ACCEPTANCE AND CHANGE AS DIALECTIC OF RECOVERY: EXAMPLES OF STORYTELLING, FAIRY TALE AND PSYCHOPHARMACOTHERAPY AS THERAPEUTIC MODALITIES

"Narative medicine promotes theraputic and recovery using fairy tales and traditional folk stories. Individuals are capable of shaping their lives through various narrative strategies and re-authoring alternative stories that are concerned with different aspects of acceptance and change. Psychotherapy through the eyes of stories and fairy tales can have two perspectives. Firstly, fairy tale acts like a weft around which the very story/script of the patient is formed, which in itself becomes the basis for interpreting the occurrence of a mental disorder. The second perspective is the perspective of healing or getting out of a "fairytale" story/script by changing an incoherent life narrative into an alternative coherent narrative (reframing). The aim of this pilot case studies approach was to use a narrative approach based on stories and fairy tales in order to promote psychological growth, meaning in life, resilience, self-realization and improved well-being and highlight the dialectic of recovery, an interplay of acceptance and change (reframing). With properly applied personalized narrative psychopharmacotherapy, the patient is capable of changing their beliefs in order to reach a new meaning of life, and thus to facilitate the lowering of symptomatology, its dissaperance and possibly even a cure, whatever that may mean for an individual. Considering its promising results, clinical implications and possible further applications are discussed

Reduced specificity of autobiographical memories following a negative mood induction

Reduced autobiographical memory specificity (AMS) to emotional and neutral cue words appears to be a stable cognitive marker of clinical depression. For example, reduced AMS is present in remitted/recovered depressed patients and shows no reliable relationship with current levels of depressed mood in correlational studies. The present study examined whether reduced AMS could be induced in healthy volunteers with no history of depression, using a negative mood manipulation and whether levels of AMS and induced mood were positively correlated. Results showed a reduction in AMS following negative mood induction, compared to a neutral induction, whereas positive mood induction had no effects on AMS. Furthermore, lower happiness following the induction phase correlated positively with reduced AMS, and the extent of happiness reduction from pre- to post-induction correlated positively with reduction in AMS. These results suggest that AMS is, at least in part, a function of current emotion state. The implications for the literature on AMS as a stable marker of clinical depression are discussed

The Impact of Affective Context on Autobiographical Recollection in Depression.

Across two studies we investigated the influence of contextual cues on autobiographical memory recall. In Study 1, participants (N = 37) with major depressive disorder, in episode or in varying degrees of remission, were administered a Negative Autobiographical Memory Task (NAMT) that required them to retrieve negatively valenced memories in response to positive cue words (a positive context). We reasoned that increased depression symptom severity would be associated with a reduced ability to override priming from this disadvantageous context. Consequently, we hypothesized that increased depressive severity would counterintuitively be associated with reduced negativity ratings for retrieved personal memories to positive cues on the NAMT. This hypothesis was supported. Study 2, using a community sample (N = 63), demonstrated that a similar reduction in memory negativity was observed in individuals with lower working memory capacity-an index of executive control. Implications for autobiographical memory and executive training paradigms for depression are discussed

Impact of culture on autobiographical life structure in depression.

