Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms and Binge Eating With Mental Escape Features

© 2019, © 2019 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. The current study examines the association between posttraumatic stress symptoms and the experience of mental escape during binge eating. Participants were 898 undergraduate students at a large university in the southeastern United States. Results found that posttraumatic stress symptoms predicted (a) binge eating frequency and (b) mental escape during binge eating, even after controlling for emotion regulation deficits and other well-established predictors of binge eating (e.g., body weight and shape concerns). The results of this study are consistent with theories that conceptualize binge eating as an attempt to escape negative affect regarding past trauma. Results have implications for trauma-focused psychotherapy

Reflecting on one’s future versus one’s past: effects on death anxiety and death acceptance

The purpose of the current study was to explore the possibility of increasing death acceptance among a non-clinical sample of young adults. Recent empirical findings have supported the effectiveness of life review therapies and legacy exercises in helping people who are facing their imminent deaths reduce anxiety and distress. The premise of these treatments is that reviewing ones life in a therapeutic context, or through organizing family photographs or creating autobiographical materials, produces a sense of closure or completeness that increases death acceptance. The current study sought to determine whether having young participants think about their life to-date as a complete story could likewise produce transient decreases in death anxiety and increases in death acceptance. Specifically, I predicted that reflecting positively on one’s past life experiences would produce a transient decrease in death anxiety and an increase in death acceptance. Results provided some support for this hypothesis; generally, participants who wrote about their past were found to be more accepting of death compared to those who did not. Moreover, they were found to be less avoidant compared to participants who wrote only about their future. These findings elucidate the potential benefits of applying life review therapy to increasing death acceptance in younger adults. (Published By University of Alabama Libraries

Genetic factors associated with prostate cancer conversion from active surveillance to treatment

Men diagnosed with low-risk prostate cancer (PC) are increasingly electing active surveillance (AS) as their initial management strategy. While this may reduce the side effects of treatment for PC, many men on AS eventually convert to active treatment. PC is one of the most heritable cancers, and genetic factors that predispose to aggressive tumors may help distinguish men who are more likely to discontinue AS. To investigate this, we undertook a multi-institutional genome-wide association study (GWAS) of 5,222 PC patients and 1,139 other patients from replication cohorts, all of whom initially elected AS and were followed over time for the potential outcome of conversion from AS to active treatment. In the GWAS we detected 18 variants associated with conversion, 15 of which were not previously associated with PC risk. With a transcriptome-wide association study (TWAS), we found two genes associated with conversion (MAST3, p = 6.9 × 10−7 and GAB2, p = 2.0 × 10−6). Moreover, increasing values of a previously validated 269-variant genetic risk score (GRS) for PC was positively associated with conversion (e.g., comparing the highest to the two middle deciles gave a hazard ratio [HR] = 1.13; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.94–1.36); whereas decreasing values of a 36-variant GRS for prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels were positively associated with conversion (e.g., comparing the lowest to the two middle deciles gave a HR = 1.25; 95% CI, 1.04–1.50). These results suggest that germline genetics may help inform and individualize the decision of AS—or the intensity of monitoring on AS—versus treatment for the initial management of patients with low-risk PC