Author Archives: samweiss

Maxx Dempsey is the newest edition to the Center for Excellence in Mental Health. They will be working as a peer support specialist within the Encompass program. They will provide support through the sharing of lived experience and serve as a positive role model for mental health wellness and recovery.

This study evaluated a novel psychosocial intervention that combined two evidence-based practices – motivational interviewing and cognitive-behavioral therapy (MI-CBT) – for the treatment of motivational negative symptoms. The results of the randomized-controlled trial showed that participants in the MI-CBT group showed significantly greater improvements in motivational negative symptoms over the...

Exposure to stressful life events proximal to the pubertal transition can expose directional effects of hormone change on affective symptoms. Specifically, greater affective symptoms were associated with increases in hormones in a high stress context and decreases in hormones in a low stress context. These findings provide support for a...

This study demonstrates that the success of psychotherapy aimed at reducing anhedonia is dependent on perceived stress and impacts perceived stress.  

Prior exposure to childhood maltreatment contributes to changes in white matter microstructure of connections involved in carrying sensory information. Importantly, the effect of maltreatment on these connections is related to presence of PTSD symptoms up to 6-months after a traumatic event. These data highlight an important neural marker of later...

Childhood adversities (CAs) have been shown to predict increased risk of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and major depressive episode (MDE) among people exposed to adult traumatic events. Utilizing data from the AURORA study, Ziobrowski et al., examined whether patient-reported CAs (physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, physical neglect, emotional neglect,...

Investigators assessed the course of adverse posttraumatic neuropsychiatric sequela symptoms (pain, depression, sleep, nightmares, avoidance, re-experiencing, anxiety, hyperarousal, somatic, and mental/fatigue symptoms) in over two thousand patients from the AURORA study over a two month period after a car accident The study found that APNS symptoms were common during the...

Within the AURORA study, participants of different racial/ethnic groups experience different levels of adversity and come from different socioeconomic backgrounds. As a result, these groups differ in basal levels of arousal both behaviorally and neurally which is then related to how MRI biomarkers predict future PTSD symptoms. These results are...