Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Specifically Improves Social Anhedonia among Adults with Chronic Stress

This randomized controlled trial examined the effects of mindfulness on anhedonic symptoms in a sample of adults reporting high levels of chronic stress. Meditation-naïve adults (N=68, Mage=32, 62% female) were randomized to either an 8-week MBSR intervention group (N=35), or to a waitlist control group (N=33). We hypothesized that changes in mindfulness would mediate the relationship between condition and changes in anhedonic symptoms. Additionally, the present study aimed to determine if other theoretically-linked mechanisms (i.e., stress, negative affect(NA), depression) were involved in producing changes in anhedonic symptoms. Results provided evidence for full mediation of the effect of MBSR on social anhedonia through its essential mechanism of ΔMindfulness. These results highlight specificity of anhedonic symptoms targeted by MBSR, with social anhedonia symptoms being modified by changes in mindfulness whereas other anhedonic domains were not. Additionally, although associative relationships were present for stress, depression, NA, and anhedonic symptoms, no mediational relationships emerged

Validation of a novel method of ultraviolet-induced cutaneous inflammation and its associations with anhedonia

Affective immunology of the skin is a growing area; however, established protocol for measuring individual differences in cutaneous inflammation are lacking. To address this, we present a preliminary validation of Precision Implementation of Minimal Erythema Dose (PI-MED) testing as a method for measuring cutaneous inflammation. PI-MED is a recently adapted protocol, optimized for reproducibility and individual differences research, that uses ultraviolet (UV) light to evoke cutaneous erythema, or inflammatory skin reddening. PI-MED’s novel UV dosage schedule produces standardized erythema responses across different skin pigmentation types and shows strong internal consistency within person and good test-retest reliability across 8-10 weeks. In line with predictions, increased PI-MED erythema was associated with heightened anhedonia, across several measures, beyond influences of non-affective covariates. While future work should further refine the dosage schedule for the lightest and darkest skin types, overall, evidence supports PI-MED as a protocol for inducing and measuring individual differences in cutaneous inflammation. Further, PI-MED-induced erythema can expand psychoneuroimmunology research by offering a complementary assessment for general inflammatory tone. This work adds to a growing body of evidence demonstrating a distinct relationship between inflammation and anhedonia

Routinized Categorization of Suicide Risk into Actionable Strata: Establishing the Validity of an Existing Suicide Risk Assessment Framework in an Outpatient Sample

Objective: The Suicide Risk Assessment and Management Decision Tree (DT) is a clinician-administered assessment that leads to risk categorizations that correspond with actionable strata. This study investigated the construct validity and test-retest reliability of the DT risk categories across two timepoints. Method: Outpatients (N = 731) completed a battery of self-report measures. Spearman’s correlations were used to examine the relationships between DT suicide risk level and suicidal symptoms, theory-based risk factors, psychiatric correlates, and DT suicide risk level a timepoint 2. Correlations were analyzed for significant differences to examine the divergent validity of the DT. Results: Results, overall, were in line with hypotheses, with the exception of depression and thwarted belongingness. Conclusions: Findings provide evidence for the reliability, convergent validity and discriminant validity of the DT. This clinician-administered suicide risk assessment may be useful for standardization of the assessment and management of suicide risk in outpatient clinical settings