Our sample consisted of 116 adults aged 18 and older, recruited from college and community settings. Participants were currently in a romantic relationship and endorsed the sudden and/or violent death of a family member, close friend, or romantic partner. We hypothesized that: 1) prolonged grief is associated with poor dyadic functioning; 2) social support moderates the relationship between prolonged grief and dyadic functioning; 3) religious coping moderates the association between prolonged grief and dyadic functioning. Results indicated that prolonged grief was not significantly related to dyadic functioning, and neither social support nor religious coping moderated this association.

Research on associations between online dating and later relationship and sexual satisfaction is limited. The purpose of this study is to examine the association between meeting a romantic partner online or in person and later relationship and sexual satisfaction for heterosexual males and females. Main analysis results suggest that men report higher relationship satisfaction when they met their partner online and women with a preoccupied and dismissing attachment style reported higher sexual satisfaction when they met their partner online. Overall, there were few differences in relationship and sexual satisfaction for heterosexual men and women who met their partner online or in person.

The present study examined the effects of adult attachment and cultural orientation on sacrifice behaviors and the corresponding emotional reactions, using a cross-cultural sample in the U.S. and China. Strain-tests protocol was utilized in this study, in which an individual (i.e., the asker) was asked to share with their romantic partner a personal goal that required a major sacrifice from their partner (i.e., the responder), and then entered a discussion to process their plan of carrying out this goal. The final sample included 115 couples from the U.S. and 99 couples from China. Results indicated that responder's attachment avoidance was negatively associated with sacrifice offered to their partners and they reported more positive emotions as a result. The interaction between attachment anxiety and nationality was significant. Specifically, in the U.S. sample, individuals with high attachment anxiety were more likely to offer sacrifice for their partners, but this effect was reversed in the Chinese sample. In addition, interdependent self-construal (ISC) was a significant moderator for the relation between attachment anxiety and sacrifice behavior. Individuals who endorsed higher ISC and higher anxious attachment were less likely to make sacrifice for their partner. Furthermore, when individual offered more sacrifice, they reported more positive …

Mental health stigma has been identified as a barrier to help-seeking in the United States. Research suggests that insecure attachment may contribute to higher mental health stigma and lower help-seeking behavior. This may be particularly salient in military personnel who tend to report higher mental health stigma than the general population. Evidence suggests that both supportive and destructive military leadership are related to service members' attitudes toward seeking help. In the current study, a sample of military service members and veterans (N = 232) completed an online survey regarding mental health stigma, military leadership experiences, attachment strategies, and mental health help-seeking behaviors. Findings indicated that destructive and supportive leadership experiences were significantly related to self and public stigma, and self-stigma mediated the relationship between destructive and supportive leadership experiences and likelihood to seek help. Attachment anxiety predicted higher self and public stigma, while attachment avoidance predicted high self-stigma but low public stigma, with high self-stigma partially mediating the relationship between attachment avoidance and help seeking.

Extant literature has provided evidence suggesting that ethnic minority individuals experiencing discrimination report poor mental health outcomes, including depression, anxiety, and an overall lower sense of belongingness with the majority culture, but empirical research examining how ethnic identity affects this relationship is extremely scarce. The first goal of the current study was to replicate the results of previous studies demonstrating a strong relationship between discrimination and selected wellbeing indicators: meaning in life, American affirmation, depression, and life satisfaction. The second goal of the study was to examine a moderation model and two moderated moderation models that depict the relationships among adult attachment, the affective component of ethnic identity, exploration and commitment to ethnic identity, and wellbeing indicators. Data was collected from 206 students who were recruited from undergraduate psychology courses. Findings provided partial support to the direct effects of discrimination on various wellbeing indicators but did not support the moderating effect of ethnic identity. Additionally, adult attachment, ethnic identity, and discrimination were not found to significantly interact, but the relationship between discrimination, ethnic identity, and American affirmation was found to be significantly moderated by the affective component of ethnic identity. Discussion on the findings, limitations of the study, future research …

The work group in charge of editing the trauma disorders in the upcoming edition of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) made several changes to the trauma criteria. Specifically, they simplified the criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and added a new trauma disorder called complex PTSD (CPTSD). To assess the new and newly defined trauma disorders, Litvin, Kaminski and Riggs developed a self-report trauma measure called the Complex Trauma Inventory (CTI). Although the reliability and validity of the CTI has been supported, no empirically-derived cutoff scores exist. We determined the optimal CTI cutoff scores using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analyses in a diverse sample of 82 participants who experienced trauma and were recruited from an inpatient trauma unit, student veteran organizations, and university classrooms. We used the Clinician-Administered Interview for Trauma Disorders (CAIT) to diagnose the presence of an ICD-11 trauma disorder, and we correlated the results of the CAIT with the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale for the DSM-5 to establish the convergent validity of the CAIT, r = .945, p < .001. For the ROC analyses, the CTI was used as the index test and the CAIT was used as the criterion test. The area under the curve (AUC) …