{"title":"Facing the Unknown: An Inductive Analysis of the Lived Experience of Medical Residents during the COVID-19 Pandemic.","authors":"Flávio Guimarães-Fernandes, Laelia Benoit, Luiza Magalhães de Oliveira, Paulo Chenaud Neto, Débora Chou Feniman, Aline Villalobo Correia, Nathaly de Oliveira Bosoni, Daniela Medina Macaya, Euripedes Constantino Miguel, Daniela Ceron-Litvoc, Gustavo Bonini Castellana","doi":"10.1159/000536135","DOIUrl":"10.1159/000536135","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Introduction: </strong>The COVID-19 pandemic had significant repercussions for the everyday life and public health of society. Healthcare professionals were particularly vulnerable. Here, we interviewed medical residents about their lived experiences during the pandemic to offer a phenomenological analysis. To this end, we discuss their pandemic experiences considering Jaspers' \"limit situation\" concept - that is, a radical shift from their everyday experiences, to one causing them to question the basis of their very existence.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>We interviewed 33 medical residents from psychiatry and other specialties from the Hospital das Clínicas da Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo (HCFMUSP) who either (a) worked directly with COVID-19 patients or (b) provided psychiatric care to other healthcare professionals. Semi-structured interviews were developed using the Inductive Process to Analyze the Structure of lived Experience (IPSE).</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>The descriptions of the lived experiences of medical residents during the pandemic were organized into four content themes: (a) existential defense, (b) limit situations during the COVID-19 pandemic, (c) changes in lived experience, and (d) new world meanings through lived experience.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>During the COVID-19 pandemic, medical residents experienced what can be thought of as a \"limit situation,\" as they encountered the healthcare delivery challenges coupled with the social isolation imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. These challenges included fear of infection and potential death, uncertainty about the future, and the emotional overload caused by the sharp increase in patient deaths. That said, after facing such a limit situation, residents reported feeling strengthened by this experience. This is consistent with the notion that when confronted with limit situations, we draw on our resources to overcome adversity and, in turn, reap existential gains. Health care providers might use these experiences to energize their own professional approach.</p>","PeriodicalId":20723,"journal":{"name":"Psychopathology","volume":" ","pages":"169-181"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140102335","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PsychopathologyPub Date : 2024-01-01Epub Date: 2024-07-22DOI: 10.1159/000539740
Leonhard Kratzer, Stefan Tschöke, Johanna Schröder, Mark Shevlin, Philip Hyland, Christine Eckenberger, Peter Heinz, Thanos Karatzias
{"title":"Severe Dissociative Experiences beyond Detachment in a Large Clinical Sample of Inpatients with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Diagnostic and Treatment Implications.","authors":"Leonhard Kratzer, Stefan Tschöke, Johanna Schröder, Mark Shevlin, Philip Hyland, Christine Eckenberger, Peter Heinz, Thanos Karatzias","doi":"10.1159/000539740","DOIUrl":"10.1159/000539740","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Introduction: </strong>The fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) contains a dissociative subtype of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) characterized by depersonalization and derealization. Yet, there is evidence that dissociative symptoms in PTSD go beyond this kind of detachment dissociation and that some patients present with additional compartmentalization dissociation in the form of auditory-verbal hallucination, amnesia, and identity alteration.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>Hence, in this study, we examined latent profiles of childhood trauma (Childhood Trauma Questionnaire), PTSD (Impact-of-Event Scale-Revised), and pathological dissociation (Dissociative Experiences Scale-Taxon; DES-T) in a large sample of severely traumatized inpatients with PTSD (N = 1,360).</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Results support a three-class solution of the latent profile analysis with a PTSD class, a dissociative subtype class, and a third class characterized by more complex and more severe dissociative symptoms. Importantly, in our inpatient sample of patients with severe PTSD, the latter class was found to be the most prevalent. Both the exploratory character of our retrospective analysis of clinical routine data and the use of the DES-T limit the generalizability of our findings, which require methodologically more rigorous replication.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>In severe PTSD, dissociative symptoms beyond detachment are highly prevalent. Diagnostic and treatment implications are discussed.</p>","PeriodicalId":20723,"journal":{"name":"Psychopathology","volume":" ","pages":"519-527"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141748946","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PsychopathologyPub Date : 2024-01-01Epub Date: 2023-06-13DOI: 10.1159/000530588
