Background Suicide is a global public health concern causing the death of 703 000 people each year. Adolescents are an especially vulnerable population. Suicidality usually starts with suicidal...Show moreBackground Suicide is a global public health concern causing the death of 703 000 people each year. Adolescents are an especially vulnerable population. Suicidality usually starts with suicidal ideation (SI); therefore, this may be a useful preliminary measure of suicidal intent, and a point for suicide prevention. Our understanding of suicide and strategies for its prevention have not improved much in the past 50 years, which may be due to a missing piece in our current theories of suicidality: they do not address the self and the role it plays in suicidality. However, there is a theory that systematically addresses the self, namely the ego in psychoanalytic theory. Of particular interest are ego mechanisms of defense. Objectives This study aimed to investigate the relationship between ego mechanisms of defense and SI in adolescents to improve existing theories of suicidal behaviour by exploring whether specific ego mechanisms of defense can be identified as a risk factor for SI in adolescents aged 17-26. Methods This cross-sectional study was conducted using self-report questionnaires. The sample consisted of 98 university students. Logistic regression analyses were used to test the hypotheses. Results Immature and neurotic defensive categories were positive predictors of group membership of suicidal ideators, however only neurotic defense mechanisms were significant at p < 0.05. Displacement was also a positive predictor at p < 0.05. Finally, overall defensive functioning (ODF) had a significant negative correlation with SI at p < 0.05, however the logistic regression model was not significant. Conclusion Neurotic defensive category may be a useful predictor of SI. The defense mechanism displacement may also be a useful predictor of SI. ODF is negatively correlated with SI, suggesting a possibly useful relationship between the variables. These results are promising and seem worth further investigation, as defense mechanisms could be used as primary points of prediction and prevention of SI, and hence, suicidality.Show less
Er zijn steeds meer jongeren met angstklachten. Uit onderzoek blijkt dat opvoedstijl een voorspeller kan zijn voor de hoeveelheid angstklachten bij adolescenten. Met name een (over)beschermende...Show moreEr zijn steeds meer jongeren met angstklachten. Uit onderzoek blijkt dat opvoedstijl een voorspeller kan zijn voor de hoeveelheid angstklachten bij adolescenten. Met name een (over)beschermende opvoedstijl zou samenhangen met angstklachten bij de adolescent. Maar welke aspecten van deze opvoedstijl leiden tot verhoging van angstklachten is nog niet volledig bekend. Bij een (over)beschermende opvoedstijl ligt de nadruk wellicht minder op het aspect cognitieve empathie. Als ouders heel beschermend zijn, zijn ze zich mogelijk minder bewust van de gevoelens en behoeftes van hun kind. Ouders proberen de emoties van het kind te controleren en tonen zo minder empathie, door minder ruimte voor emoties te geven. In de huidige studie is daarom onderzocht of verhoogde cognitieve empathie het verband tussen een (over)beschermende opvoedstijl en angstklachten bij adolescenten medieert. Hiertoe hebben 115 adolescenten, waarbij 102 vaders en 114 moeders, als onderdeel van een grotere studie, een reeks vragenlijsten ingevuld om deze variabelen te meten. Met de Interpersonal Reactivity Index werd cognitieve empathie van de ouders gemeten, met de Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders de angstklachten bij de adolescent en met de Parental Bonding Instrument de mate van een (over)beschermende opvoedstijl. Regressieanalyses toonden aan dat een (over)beschermende opvoedstijl van de ouders inderdaad positief samenhing met de angstklachten bij de adolescent, maar deze relatie werd niet gemedieerd door cognitieve ouderlijke empathie. De resultaten worden geïnterpreteerd en limitaties en vervolgonderzoeken worden besproken.Show less
The etiology of anorexia nervosa (AN) remains difficult to understand, and even harder to predict. Identifying possible risk factors is therefore crucial. Recent literature has suggested that...Show moreThe etiology of anorexia nervosa (AN) remains difficult to understand, and even harder to predict. Identifying possible risk factors is therefore crucial. Recent literature has suggested that impaired set-shifting (SS) in the anorexic population might play a role as an endophenotype, meaning it might make individuals more susceptible to developing this disorder. It has been established that SS abilities are impaired in adults with AN, but it is unclear whether this is also the case for younger age groups. In this study we aimed to get a better understanding of the possible SS impairment in adolescents with AN. We examined differences in SS abilities between female adolescents with AN and HC (N=72; AN=45, HC=27), between the ages of 12-21 years old (M=15.83, SD=2.08) using a MANOVA, and looked at the influence of food-related stimuli, activity-related stimuli, and neutral stimuli on SS abilities within both groups through ANCOVAs. We examined whether poor SS abilities are associated with low BMI, poor body image, and restrictive eating behaviors using multiple regression analyses, with age, AN subtype and intelligence level as covariates. We found no significant difference in SS abilities between the participants with AN and healthy controls (p=.20). Participants with AN performed significantly worse on the SS task with activity-related stimuli as compared to the food-related (p=.015) and neutral stimuli (p<.001). HC participants did not show a difference in performance between the three SS tasks (p=.17). We did not find a significant association between SS abilities and low BMI (p=.78), poor body image (p=.233) and restrictive behaviors (p=.197). Based on our findings, poor SS abilities do not seem to be associated with adolescent AN, but more research should be done into this topic to strengthen these results. Future research must additionally focus on finding alternative measures that can be understood as risk factors, and actively seek out new approaches that can be used in the prevention of this disorder.Show less
