Impact of COVID-19 on cardiovascular testing in the United States versus the rest of the world

Objectives: This study sought to quantify and compare the decline in volumes of cardiovascular procedures between the United States and non-US institutions during the early phase of the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the care of many non-COVID-19 illnesses. Reductions in diagnostic cardiovascular testing around the world have led to concerns over the implications of reduced testing for cardiovascular disease (CVD) morbidity and mortality. Methods: Data were submitted to the INCAPS-COVID (International Atomic Energy Agency Non-Invasive Cardiology Protocols Study of COVID-19), a multinational registry comprising 909 institutions in 108 countries (including 155 facilities in 40 U.S. states), assessing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on volumes of diagnostic cardiovascular procedures. Data were obtained for April 2020 and compared with volumes of baseline procedures from March 2019. We compared laboratory characteristics, practices, and procedure volumes between U.S. and non-U.S. facilities and between U.S. geographic regions and identified factors associated with volume reduction in the United States. Results: Reductions in the volumes of procedures in the United States were similar to those in non-U.S. facilities (68% vs. 63%, respectively; p = 0.237), although U.S. facilities reported greater reductions in invasive coronary angiography (69% vs. 53%, respectively; p < 0.001). Significantly more U.S. facilities reported increased use of telehealth and patient screening measures than non-U.S. facilities, such as temperature checks, symptom screenings, and COVID-19 testing. Reductions in volumes of procedures differed between U.S. regions, with larger declines observed in the Northeast (76%) and Midwest (74%) than in the South (62%) and West (44%). Prevalence of COVID-19, staff redeployments, outpatient centers, and urban centers were associated with greater reductions in volume in U.S. facilities in a multivariable analysis. Conclusions: We observed marked reductions in U.S. cardiovascular testing in the early phase of the pandemic and significant variability between U.S. regions. The association between reductions of volumes and COVID-19 prevalence in the United States highlighted the need for proactive efforts to maintain access to cardiovascular testing in areas most affected by outbreaks of COVID-19 infection

Adherence to behavioral Covid-19 mitigation measures strongly predicts mortality

In the absence of vaccines or causal therapies, behavioral measures such as wearing face masks and maintaining social distance are central to fighting Covid-19. Yet, their benefits are often questioned by the population and the level of adherence to the measures is variable. We examined in representative samples across eight countries ($\it N$ = 7,568) whether adherence reported around June 1, 2020 predicted the increase in Covid-19 mortality by August 31, 2020. Mortality increased 81.3% in low adherence countries (United States, Sweden, Poland, Russia), 8.4% in high adherence countries (Germany, France, Spain, United Kingdom). Across countries adherence and subsequent mortality increases correlated with $\it r$ = -0.91. No African or South American countries were included in the present study, which limits the generalizability of the findings. While reported Covid-19 mortality is likely to be influenced by other factors, the almost tenfold difference in additional mortality is significant, and may inform decisions when choosing whether to prioritize individual liberty rights or health-protective measures

Behavioral measures to fight COVID-19

Behavioral measures, such as the wearing of facemasks and maintaining of distance to other people, have been central in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic and will continue to be important in curbing its spread. We therefore investigated their perceived usefulness, adherence and their predictors in representative online samples in eight countries (France, Germany, Poland, Russia, Spain, Sweden, U.K., U.S.). Of the 7,658 participants, 77.4% rated governmental measures (highest: Germany, lowest: France) as useful and 91.7% reported adherence to them. Adherence was lowest in Russia and Poland, where people felt particularly left alone and not well supported, and in the U.S. and Sweden, where governments showed ambivalent attitudes towards the measures. The highest adherence was reported in countries with very high mortality (U.K., Spain, France) or very positively perceived government communication (Germany). Female gender, higher age, belonging to a risk group, being affected physically and mentally, perception of governmental communication as guided by the interests of people, feeling of being well informed and the level of positive mental health positively predicted both outcomes, while being affected economically negatively predicted both outcomes. Country-specific results are considered in the light of the protection motivation theory and the theory of planned behavior together with potential ways to improve active participation of the population. Overall, we recommend the governments and authorities to stress that each individual can contribute to the control of the COVID-19 situation by adherence to the measures in the public communication. Moreover, they should emphasize the risk of unconscious infection of older individuals by younger people, as well as the importance of physical activity for the protection of mental and physical health especially during the pandemic