Massimo Ballerini, Silvana Galderisi, Paola Bucci, Armida Mucci, Paul H Lysaker, Giovanni Stanghellini
{"title":"The Autism Rating Scale for Schizophrenia - Revised English Version: An Instrument to Characterize Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders Phenotype.","authors":"Massimo Ballerini, Silvana Galderisi, Paola Bucci, Armida Mucci, Paul H Lysaker, Giovanni Stanghellini","doi":"10.1159/000530588","DOIUrl":"10.1159/000530588","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Dis-sociality (DS) reflects the impairment of social experience in people with schizophrenia; it encompasses both negative features (disorder of attunement, inability to grasp the meaning of social contexts, the vanishing of social shared knowledge) and positive features (a peculiar set of values, ruminations not oriented to reality), reflecting the existential arrangement of people with schizophrenia. DS is grounded on the notion of schizophrenic autism as depicted by continental psychopathology. A rating scale has been developed, providing an experiential phenotype. Here we present the Autism Rating Scale for Schizophrenia - Revised English version (ARSS-Rev), developed on the Italian version of the scale. The scale is provided by a structured interview to facilitate the assessment of the phenomena investigated here. ARSS-Rev is composed of 16 distinctive items grouped into 6 categories: hypo-attunement, invasiveness, emotional flooding, algorithmic conception of sociality, antithetical attitude toward sociality, and idionomia. For each item and category, an accurate description is provided. Different intensities of phenomena are assessed through a Likert scale by rating each item according to its quantitative features (frequency, intensity, impairment, and need for coping). The ARSS-Rev has been able to discriminate patients with remitted schizophrenia from euthymic patients with psychotic bipolar disorder. This instrument may be useful in clinical/research settings to demarcate the boundaries of schizophrenia spectrum disorders from affective psychoses.</p>","PeriodicalId":20723,"journal":{"name":"Psychopathology","volume":" ","pages":"149-158"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9627350","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PsychopathologyPub Date : 2024-01-01Epub Date: 2024-05-22DOI: 10.1159/000538942
Milena Mancini, Cecilia Maria Esposito, Andrés Estradé, René Rosfort, Paolo Fusar-Poli, Giovanni Stanghellini
{"title":"Major Depression as a Disorder of the Narrative Self: A Qualitative Study.","authors":"Milena Mancini, Cecilia Maria Esposito, Andrés Estradé, René Rosfort, Paolo Fusar-Poli, Giovanni Stanghellini","doi":"10.1159/000538942","DOIUrl":"10.1159/000538942","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Introduction: </strong>Abnormal self-experiences are a common feature of major depression despite their absence from current diagnostic manuals. Current diagnostic criteria leave us with an impoverished conception of depressive disorders, and they fail to exploit the diverse experiential alterations that might be useful for understanding and diagnosing patients, and last but not least for explaining the aetiology of these disorders. Although some phenomenological descriptions of abnormal self-experiences in major depression are available, further research is needed to validate these through detailed clinical interviews.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>To characterize these phenomena in more detail and to verify and consolidate previous accounts, we conducted a qualitative study using the Consensual Qualitative Research method.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Our findings identified three categories of abnormal self-experiences: (1) impossibility to project oneself forward, (2) not recognizing one's self, and (3) losing control on one's self.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>Before delving into these results, we briefly described how the self is conceptualized in phenomenological psychopathology and explored in the literature on the self-experience in major depression. After discussing our results in the light of recent and contemporary phenomenological literature, we suggest that the inability to recognize otherness as part of oneself - which is the core of depressive experiences - ends in specific symptoms of depersonalization that differ from schizophrenic ones. We conclude that the self-experience, and in particular narrative identity, is central to the development and maintenance of depression.</p>","PeriodicalId":20723,"journal":{"name":"Psychopathology","volume":" ","pages":"423-433"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141081741","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PsychopathologyPub Date : 2024-01-01Epub Date: 2024-06-12DOI: 10.1159/000538458
