Trauma's distinctive and combined effects on subsequent substance use, mental health, and neurocognitive functioning with the NCANDA sample.

PURPOSE: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) and potentially traumatic events (PTEs) contribute to increased substance use, mental health issues, and cognitive impairments. However, there's not enough research on how TBI and PTEs combined impact mental heath, substance use, and neurocognition. METHODS: This study leverages a subset of The National Consortium on Alcohol and Neurodevelopment in Adolescence (NCANDA) multi-site dataset with 551 adolescents to assess the combined and distinctive impacts of TBI, PTEs, and TBI+PTEs (prior to age 18) on substance use, mental health, and neurocognitive outcomes at age 18. RESULTS: TBI, PTEs, and TBI+PTEs predicted greater lifetime substance use and past-year alcohol and cannabis use. PTEs predicted greater internalizing symptoms, while TBI+PTEs predicted greater externalizing symptoms. Varying effects on neurocognitive outcomes included PTEs influencing attention accuracy and TBI+PTEs predicting faster speed in emotion tasks. PTEs predicted greater accuracy in abstraction-related tasks. Associations with working memory were not detected. CONCLUSION: This exploratory study contributes to the growing literature on the complex interplay between TBI, PTEs, and adolescent mental health, substance use, and neurocognition. The developmental implications of trauma via TBIs and/or PTEs during adolescence are considerable and worthy of further investigation.

How does disgust regulate social rejection? a mini-review.

The need to belong is a fundamental aspect of human nature. Over the past two decades, researchers have uncovered many harmful effects of social rejection. However, less work has examined the emotional antecedents to rejection. The purpose of the present article was to explore how disgust--an emotion linked to avoidance and social withdrawal--serves as an important antecedent to social rejection. We argue that disgust affects social rejection through three routes. First, disgust encourages stigmatization, especially of those who exhibit cues of infectious disease. Second, disgust and disease-avoidance give rise to cultural variants (e.g., socially conservative values and assortative sociality), which mitigate social interaction. Third, when the self is perceived as a source of contamination, it promotes shame, which, subsequently, encourages withdrawal from social interaction. Directions for future research are also discussed.

Influences of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Intuitive Exercise and Physical Activity among College Students.

The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted the health behaviors of people around the world, including their physical activity patterns. Intuitive exercise, a facet of one's relationship with physical activity, is defined as one's awareness, mindset (positive versus negative), and mindfulness when engaged in movement. The study's purpose was to explore whether self-reported physical activity and psychological mindsets around exercise changed during the pandemic. College students (n = 216) described their relationship with exercise before and during the pandemic through anonymous completion of the Intuitive Exercise Scale (IEXS) and open-ended questions to provide in-depth contextualized responses about exercise habits. Participants reported significantly higher scores on intuitive exercise during the pandemic, such as on the Body Trust subscale (M = 3.43), compared to pre-pandemic levels (M = 3.20), p < 0.001. Moreover, varied themes related to physical activity were uncovered such as exercising for fun, exercise influenced by emotion, and loss of motivation to exercise. Important takeaways of the study include the diversity of responses to the pandemic (i.e., some participants reported an increase in physical activity levels and more positive exercise attitudes while others experienced the opposite), the need to promote self-care, and the need for positive coping strategies.