Journal of Abnormal Psychology

A viewpoint on stress generation methodology.
This article provides an overview of Stress Generation Methodology. Stress generation is a phenomenon in which individuals with depression or vulnerability to depression experience greater dependent stressful life events (SLEs), defined as stressors in which individuals at least partially contributed to occurrence. The stress generation process demonstrates how depressed individuals shape their environments, contributing to depression maintenance and exacerbation. Subsequent extensions have shown that other forms of psychopathology and a variety of cognitive and personality risk factors also predict stress generation. The focus on stress generation in women is accompanied by an emphasis on interpersonal stress. In addition to emphasizing communal SLEs, stress generation studies have also focused on communal vulnerability factors. However, men do not typically exhibit communal vulnerabilities to the degree that women do. Thus, it is also important to broaden the scope of vulnerability factors examined to include vulnerabilities associated with stress generation in men. These could include impulsivity, anger and aggression, and the need for autonomy and self-definition, all of which tend to be more common in males. Lastly, studies often employ self-report measures of SLEs which could artificially accentuate gender differences in stress generation findings. As existing studies may be more sensitive to detecting stress generation in women, future research should examine this phenomenon with the following methodological refinements: (a) use male-only or adequately sized samples with equal gender representation to test gender moderation effects, (b) expand the range of SLEs to include agentic and achievement-oriented stressors and use wider assessment windows, and (c) examine vulnerability factors that may be relevant to men such as impulsivity, anger, aggression, and the need for autonomy and self-definition. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Putting the “experience” back in experience sampling: A phenomenological approach.
This article discusses the concept of “experience” in experience sampling. A central challenge of clinical science is understanding psychopathological constructs and their manifestations. In conventional definitions and measures of psychopathology, subjective experience of mental disorder is often lost. The authors argue for an integration of phenomenology—or prioritization of subjectivity—in psychopathological construct definition and measurement, particularly through experience sampling methods (ESMs). ESMs capture idiographic, contextual, and longitudinal elements of lived experience that can expand our current conceptualizations and classifications of psychopathology. The authors propose three novel applications and extensions: (a) leveraging ESM for subjective construct definition (i.e., phenomena detection), (b) mixed-methods approaches, like cognitive interviewing, to improve the validity of ESM measures and (c) incorporation of novel ESM approaches (e.g., audiovisual data capturing) to expand understanding of subjective, daily experience of psychopathology. Merging phenomenological tradition with ESM serves to expand our understanding of psychopathology and bring “experience” back into experience sampling. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Antecedents, reasons for, and consequences of suicide attempts: Results from a qualitative study of 89 suicide attempts among army soldiers.
Most studies aimed at understanding suicidal behavior have focused on quantifying the associations between putative risk factors and suicidal behavior in comparative studies of cases and controls. The current study, in comparison, exclusively focused on cases—89 Army soldiers presenting for hospital care following a suicide attempt—and attempted to reveal the antecedents of, reasons for, and consequences of suicide attempts. This mixed-methods study using qualitative interviews and self-report surveys/interviews revealed that in most cases, the most recent onset of suicidal thoughts began shortly before the suicide attempt and were not disclosed to others, limiting opportunities for intervention via traditional approaches. The primary reason given for attempting suicide was to escape from psychologically aversive conditions after concluding that no other effective strategies or options were available. Participants reported both negative (e.g., self-view, guilt) and positive (e.g., learning new skills, receiving support) consequences of their suicide attempt—and described things they believe would have prevented them from making the attempt. These findings provide new insights into the motivational and contextual factors for suicidal behavior and highlight several novel directions for prevention and intervention efforts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Suicidal thoughts are associated with reduced source attribution of emotion.