Jani Kajanoja, Jussi Valtonen
{"title":"A Descriptive Diagnosis or a Causal Explanation? Accuracy of Depictions of Depression on Authoritative Health Organization Websites.","authors":"Jani Kajanoja, Jussi Valtonen","doi":"10.1159/000538458","DOIUrl":"10.1159/000538458","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Introduction: </strong>Psychiatric diagnoses are descriptive in nature, but the lay public commonly misconceives them as causal explanations. It is not known whether this logical error, a form of circular reasoning, can sometimes be mistakenly reinforced by health authorities themselves. In this study, we investigated the prevalence of misleading causal descriptions of depression in the information provided by authoritative mental health organizations on widely accessed internet sites.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>We searched for popular websites managed by leading mental health organizations and conducted a content analysis to evaluate whether they presented depression accurately as a description of symptoms, or inaccurately as a causal explanation.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Most websites used language that inaccurately described depression as a causal explanation to depressive symptoms.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>Leading professional medical and psychiatric organizations commonly confound depression, a descriptive diagnostic label, with a causal explanation on their most prominently accessed informational websites. We argue that the scientifically inaccurate causal language in depictions of psychiatric diagnoses is potentially harmful because it leads the public to misunderstand the nature of mental health problems. Mental health authorities providing psychoeducation should clearly state that psychiatric diagnoses are purely descriptive to avoid misleading the public.</p>","PeriodicalId":20723,"journal":{"name":"Psychopathology","volume":" ","pages":"389-398"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141311528","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PsychopathologyPub Date : 2024-01-01Epub Date: 2023-10-30DOI: 10.1159/000533862
Valerio Ricci, Giuseppe Maina, Giovanni Martinotti
{"title":"Dissociation and Temporality in Substance Abuse: A Clinical Phenomenological Overview.","authors":"Valerio Ricci, Giuseppe Maina, Giovanni Martinotti","doi":"10.1159/000533862","DOIUrl":"10.1159/000533862","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The term \"dissociation\" encompasses a wide array of symptoms and phenomena, all sharing the common characteristic of involving altered states of consciousness where an individual temporarily loses the sense of continuity of their own identity. In the context of addiction pathology, however, the dissociative paradigm remains a topic of ongoing debate. It fluctuates between the description of individual dissociative symptoms and the notion of post-traumatic dissociation as a structural process. This process involves fragmentation that extends beyond the confines of perception and experience within a singular moment, instead ensuring a persistent discontinuity of the self throughout one's existence. Pathological addiction stresses the question of the donation of sense in this deep and dramatic experience; it situates individuals within a compressed and constricted realm of vital space, alongside a frozen perception of time. Within this context, every emotion, sensation, and comprehension becomes impaired. Consequently, we have embarked on a journey starting with a historical analysis: the aim was to construct an elucidative framework for the dissociative paradigm in the context of addiction. This involves an in-depth exploration of the fundamental constructs of trauma and temporality, examined through the lens of phenomenological perspective.</p>","PeriodicalId":20723,"journal":{"name":"Psychopathology","volume":" ","pages":"219-228"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71413569","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PsychopathologyPub Date : 2024-01-01Epub Date: 2023-08-16DOI: 10.1159/000531512
Elena Poznyak, Jessica Lee Samson, Juan Barrios, Halima Rafi, Roland Hasler, Nader Perroud, Martin Debbané