OBJECTIVES: Distortions in autobiographical memory have been implicated in major depressive disorder (MDD). Those with MDD demonstrate a 'depressogenic' autobiographical life structure. Research has not examined how culture influences this process. We investigated whether Malay individuals (members of an interdependent culture) with MDD demonstrated a 'depressogenic' autobiographical life structure similar to that of British individuals (members of an independent culture) with MDD. DESIGN: A 2 (Culture; Malay, British) × 2 (Mood; depressed, control) cross-sectional design using a card sort task and self-report measures was used. METHODS: Malay individuals with MDD or no history of MDD completed the life-structure card-sorting task, which provided a novel method for investigating organizational structure of the life narrative. These data were compared to previously collected data in which British individuals with MDD or without MDD had completed the same task within the same experimental protocol. RESULTS: Pan-culturally those with MDD had greater negativity (i.e., used more negative attributes), negative redundancy (i.e., used the same negative attributes repeatedly across life chapters) and negative emodiversity (i.e., had greater variety and relative abundance of negative attributes), and reduced positive redundancy (i.e., used the same positive attributes repeatedly across chapters) in their structuring relative to controls. While the British MDD group had greater compartmentalization (i.e., the negative and positive attributes were clustered separately across different chapters) than British controls, the Malay MDD group had lower levels of compartmentalization than Malay controls. CONCLUSIONS: The findings suggest culture may shape aspects of the autobiographical life structure in MDD. PRACTITIONER POINTS: The majority of the literature investigating depression pertains to individuals from European Western cultures, despite recognition that depression ranks as one of the most debilitating diseases worldwide. This raises questions as to whether current depression models and interventions can be applied universally or whether they are limited to European Western groups. The current study found that pan-culturally those with MDD had similar structuring of their life story relative to controls. However, there were some cultural differences that need to be considered (e.g., Malay individuals provided less detailed, less elaborate and less emotionally diverse life stories and while the British MDD group had greater compartmentalization than British controls, the Malay MDD group had lower levels of compartmentalization than Malay controls). Limitations of the study included group differences in gender and mood at the time of testing. Cultural differences in the number of attributes used may have influenced findings. Only the Malay group completed the individualism-collectivism measure

Affective enhancement of working memory is maintained in depression.

We currently know little about how performance on assessments of working memory capacity (WMC) that are designed to mirror the concurrent task demands of daily life are impacted by the presence of affective information, nor how those effects may be modulated by depression-a syndrome where sufferers report global difficulties with executive processing. Across 3 experiments, we investigated WMC for sets of neutral words in the context of processing either neutral or affective (depressogenic) sentences, which had to be judged on semantic accuracy (Experiments 1 and 2) or self-reference (Experiment 3). Overall, WMC was significantly better in the context of depressogenic compared with neutral sentences. However, there was no support for this effect being modulated by symptoms of depression (Experiment 1) or the presence of recurrent major depressive disorder (MDD; Experiments 2 and 3). Implications of these findings for cognitive theories of the role of WM in depression are discussed in the context of a growing body of research showing no support for a differential impact of depressogenic compared with neutral information on WM accuracy. (PsycINFO Database Recor

"The Book of Negroes’ illustrated edition: circulating African-Canadian history through the Middlebrow"

This article examines the 2009 deluxe illustrated edition of Lawrence Hill’s Commonwealth Writers’ Prize– and Canada Reads–winning novel The Book of Negroes, originally published in 2007. It relates the story of Aminata, a West African girl kidnapped and sold into slavery, and her experiences on an indigo plantation in the American south, followed by further displacements to Charleston, Nova Scotia, Sierra Leone, and London. In New York, as the Revolutionary War comes to a close, Aminata becomes the scribe for the Book of Negroes, documenting the Black Loyalists, as well as the slaves and indentured servants of white Loyalists, granted passage by the British to Canada. Hill has commented that the Book of Negroes is an important document about which Canadians are largely ignorant. This desire to circulate knowledge about African-Canadian history through the novel is particularly manifest in the illustrated edition of 2009, where a photograph of the Book of Negroes features prominently, along with countless other images and captions which supplement and interrupt Hill’s narrative. This article considers the significance and implications of this “keepsake” or “souvenir” edition, particularly its circulation of knowledge about African-Canadian history through visual pleasure

Age shall not weary us: Deleterious effects of self-regulation depletion are specific to younger adults

Self-regulation depletion (SRD), or ego-depletion, refers to decrements in self-regulation performance immediately following a different self-regulation-demanding activity. There are now over a hundred studies reporting SRD across a broad range of tasks and conditions. However, most studies have used young student samples. Because prefrontal brain regions thought to subserve self-regulation do not fully mature until 25 years of age, it is possible that SRD effects are confined to younger populations and are attenuated or disappear in older samples. We investigated this using the Stroop color task as an SRD induction and an autobiographical memory task as the outcome measure. We found that younger participants (<25 years) were susceptible to depletion effects, but found no support for such effects in an older group (40–65 years). This suggests that the widely-reported phenomenon of SRD has important developmental boundary conditions casting doubt on claims that it represents a general feature of human cognition

Narcissism and the strategic pursuit of short-term mating : universal links across 11 world regions of the International Sexuality Description Project-2.