Approximately 9% of people think about suicide during their lifetime. Suicidal thoughts are consistently associated with perceived failures in emotion regulation. However, factors contributing to these perceptions remain insufficiently clear. New evidence suggests that when people know little about the cause of their emotions (i.e., low source attribution of emotion), they perceive themselves as less successful in regulating them. Therefore, emotion regulation deficits in people with suicidal thoughts might be related to lower knowledge about sources of emotions. We examined this question in two ecological momentary assessment studies (N₁ = 396, N₂ = 195). We found that participants with current suicidal thoughts knew less about the sources of their emotions compared to participants with no suicidal thoughts history (Studies 1 and 2), and even when compared to controls with similar levels of psychiatric symptoms but no history of suicidal thoughts (Study 2). Using language processing, we found that written descriptions of the source of participants’ emotions were less concrete among those with suicidal thoughts compared to participants with no suicidal thoughts history. Among suicidal participants, suicidal thoughts were more likely to be present in moments when participants knew less than usual about the source of their negative emotions (Study 2), and low knowledge of the source was associated with more frequent and prolonged suicidal thoughts (Studies 1 and 2). Finally, lower perceived success in emotion regulation mediated the association between source attribution of emotion and the occurrence of suicidal thoughts. Findings suggest that reduced knowledge about the source of negative emotions might increase the risk for suicidal thinking. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Use of passively collected actigraphy data to detect individual depressive symptoms in a clinical subpopulation and a general population.
The presentation of major depressive disorder (MDD) can vary widely due to its heterogeneity, including inter- and intraindividual symptom variability, making MDD difficult to diagnose with standard measures in clinical settings. Prior work has demonstrated that passively collected actigraphy can be used to detect MDD at a disorder level; however, given the heterogeneous nature of MDD, comprising multiple distinct symptoms, it is important to measure the degree to which various MDD symptoms may be captured by such passive data. The current study investigated whether individual depressive symptoms could be detected from passively collected actigraphy data in a (a) clinical subpopulation (i.e., moderate depressive symptoms or greater) and (b) general population. Using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, a large nationally representative sample (N = 8,378), we employed a convolutional neural network to determine which depressive symptoms in each population could be detected by wrist-worn, minute-level actigraphy data. Findings indicated a small-moderate correspondence between the predictions and observed outcomes for mood, psychomotor, and suicide items (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve [AUCs] = 0.58–0.61); a moderate-large correspondence for anhedonia (AUC = 0.64); and a large correspondence for fatigue (AUC = 0.74) in the clinical subpopulation (n = 766); and a small-moderate correspondence for sleep, appetite, psychomotor, and suicide items (AUCs = 0.56–0.60) in the general population (n = 8,378). Thus, individual depressive symptoms can be detected in individuals who likely meet the criteria for MDD, suggesting that wrist-worn actigraphy may be suitable for passively assessing these symptoms, providing important clinical implications for the diagnosis and treatment of MDD. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Adolescent social anxiety is associated with diminished discrimination of anticipated threat and safety in the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis.
Social anxiety—which typically emerges in adolescence—lies on a continuum and, when extreme, can be devastating. Socially anxious individuals are prone to heightened fear, anxiety, and the avoidance of contexts associated with potential social scrutiny. Yet most neuroimaging research has focused on acute social threat. Much less attention has been devoted to understanding the neural systems recruited during the uncertain anticipation of potential encounters with social threat. Here we used a novel functional magnetic resonance imaging paradigm to probe the neural circuitry engaged during the anticipation and acute presentation of threatening faces and voices in a racially diverse sample of 66 adolescents selectively recruited to encompass a range of social anxiety and enriched for clinically significant levels of distress and impairment. Results demonstrated that adolescents with more severe social anxiety symptoms experience heightened distress when anticipating encounters with social threat, and reduced discrimination of uncertain social threat and safety in the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, a key division of the central extended amygdala (EAc). Although the EAc—including the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis and central nucleus of the amygdala—was robustly engaged by the acute presentation of threatening faces and voices, the degree of EAc engagement was unrelated to the severity of social anxiety. Together, these observations provide a neurobiologically grounded framework for conceptualizing adolescent social anxiety and set the stage for the kinds of prospective–longitudinal and mechanistic research that will be necessary to determine causation and, ultimately, to develop improved interventions for this often-debilitating illness. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Toward diversification of acute stressors and precision stress research: A stage 2 Registered Report validating a reward-salient stress task in emerging adults.