German anxiety barometer

The objective of this study was to test a time-efficient screening instrument to assess clinically relevant and everyday-life (e.g., economic, political, personal) anxieties. Furthermore, factors influencing these anxieties, correlations between clinical and everyday anxieties and, for the first time, anxiety during different stages of life were assessed in a representative sample of the general population ($\it N$ = 2229). Around 30% of the respondents manifested at least one disorder-specific key symptom within 1 year (women > men), 8% reported severe anxiety symptoms. Two thirds of respondents reported minor everyday anxieties and 5% were strongly impaired, whereby persons with severe clinical symptoms were more frequently affected. A variety of potential influencing factors could be identified. These include, in addition to socioeconomic status, gender, general health, risk-taking, and leisure behavior, also some up to now little investigated possible protective factors, such as everyday-life mental activity. The observed effects are rather small, which, however, given the heterogeneity of the general population seems plausible. Although the correlative design of the study does not allow direct causal conclusions, it can, however, serve as a starting point for experimental intervention studies in the future. Together with time series from repeated representative surveys, we expect these data to provide a better understanding of the processes that underlie everyday-life and clinical anxieties

Attention placebo control in randomized controlled trials of psychosocial interventions

Attention placebo control (APC) is considered a highly valid control condition when conducting trials of social interventions. Unfortunately, an appropriate APC condition is rarely used. This letter discusses the tension between methodological and ethical requirements of an APC group in psychosocial interventions based on our experiences with a randomized controlled efficacy study of a parent training program. To prevent negative side effects and high drop-out rates, feasible and accepted attention control conditions are discussed. The paradigms of placebo research must be adapted to the special challenges of psychosocial intervention research

Increased perceived self-efficacy facilitates the extinction of fear in healthy participants

Self-efficacy has been proposed as an important element of a successful cognitive behavioral treatment (CBT). Positive changes in perceived self-efficacy have been linked to an improved adaptive emotional and behavioral responding in the context of anxiety-provoking situations. Furthermore, a positive influence of increased self-efficacy on cognitive functions has been confirmed. The present study examined the effect of verbal persuasion on perceived self-efficacy and fear extinction. Healthy participants were subjected to a standardized differential fear conditioning paradigm. After fear acquisition, half of the participants received a verbal persuasion aimed at increasing perceived self-efficacy. The extinction of fear was assessed immediately thereafter on both the implicit and explicit level. Our results suggest that an increased perceived self-efficacy was associated with enhanced extinction, evidenced on the psychophysiological level and accompanied by more pronounced decrements in conditioned negative valence. Changes in extinction were not due to a decrease in overall emotional reactivity to conditioned stimuli (CS). In addition, debriefing participants about the false positive feedback did not affect the processing of already extinguished conditioned responses during a subsequent continued extinction phase. Our results suggest that positive changes in perceived self-efficacy can be beneficial for emotional learning. Findings are discussed with respect to strategies aimed at increasing extinction learning in the course of exposure-based treatments

Bullying history and mental health in university students

Bullying victimization by peers is highly prevalent in childhood and adolescence. There is convincing evidence that victimization is associated with adverse mental health consequences. In contrast, it has been found that perpetrators suffer no adverse mental health consequences. These findings originate from Western countries such as Germany but have rarely been investigated in collectivistic societies such as China. Furthermore, it has been rarely studied whether positive intrapersonal characteristics (e.g., personal resilience and self-efficacy) and interpersonal positive resources (e.g., social support) may mediate the impact of bullying on mental health. The current study used a path analytic model to examine, firstly, whether previous bullying experiences (both victimization and perpetration) are associated with current positive and negative mental health in university students and, secondly, whether these influences are mediated by social support, resilience, and self-efficacy. The model was tested in 5,912 Chinese and 1,935 German university students. It was found that in both countries, higher victimization frequency was associated with lower levels of social support, personal resilience, and self-efficacy, which in turn predicted poorer mental health. Moreover, and only in China, perpetration was negatively associated with social support and personal resilience but not self-efficacy. In contrast, in the German sample, perpetration experience was found to enhance one's self-efficacy, and the later was associated with better mental health. The results support a mediation model in which social support, personal resilience, and self-efficacy partially mediate the influence of victimization on mental health in both countries. For the relationship between perpetration and mental health, self-efficacy was the only full mediator in Germany, whereas in China, both social support and personal resilience were partial mediators. In conclusion, peer victimization has adverse effects on mental health in both Germany and China. Only in China, however, is perpetration also associated with adverse mental health outcomes. In contrast, getting ahead by bullying in an individualistic society such as Germany is associated with increased self-efficacy and mental health. The differences found between an individualistic country and a collectivistic country have important implications for understanding and planning interventions to reduce bullying

