trauma-exposed adults (N = 119) seeking mental health services at a community mental health center. Participants completed self-report measures of DT, rumination, and PTSD. Mediation analyses were conducted using the SPSS PROCESS Macro. ResultsLower scores on the DT regulation dimension were associated with higher PTSD symptom severity for all four symptom clusters, controlling for depression and number of traumas. CFT significantly mediated this relationship between DT's regulation and PTSD's intrusions and avoidance symptoms. LimitationsLimitations included use of self-report data and the cross-sectional nature of this data. ConclusionsClinically, this study highlights that difficulties with regulating negative emotions can result in the use of maladaptive cognitive strategies, such as CFT. This, in turn, may exacerbate PTSD symptom severity, particularly intrusions and avoidance. This study highlights the importance of understanding specific dimensions of DT, rumination, and PTSD symptom clusters to develop precise and efficient psychological interventions.

Adaptive Associations between Social Cognition and Emotion Regulation are Absent in Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder

Schizophrenia (SZ) and bipolar disorder (BD) are associated with impairments in facial emotion perception and Theory of Mind (ToM). These social cognitive skills deficits may be related to a reduced capacity to effectively regulate one’s own emotions according to the social context. We therefore set out to examine the relationship between social cognitive abilities and the use of cognitive strategies for regulating negative emotion in SZ and BD. Participants were 56 SZ, 33 BD, and 58 healthy controls (HC) who completed the Ekman 60-faces test of facial emotion recognition; a sub-set of these participants also completed The Awareness of Social Inference Test (TASIT) and the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ). SZ participants demonstrated impairments in emotion perception on both the Ekman and the TASIT Emotion Evaluation tests relative to BD and HC. While both SZ and BD patients showed ToM deficits (i.e., perception of sarcasm and lie) compared to HC, SZ patients demonstrated significantly greater ToM impairment compared to BD. There were also distinct patterns of cognitive strategies used to regulate emotion in both patient groups: those with SZ were more likely to engage in catastrophizing and rumination, while BD subjects were more likely to blame themselves and were less likely to engage in positive reappraisal, relative to HC. In addition, those with SZ were more likely to blame others compared to BD. Associations between social cognition and affect regulation were revealed for HC only: TASIT performance was negatively associated with more frequent use of rumination, catastrophizing, and blaming others, such that more frequent use of maladaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies was associated with poor social cognitive performance. These associations were not present in either patient group. However, both SZ and BD patients demonstrated poor ToM performance and aberrant use of emotion regulation strategies consistent with previous studies. SZ also showed basic emotion recognition deficits relative to BD and HC. That there were no associations between social cognition and the capacity to self-regulate negative emotion in SZ and BD (in the context of poor social cognition and maladaptive regulatory strategies) suggests that dysfunction in fronto-limbic brain networks may underpin both social cognitive deficits and the use of maladaptive cognitive strategies in these disorders, albeit by potentially different routes.