Stress is one of, if not the, most ubiquitously studied risk factor across the health sciences. This is unlikely to change given that the primary drivers of mortality and disability are chronic, stress-mediated illnesses (often highly comorbid with psychopathology). We argue that an important limitation of stress research is the consistency with which the Trier Social Stress Test is used when the research questions are not specific to social stress. We advocate for precision stress research using qualitatively different stressors to facilitate exploration of how different types of stressors might differentially impact health outcomes, including psychopathology. This registered report validates a reward-salient stress task (a modified Anger Incentive Delay Task) in a sample of 101 emerging adults, over half of whom reported clinically relevant anxiety, hypo/mania, depression, and/or suicidal ideation, who participated in a study between 2020 and 2022. This task involves teaching participants a game where they can win money. Part way through, the “goal frustration” condition changes the rules such that correct responses to trials with anticipatory stimuli indicating the possibility to win money actually lose money on 56% of trials despite visual feedback indicating that responses were successful. Results consistently indicated that the Anger Incentive Delay Task successfully reduced positive emotions and motivation and increased negative emotions. The magnitude of these responses was predicted by individual differences in reward and punishment sensitivity. Given the breadth of psychopathologies that share both (a) stress and (b) reward and punishment sensitivity as risk factors, a reward-salient acute stress task is an important tool for precision psychopathology research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Modeling the dynamics of addiction relapse via the double-well potential system.
Substance use relapse is difficult to define, and previous work has used one-size-fits-all ad hoc definitions. Researchers have called for a dynamic and personalized understanding of relapse as a concept and model, necessitating novel statistical tools. We aimed to develop and validate a novel statistical model of latent relapse processes: the double-well potential model (DWPM). This model describes posttreatment substance use in terms of a dynamical system with stable equilibria of abstinence and relapse, person-specific dominant equilibria (tilt), the ease of changing between equilibria (steepness), and an overall relapse risk (RR). Using timeline follow-back data from N = 139 adults with a substance use disorder transitioning back to the community after residential treatment, we examined individual differences and the criterion-related validity of DWPM parameters to determine the clinical utility of the double-well model. While nonuse was the predominant stable state across participants, we found significant between-subjects variability steepness and RR. These individual differences were predictable via demographics, baseline psychopathology, treatment history, and treatment condition. Steepness and RR also predicted long-term outcomes, including life satisfaction and criminal behavior, above and beyond traditional metrics of relapse (proportion of days used and time to first use). Thus, the DWPM is a strong theoretical and statistical representation of the underlying relapse processes. Moreover, the parameters show criterion-related validity and may be useful in precision medicine. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Transdiagnostic modeling of clinician-rated symptoms in affective and nonaffective psychotic disorders.
Prevailing factor models of psychosis are centered on schizophrenia-related disorders defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and International Classification of Diseases, restricting generalizability to other clinical presentations featuring psychosis, even though affective psychoses are more common. This study aims to bridge this gap by conducting exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, utilizing clinical ratings collected from patients with either affective or nonaffective psychoses (n = 1,042). Drawing from established clinical instruments, such as the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale, Young Mania Rating Scale, and Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale, a broad spectrum of core psychotic symptoms was considered for the model development. Among the candidate models considered, including correlated factors and multifactor models, a model with seven correlated factors encompassing positive symptoms, negative symptoms, depression, mania, disorganization, hostility, and anxiety was most interpretable with acceptable fit. The seven factors exhibited expected associations with external validators, were replicable through cross-validation, and were generalizable across affective and nonaffective psychoses. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Investigating differential item functioning among borderline personality disorder diagnostic criteria and internalizing/externalizing domains based on sexual orientation.
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is more frequently diagnosed among sexual minority (SM) populations. SM populations also report higher levels of internalizing and externalizing psychopathology, two core domains of clinical problems that are highly comorbid with BPD. Contextual factors (e.g., group-specific norms) might affect endorsement of BPD items for reasons other than an underlying liability to experience BPD or internalizing and externalizing psychopathology. Therefore, BPD items may be “easier” to endorse (i.e., be associated with lower indicator thresholds) for SM populations relative to non-SM populations. We tested this hypothesis in a large, nationally representative sample of the U.S. population (N = 35,723, SM n = 1,150) using an item response theory approach. Several BPD indicators demonstrated differential item functioning of indicator thresholds, though these results varied based on impairment and sex. Endorsement of impulsive sex and chronic suicidality were consistently associated with lower indicator thresholds among SM groups; lower BPD, internalizing and externalizing factor levels were necessary for item endorsement for SM individuals. Chronic suicidality and impulsivity criteria may conflate BPD-related variance with SM-specific factors, such as potentially nonpathological SM group norms and minority stress processes. Implications for equitable diagnosis and future research on the BPD syndrome in SM populations are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)

Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science - Vol 134, Iss 1