{"title":"Mentalizing in Adolescents and Young Adults with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: Associations with Age and Attention Problems.","authors":"Elena Poznyak, Jessica Lee Samson, Juan Barrios, Halima Rafi, Roland Hasler, Nader Perroud, Martin Debbané","doi":"10.1159/000531512","DOIUrl":"10.1159/000531512","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Introduction: </strong>Growing, albeit heterogenous evidence questions whether attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is associated with socio-cognitive impairments, especially beyond childhood. This study focuses on mentalizing - the socio-cognitive ability to attribute and reason in terms of mental states. We aimed to characterize mentalizing performance in terms of correct scores and types of errors in adolescents and young adults with ADHD.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>Forty-nine adolescents and adults with ADHD and 49 healthy controls matched for age and gender completed a computerized naturalistic mentalizing task, the Movie for Assessment of Social Cognition (MASC). Repeated measures analyses of variance examined the effects of age group and ADHD diagnosis on MASC performance. Additionally, associations between mentalizing scores, the severity of attention problems, and the presence of comorbidity were explored in the ADHD group.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Results showed an increased prevalence of hypomentalizing errors in adolescents with ADHD. Lower mentalizing scores in adolescents with ADHD were correlated with indices of inattentiveness, impulsivity, and vigilance problems. Hypomentalizing errors in adolescents showed to be particularly associated with inattentiveness, after controlling for age and comorbidity. In contrast, adults with ADHD performed similarly to controls and their scores on the mentalizing task were not correlated to attention problems.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>These findings highlight potential developmental differences in mentalizing abilities in ADHD youths and their association with attentional impairments.</p>","PeriodicalId":20723,"journal":{"name":"Psychopathology","volume":" ","pages":"91-101"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10997248/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10016672","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PsychopathologyPub Date : 2024-01-01Epub Date: 2024-06-27DOI: 10.1159/000539695
Aylin Deniz Uzun Çakir, Burak Çakir, Şermin Yalin Sapmaz, Öznur Bilaç, Fatma Taneli, Hasan Kandemir
{"title":"Exploring the Association between Depression, Suicidality, and Serum Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor, FAM19A5, Total Antioxidant Status, Total Oxidant Status, Oxidative Stress Index, and Cytokine Levels: A Case-Control Study of Drug-Naive Adolescents with First-Episode Major Depressive Disorder.","authors":"Aylin Deniz Uzun Çakir, Burak Çakir, Şermin Yalin Sapmaz, Öznur Bilaç, Fatma Taneli, Hasan Kandemir","doi":"10.1159/000539695","DOIUrl":"10.1159/000539695","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Introduction: </strong>Considering the importance of neuroinflammation and neurodegeneration in the pathophysiology of major depressive disorder (MDD), peripheral blood biomarkers are promising for the prediction of diagnosis and treatment outcomes. We aimed to elucidate the neuroinflammatory pathophysiology of depression by evaluating serum levels of FAM19A5 as a new biomarker of inflammatory activation, proinflammatory cytokines, brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), and oxidative stress parameters.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>Adolescents diagnosed with first-episode drug-naive MDD (n = 35) were compared neurobiologically healthy control group (n = 33). Serum FAM19A5 levels, cytokine levels, BDNF and oxidative stress parameters were evaluated using the enzyme-linked immunoassay method. All participants were assessed with the Level-2 Depression Severity Scale, Sleep Disturbance Scale, Somatic Symptom Scale.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>BDNF levels were significantly higher in the patient group compared to the control group. While BDNF showed a positive correlation with all scale scores; BDNF was significantly higher in the suicide risk groups than the control group. IL-1β levels displayed a negative correlation with the severity of sleep disturbances.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>In adolescents with MDD, inflammatory and oxidative stress markers were not raised in peripheral blood, unlike in adults. However, BDNF levels, which typically decrease in neurodegenerative conditions, were higher in those with MDD.</p>","PeriodicalId":20723,"journal":{"name":"Psychopathology","volume":" ","pages":"451-458"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141458934","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PsychopathologyPub Date : 2024-01-01Epub Date: 2023-07-27DOI: 10.1159/000530768
Paola Salvatore, Premananda Indic, Harimandir K Khalsa, Mauricio Tohen, Ross J Baldessarini, Carlo Maggini