Up to a third of children experience childhood maltreatment (CM), which is abuse and/or neglect by a caregiver. CM is a robust risk factor for depression, and adolescent depressive symptoms seem to...Show moreUp to a third of children experience childhood maltreatment (CM), which is abuse and/or neglect by a caregiver. CM is a robust risk factor for depression, and adolescent depressive symptoms seem to increase during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study therefore investigated whether childhood maltreatment was associated with a further increase in adolescent depression in response to the pandemic, and what role self-esteem and loneliness play in this association. We examined depressive symptoms before (up to March 2020) and during the pandemic (April 2020), in a sample of 79 adolescents (16-26 years old) of which 67.1% were female and non were non-binary (REACT study; Smith et al., 2021). We found that CM was predictive of depression during the pandemic, but not of depression before the pandemic, nor of an increase in depressive symptoms. Furthermore, we found that loneliness was a significant mediator of the relationship between CM and depression during the pandemic, whereas self-esteem was found to be an independent predictor of depression increase. Based on these findings depression prevention/intervention programs are advised to identify CM survivors and to target loneliness and low self-esteem.Show less
The present study is a longitudinal study that examined whether depression in adolescence within a two-year gap could be predicted by adolescents’ stress responses to social stressors, while also...Show moreThe present study is a longitudinal study that examined whether depression in adolescence within a two-year gap could be predicted by adolescents’ stress responses to social stressors, while also investigating whether gender and age play a role in this prediction. At T1, participants were 205 adolescents between 12 and 17 years old (mean age=14.81 year, SD=1.31, 49.3% female). This study also replicated past studies that investigated gender differences in depression and stress responses including coping. The Response to Stress Questionnaire was used as an instrument to assess adolescents’ reaction and coping methods to social stressors, whereby the participants indicated the ways in which they react to social stressors on a four-point scale. Furthermore, the depressive symptoms of the participants were measured with the Children Depression Inventory at two time points two years apart, whereby the participants answer a 27-item self-report questionnaire. Based on the results of the statistical analyses, there were no significant gender differences in depression, nor were there significant age-related differences in depression between adolescent girls and boys. There were, however, significant gender differences in stress responses, namely Primary Control Engagement coping and Involuntary Engagement stress response. And finally, Primary Control Engagement coping, gender, and depression at T1 significantly predicted depression at T2, however the interaction effects of gender, age, and gender by age with the stress response did not significantly predict depression at T2. In conclusion, later depression can be predicted by stress responses, however gender and age do not moderate this prediction.Show less
Parentally bereaved adolescents constitute a high-risk group susceptible to many short and long term negative outcomes, such as prolonged grief and depression. Numerous different interventions have...Show moreParentally bereaved adolescents constitute a high-risk group susceptible to many short and long term negative outcomes, such as prolonged grief and depression. Numerous different interventions have been proposed and implemented aiming to support this population. However, there has been no comprehensive review or empirical support for all of them. This thesis aims to systematically review intervention studies for parentally bereaved adolescents and report on their effectiveness. Time interval between loss and treatment, symptom severity at baseline, interventions’ structure, therapeutic confrontation, participants’ age, and percentage of parental death were examined as plausible moderators. The dataset was extracted in December 2019 from nine electronic databases. Study characteristics regarding the interventions, samples, measures, and outcomes were extracted from 30 articles. Based on the sufficiently reported statistical data of 25 studies an overall effect size was estimated for the interventions and moderator analyses were conducted. A pooled effect size of -0.397 was found, indicating a small to moderate positive effect of these interventions on the participants’ life. Therapeutic confrontation, unstructured interventions, and targeting severely distressed participants were the intervention characteristics that positively moderated the intervention effectiveness. Different effect sizes were reported for separate outcome constructs, ranging from g = -0.029 to g = -1.203. Trauma-related outcomes reported the largest point estimate, while cortisol levels the smallest. To summarize, interventions targeting parentally bereaved adolescents can positively affect their participants during the difficult period following the loss of their parents. However, further and more targeted research is required to achieve larger effects.Show less
Bachelor thesis | South and Southeast Asian Studies (BA)
closed access
Social media has been able to develop itself as a necessity into the lives of Indonesian users for the past decade. There are different factors that contribute to the popularity of social media...Show moreSocial media has been able to develop itself as a necessity into the lives of Indonesian users for the past decade. There are different factors that contribute to the popularity of social media usage in Indonesia. The most important motive behind remains the wide accessibility of mobile internet devices. Social media has been a main focal point for cultural exchanging and cultural expressions. It has shaped and created idealistic lifestyles, beauty perceptions, fashion trends and religious/educational resources are shared freely in a high pace. Especially on the social network application Instagram, visual representations are easily being shared using photographic posts. Along with the impact of globalization, Indonesian Instagram users are the interlinked and in direct involvement with the outer world. It cannot be denied that social media platforms strengthen the power of the active individual agent and that the social media application becomes an empowerment tool to the audience. Besides the evident benefits, social media has brought a series of negative effects to the Indonesian society as well. Ethical conflicts and moral violations of visual social media content have inflamed the debate on social media literacy education. Also, excessive monthly expenditures are a result of the problematic high consumer culture that circulates on Instagram. Especially the most dominant group users –Indonesian youngsters– seem to be the most vulnerable group for these online complications. It is therefore of the interest to highlight how the Indonesian youth approaches and practice social media applications. This paper explores cultural Indonesian youth studies further on virtual terrain, with its focus on the photo-sharing application Instagram.Show less
