Background: Patients with a psychotic disorder generally seem to have difficulties recovering, especially on functional and societal ground. Due to cognitive impairments and experienced stigma, the...Show moreBackground: Patients with a psychotic disorder generally seem to have difficulties recovering, especially on functional and societal ground. Due to cognitive impairments and experienced stigma, the psychosis population feel excluded from society as a result of discrimination. This study aimed to get a better insight of functional and societal recovery and their association amongst patients with a psychotic disorder. In addition, it was investigated whether degree of importance regarding social roles had a moderating effect on the association. Functional recovery lacked consensus on terminology and assessments, but this study used executive functioning as a point of reference. Societal recovery was described as counteracting the public stigma on mental illness and improving the position and rights of (ex-)clients within society. Methods: This study included 237 participants (18-65 years) with psychosis as their main diagnosis through Flexible Assertive Community Treatment teams or Early Intervention Psychosis teams in healthcare institutions throughout the Netherlands. Participants signed informed consent prior participating in the study. The study design was cross-sectional, where data at baseline was used for the analyses. The data was gathered through (self-reported) questionnaires that measured executive functioning (functional recovery), and satisfaction scores on fulfilling various social roles (societal recovery). Two multiple linear regression analyses were performed to assess whether the level of executive functioning was associated with satisfaction scores. A binary logistic regression was performed to assess executive functioning in employment. Results: No effects were found between self-reported executive functioning and satisfaction scores. The degree of importance regarding social roles was found to have a direct relationship with satisfaction scores. Surprisingly, self-reported executive functioning did not seem to be associated with employment. Conclusion: Functional and societal recovery were not related and degree of importance regarding social roles was directly related to societal recovery. Self-reported executive functioning did not differ amongst those who were employed and unemployed. A better consensus on terminology and measurements needs to be realized for functional and societal recovery to acquire a better assessment of the psychosis population. Further research should include a more diverse range of patients in the psychosis population for better generalizabilityShow less
Previous research has established the mediating role of aspects of emotion regulation in the effect of youth trauma on substance use. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the use of...Show morePrevious research has established the mediating role of aspects of emotion regulation in the effect of youth trauma on substance use. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the use of two emotion regulation strategies, cognitive reappraisal (CR) and expressive suppression (ES), mediate the effect of youth trauma severity on substance use severity. Sixty Dutch speaking participants (41 male) between the age of 21 and 63 years with a substance use disorder (SUD) and at least one comorbid psychiatric diagnosis were included. Participants completed self-report measures regarding youth trauma severity and emotion regulation strategies. A semi-structured interview was administered for substance use severity. We performed a mediation analysis using multiple regression analyses with youth trauma severity as independent variable, CR and ES as mediators and substance use severity as dependent variable. No significant effects of trauma severity on CR (b = -.03, t = -.37, p = .712) and of CR on substance use severity (b = .02, t = .54, p = .595) were found. Also, the effects of youth trauma severity on ES (b = -.07, t = -1.00, p = .322) and of ES on substance use severity (b = -.01, t = -.18, p = .854) were found to be non-significant. The completely standardized indirect effect of CR mediating the effect of youth trauma severity on substance use severity was calculated (ab = .01). The same was done for ES (ab = .00). Overall, the findings of this study suggested that CR and ES did not mediate the effect of youth trauma severity on substance use severity. The results did provide leads for future research like investigating the possibility of an inverted U relationship in the association of substance use and emotion regulation which may very well have influenced the results of this study. Additionally, future research should use objective measures administering the same time period and include subscales of youth trauma severity, more aspects of substance use severity and additional emotion regulation strategies in order to find potential associations which this study might have missed.Show less