{"title":"Circadian Activity Rhythms and Psychopathology in Major Depressive Episodes.","authors":"Paola Salvatore, Premananda Indic, Harimandir K Khalsa, Mauricio Tohen, Ross J Baldessarini, Carlo Maggini","doi":"10.1159/000530768","DOIUrl":"10.1159/000530768","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>Identifying suicidal risk based on clinical assessment is challenging. Suicidal ideation fluctuates, can be downplayed or denied, and seems stigmatizing if divulged. In contrast, vitality is foundational to subjectivity in being immediately conscious before reflection. Including its assessment may improve detection of suicidal risk compared to relying on suicidal ideation alone. We hypothesized that objective motility measures would be associated with vitality and enhance assessment of suicidal risk.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>We evaluated 83 adult-psychiatric outpatients with a DSM-5 bipolar (BD) or major depressive disorder (MDD): BD-I (n = 48), BD-II (20), and MDD (15) during a major depressive episode. They were actigraphically monitored continuously over 3 weekdays and self-rated their subjective states at regular intervals. We applied cosinor analysis to actigraphic data and analyzed associations of subjective psychopathology measures with circadian activity parameters.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Actigraphic circadian mesor, amplitude, day- and nighttime activity were lower with BD versus MDD. Self-rated vitality (wish-to-live) was significantly lower, self-rated suicidality (wish-to-die) was higher, and their difference was lower, with BD versus MDD. There were no other significant diagnostic differences in actigraphic sleep parameters or in self-rated depression, dysphoria, or anxiety. By linear regression, the difference between vitality and passive suicidal ideation was strongly positively correlated with mesor (p < 0.0001), daytime activity (p < 0.0001), and amplitude (p = 0.001).</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Higher circadian activity measures reflected enhanced levels of subjective vitality and were associated with lesser suicidal ideation. Current suicidal-risk assessment might usefully include monitoring of motility and vitality in addition to examining negative affects and suicidal thinking.</p>","PeriodicalId":20723,"journal":{"name":"Psychopathology","volume":" ","pages":"1-9"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9883563","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
PsychopathologyPub Date : 2024-01-01Epub Date: 2023-08-02DOI: 10.1159/000531253
Nicole Hammann, Michael Kaess, Dan Rujescu, Romuald Brunner, Annette M Hartmann, Corinna Reichl
{"title":"Methylation of the Glucocorticoid Receptor Gene (NR3C1) in Adolescents with a History of Childhood Adversity Engaging in Non-Suicidal Self-Injury.","authors":"Nicole Hammann, Michael Kaess, Dan Rujescu, Romuald Brunner, Annette M Hartmann, Corinna Reichl","doi":"10.1159/000531253","DOIUrl":"10.1159/000531253","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Introduction: </strong>Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) is a large phenomenon among adolescents, and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are a major risk factor in its development. Malfunctioning of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis has been repeatedly reported for ACE as well as for NSSI. The glucocorticoid receptor (GR) is essential for the correct functioning of the HPA axis, thus alterations in the expression of the GR through altered methylation of the GR gene (NR3C1) (and more specifically exon 1F) might contribute to the development of NSSI in individuals with a history of ACEs, as has been reported for different other mental disorders.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>In this case-control study, we compared the methylation levels of exon 1F of the GR gene (NR3C1-1F) in adolescents with engagement in NSSI (n = 67) and a healthy control group (HC; n = 47). We preserved buccal swabs and used a mass spectrometry-based method called EpiTYPER for analyzing mean methylation of NR3C1-1F.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Adolescents in the NSSI group reported significantly more ACEs. The mean methylation level was about 3% in both groups with no significant group differences. Furthermore, no significant relation was found between ACE and methylation of NR3C1-1F, neither in the overall sample nor in the NSSI or HC group.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>Our results are contradictory to previous research showing an increased methylation in individuals with ACE. Regarding relations between methylation of NR3C1-1F and mental disorders, previous studies reported inconsistent findings. Our study points to NSSI being either unrelated to methylation of NR3C1-1F or to yet not identified moderators on relations between methylation of NR3C1-1F and engagement in NSSI during adolescence.</p>","PeriodicalId":20723,"journal":{"name":"Psychopathology","volume":" ","pages":"81-90"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9927253","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}