Genetik und Epigenetik in der Psychotherapie von Depression und Angststörungen

Obwohl heute für die meisten psychischen Störungen über die gesamte Lebensspanne hinweg wirksame psychotherapeutische Behandlungsangebote zur Verfügung stehen, besteht immer noch eine zu große Variabilität in Bezug auf den kurz- und langfristigen Erfolg solcher Interventionen. Das Feld der Therapiegenetik beschäftigt sich mit der Vorhersage des Erfolges psychotherapeutischer Behandlungen durch genetische oder epigenetische Marker. Dabei wird das Ziel verfolgt, zukünftig psychotherapeutische Interventionen auf der Basis solcher Marker individualisiert anzuwenden und dadurch die Effektivität der Behandlungsangebote weiter zu verbessern. In diesem Beitrag wird der aktuelle Stand der Forschung in diesem Feld dargestellt, methodologische Herausforderungen skizziert und die Entwicklung der noch jungen Disziplin, ausgehend von theoriegeleiteten Kandidatengenstudien, hin zu hypothesenfreien genomweiten Assoziationsstudien und der Verwendung polygener Risiko-Scores, nachgezeichnet. Der zweite Abschnitt dieses Übersichtsartikels widmet sich epigenetischen Prozessen und diskutiert kritisch erste Befunde, die sich mit Modifikation von DNA-Methylierungsmustern im Zuge psychotherapeutischer Intervention beschäftigen.Although effective psychotherapeutic treatment is now available for most mental disorders throughout the life span, there is still large variability in the short and long-term success of such interventions. The field of therapygenetics is concerned with predicting the success of psychotherapeutic treatments using genetic or epigenetic markers. The long-term goal is to individualize future psychotherapeutic interventions on the basis of such markers to further improve the effectiveness of treatment options. In this review, we present the current state of research, outline methodological challenges, and trace the development of this still young discipline from theory-based candidate gene studies to hypothesis-free genome-wide association studies. In the second part of this review, epigenetic processes are discussed, with a focus on recent studies investigating intervention-associated modifications of DNA methylation patterns

Cognitive biases in response to visual body-related stimuli in eating disorders

$\textbf {Background:}$ Biased processing of body-related information may be linked to the development and maintenance of eating disorders (ED). The objective of this systematic review will be to examine the occurrence and the extent of cognitive biases in response to visual body-related stimuli in individuals with ED and individuals with an increased risk to develop ED. $\textbf {Methods:}$ Studies will be identified by searching MEDLINE and PsycINFO. We will include observational and experimental studies that examine the association between cognitive biases (information processing biases) in response to visual body-related stimuli and eating-related pathology in clinical and non-clinical adult samples. In addition to database searches, citation tracking will be used. Two reviewers will first screen titles and abstracts independently and will then review full texts for eligibility. Data extraction will be done independently by two reviewers. Conflicts at all levels of screening and extraction will be resolved through discussion. Studies will be included if they 1) assess cognitive biases (i.e., attentional biases, memory biases, judgment biases, response biases, and interpretation biases) in response to visual body-related stimuli (i.e., pictures or photographs of a human body or a human body shape), 2) if they report associations between biases and eating-related pathology, 3) if study participants are at least 16 years or older, and 4) if no priming task was administered prior to the assessment. Descriptive data of studies will also be collected. Risk of bias assessment will be undertaken by two independent reviewers. Data will be analyzed using random-effects meta-analysis. $\textbf {Discussion:}$ This systematic review will synthesize the evidence for cognitive bias in response to visual body-related stimuli in individuals with ED and individuals with an increased risk of developing an ED. The findings may help to better understand information processing in eating-related psychopathology

The effect of picture book reading on young children’s use of an emotion regulation strategy

This project was founded by the DFG (German Research Foundation; SCHN-415/8-1