There is growing concern that much published research may have questionable validity due to phenomena such as publication bias and p-hacking. Within the psychiatric literature, the construct of expressed emotion (EE) is widely assumed to be a reliable predictor of relapse across a range of mental illnesses. EE is an index of the family climate, measuring how critical, hostile, and overinvolved a family member is toward a mentally ill patient. No study to date has examined the evidential value of this body of research as a whole. That is to say, although many studies have shown a link between EE and symptom relapse, the integrity of the literature from which this claim is derived has not been tested. In an effort to confirm the integrity of the literature of EE predicting psychiatric relapse in patients with schizophrenia, we conducted a p-curve analysis on all known studies examining EE (using the Camberwell Family Interview) to predict psychiatric relapse over a 9- to 12-month follow-up period. Results suggest that the body of literature on EE is unbiased and has integrity, as there was a significant right skew of p-values, a nonsignificant left skew of p-values, and a nonsignificant test of flatness. We conclude that EE is a robust and valuable predictor of symptom relapse in schizophrenia.

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Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) commonly co-occurs with depression, resulting in heightened severity and poorer treatment response. Research on the associations between specific obsessive-compulsive symptoms (OCS) and depressive symptoms has utilized measures that have not fully considered the relationship across OCS dimensions. Little is known about which factors explain the overlap between OCS and depressive symptoms. OCS and depressive symptoms may be related via depressive cognitive styles, such as rumination or dampening (i.e., down-regulating positive emotions). We evaluated the associations of OCS dimensions with depressive symptoms and cognitive styles. We also examined the indirect effects of rumination and dampening in the relationship between OCS and depressive symptoms. Participants (N = 250) completed questionnaires online. Greater depressive symptoms, rumination, and dampening were associated with greater levels of all OCS dimensions. Path analysis was utilized to examine a model including the direct effect of depressive symptoms on overall OCS and two indirect effects (through rumination and dampening). There was a significant indirect effect of depressive cognitive styles on the relationship between OCS and depressive symptoms, through rumination and dampening. Replication in a clinical sample and experimental manipulations may bear important implications for targeting depressive cognitive styles in treatments for OCD and depression.

A substantial literature has investigated the role of parenting on a child’s development. Several classifications of parenting styles (i.e., permissive, authoritarian, authoritative) have been linked to a wide range of negative outcomes such as mood and anxiety problems; however, their respective associations to anxiety sensitivity (AS) remain unclear. Using a nonclinical sample of young adults (N = 227), this study is the first to empirically investigate whether parenting styles were differentially associated with AS, controlling for general depression and anxiety symptoms. Hierarchical linear regression analyses showed that authoritarian and permissive styles were associated with elevated AS. Permissive parenting was associated with the AS physical subfactor, whereas authoritarian parenting was associated with the AS social subfactor. Moreover, AS was found to mediate the relationship between specific parental styles and anxiety symptoms as well as depressive symptoms. Findings suggest that AS may mediate the relationship between parenting styles and negative psychological outcomes.