Previous studies have documented links between sub-clinical narcissism and the active pursuit of short-term mating strategies (e.g., unrestricted sociosexuality, marital infidelity, mate poaching). Nearly all of these investigations have relied solely on samples from Western cultures. In the current study, responses from a cross-cultural survey of 30,470 people across 53 nations spanning 11 world regions (North America, Central/South America, Northern Europe, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, Middle East, Africa, Oceania, Southeast Asia, and East Asia) were used to evaluate whether narcissism (as measured by the Narcissistic Personality Inventory; NPI) was universally associated with short-term mating. Results revealed narcissism scores (including two broad factors and seven traditional facets as measured by the NPI) were functionally equivalent across cultures, reliably associating with key sexual outcomes (e.g., more active pursuit of short-term mating, intimate partner violence, and sexual aggression) and sex-related personality traits (e.g., higher extraversion and openness to experience). Whereas some features of personality (e.g., subjective well-being) were universally associated with socially adaptive facets of Narcissism (e.g., self-sufficiency), most indicators of short-term mating (e.g., unrestricted sociosexuality and marital infidelity) were universally associated with the socially maladaptive facets of narcissism (e.g., exploitativeness). Discussion addresses limitations of these cross-culturally universal findings and presents suggestions for future research into revealing the precise psychological features of narcissism that facilitate the strategic pursuit of short-term mating

Narcisismo y búsqueda estratégica del emparejamiento a corto plazo a través de las culturas: Enlaces omnipresentes a través de 11 regiones mundiales del Proyecto de la descripción de la sexualidad internacional 2

Previous studies have documented links between sub-clinical narcissism and the active pursuit of short-term mating strategies (e.g., unrestricted sociosexuality, marital infidelity, mate poaching). Nearly all of these investigations have relied solely on samples from Western cultures. In the current study, responses from a cross-cultural survey of 30,470 people across 53 nations spanning 11 world regions (North America, Central/South America, Northern Europe, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, Middle East, Africa, Oceania, Southeast Asia, and East Asia) were used to evaluate whether narcissism (as measured by the Narcissistic Personality Inventory; NPI) was universally associated with short-term mating. Results revealed narcissism scores (including two broad factors and seven traditional facets as measured by the NPI) were functionally equivalent across cultures, reliably associating with key sexual outcomes (e.g., more active pursuit of short-term mating, intimate partner violence, and sexual aggression) and sex-related personality traits (e.g., higher extraversion and openness to experience). Whereas some features of personality (e.g., subjective well-being) were universally associated with socially adaptive facets of Narcissism (e.g., self-sufficiency), most indicators of short-term mating (e.g., unrestricted sociosexuality and marital infidelity) were universally associated with the socially maladaptive facets of narcissism (e.g., exploitativeness). Discussion addresses limitations of these cross-culturally universal findings and presents suggestions for future research into revealing the precise psychological features of narcissism that facilitate the strategic pursuit of short-term mating.Estudios previos, en primer lugar a través de las muestras de culturas occidentales, han documentado asociaciones sistemáticas del narcisismo subclínico con múltiples indicadores de estrategias del emparejamiento a corto plazo (p. ej. sociosexualidad ilimitada, infidelidad, caza de pareja). En este estudio se han usado respuestas de la encuesta transcultural de 30.470 personas de 53 naciones de 11 regiones mundiales (América del Norte, América del Sur/América Central, Europa del Norte, Europa del Oeste, Europa del Este, Europa del Sur, Oriente Próximo, África, Asia del Sur/Sudoeste de Asia, Asia del Este y Oceanía) para evaluar si el narcisismo (medido por el Inventario de Personalidad Narcisista; NPI) se asocia panuniversalmente con los indicadores del emparejamiento a corto plazo, tanto en la dirección, como en la intensidad. Los resultados sugieren que el narcisismo (incluidos muchos aspectos suyos medidos por el NPI) tiene las mismas asociaciones básicas con los rasgos de personalidad relacionados con el sexo (p. ej. extraversión alta) y con los resultados sexuales claves (p. ej. búsqueda más activa de las estrategias del emparejamiento a corto plazo) a través de las 11 mayores regiones mundiales del PDSI 2. La discusión se enfoca en las implicaciones y limitaciones del estudio actual