Negative item memory and associative memory: Influences of working memory capacity, anxiety sensitivity, and looming cognition

Prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms among patients with mental disorder during the COVID-19 pandemic

BACKGROUND

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has caused extensive public health concerns, posing significant challenges to healthcare services. One particular area of concern is the mental health of patients with mental disorder, who are often a neglected group. The aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence of, and associated factors for symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among patients with mental disorder in China during the COVID-19 pandemic.

METHODS

Self-reported questionnaires were distributed to patients in four psychiatric hospitals in Beijing, China, between April 28th and May 30th, 2020. Information regarding sociodemographic characteristics, COVID-19 related factors, support, psychosomatic factors, and PTSD symptoms were collected using a series of scales, such as the Impact of Event Scale-Revised, the 7-item Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale, the 9-item Patient Health Questionnaire depression scale, and so on. Multivariate regression was used to identify factors related to PTSD symptoms.

RESULTS

A total of 1,055 patients with mental disorder were included in the final sample. The prevalence of PTSD symptoms was 41.3%. Hierarchical linear regression demonstrated that fear of the pandemic and anxiety were shared associated factors for both symptoms of PTSD and their subscales. Additionally, age was an associated factor for the total PTSD (β = 0.12, p < 0.01), intrusion (β = 0.18, p < 0.001), and avoidance (β = 0.1, p < 0.05) symptoms; depression was an associated factor for the total PTSD (β = 0.13, p < 0.001), intrusion (β = 0.11, p < 0.01), and hyperarousal (β = 0.19, p < 0.001) symptoms.

CONCLUSIONS

The prevalence of PTSD symptoms was high among patients with mental disorder during the COVID-19 pandemic in China. This study found that age, fear of the pandemic, anxiety and depression are significant associated factors of PTSD symptoms in patients with mental disorder during the pandemic. We call for higher awareness and introduction of PTSD interventions to relieve the psychological stress in these patients.

Episodic memory for food and non-food cues in females with obesity

Episodic memory is typically thought of as the memory system that makes possible mental time travel through subjective time. This may serve an important function in allowing us to use recent dietary information to predict future food needs and integrate this information with current food availability to adapt motivation accordingly. Growing evidence has suggested that episodic memory influences and is influenced by obesity. However, there is limited available evidence on the characteristics of episodic memory for food and non-food cues in people with obesity. The present study attempts to address this association and apply an episodic memory task to evaluate item memory and source memory for food and non-food cues in females with obesity. Participants were 26 females with obesity and 30 females with healthy weight, who were undergraduate students aged 17-24 years. They completed the Dutch Eating Behavior Questionnaire, hunger visual analog scale, fullness visual analog scale, desire-to-eat visual analog scale, and an episodic memory task including item memory and source memory. Results showed that the episodic memory patterns of females with and without obesity changed according to the type of stimuli. Specifically, females with obesity outperformed females with healthy weight in item memory for food cues, but showed deficits in item memory for non-food cues and source memory for both food and non-food cues. Taken together, based on the obesity and suboptimal food-related decision theoretical model, these findings are of great theoretical and clinical significance to explore episodic memory pattern differences between people with and without obesity.

The prevalence and risk factors of PTSD symptoms among medical assistance workers during the COVID-19 pandemic

BACKGROUND

The outbreak of COVID 19 in December 2019 spread quickly and overwhelmed the local healthcare system of the epicenter. A total of 346 medical assistance teams with 42,600 reserve medics were mobilized from around the country for emergency assistance. This study aims to examine the incidence of mental health symptoms and predictors of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders (PTSD) symptoms among the reserve medics working in Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei Province.

METHODS

An anonymous survey was conducted from April 4-6, 2020 among the medics upon their returning home. A total of 225 surveys were returned with a response rate of 83%. The survey consisted of questionnaires about the medics' demographic information, social relations, mental health status (e.g. IES-R and DASS-21) and other work-related information. Mann-Whitney U Test, Kruskal-Wallis Test and hierarchical logistic regression models were used to examine the predictors of PTSD symptoms.

RESULTS

During the stay in Wuhan, the medics experienced high levels of depression (46.7%), anxiety (35.6%) and stress symptoms (16.0%). Upon returning home, the overall prevalence of clinically concerned PTSD symptoms was as high as 31.6%. Further analyses revealed that PTSD symptoms and its subscales were significantly associated with age, collegial relationship and mental health status during their service.

CONCLUSION

The reserve medics reported a high prevalence of depression, anxiety and stress as well as clinically concerned PTSD symptoms. Comprehensive screening and intervention programs should be in place to help reserve medics cope with mental health challenges and build resilience during the COVID 19 pandemic.

A Bottom-Up Validation of the IAPS, GAPED, and NAPS Affective Picture Databases: Differential Effects on Behavioral Performance

The concept of emotion is a complex neural and psychological phenomenon, central to the organization of human social behavior. As the result of subjective experience, emotions involve bottom-up cognitive styles responsible for efficient adaptation of human behavior to the environment based on salient goals. Indeed, bottom-up cognitive processes are mandatory for clarifying emotion-cognition interactions. Accordingly, a huge number of studies and standardized affective stimuli databases have been developed (i.e., International Affective Picture System (IAPS), Geneva Affective Picture Database (GAPED), and Nencki Affective Picture System (NAPS)). However, these neither accurately reflect the complex neural system underlying emotional responses nor do they offer a comprehensive framework for researchers. The present article aims to provide an additional bottom-up validation of affective stimuli that are independent from cognitive processing and control mechanisms, related to the implicit relevance and evolutionistic significance of stimuli. A subset of 360 images from the original NAPS, GAPED, and IAPS datasets was selected in order to proportionally cover the whole dimensional affective space. Among these, using a two-step analysis strategy, we identified three clusters (“good performance”, “poor performance”, and “false alarm”) of stimuli with similar cognitive response profiles. Results showed that the three clusters differed in terms of arousal and database membership, but not in terms of valence. The new database, with accompanying ratings and image parameters, allows researchers to select visual stimuli independent from dimensional/discrete-categories, and provides information on the implicit effects triggered by such stimuli.