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As we all know, COVID-19 has impacted the entire world. Quarantine disrupts people's lives, with high levels of stress and negative psychological impacts. Studies carried out mostly in the Far East, Europe, or the United States have started to provide evidence on survivors, frontline healthcare workers, and parents. The present study is the first survey to be carried out in Latin America (in Santiago, the capital of Chile). It aims to (a) explore the perceived psychological impact and future concerns; (b) evaluate vulnerability factors; (c) describe the perceived psychological impacts on participants whose psychological help and actual online psychotherapy was interrupted; and (d) explore the future need for psychological help. Procedure: An online survey was carried out (the first 2 weeks of lockdown in Santiago), which included sociodemographic data, perceived psychological impact, future concerns, and questions about psychological support. Participants: A total of 3,919 subjects answered, mostly women (80%). Results: The main perceived psychological impacts were concern (67%) and anxiety (60%). Future concerns were : general health (55.3%), employment (53.1%), and finances (49.8%). Younger participants had a greater perceived psychological impact ( p 's < 0.01) and concerns about employment, finances, mental health, stigma, and general health ( p 's < 0.001). Women reported more perceived psychological impact than men ( p 's < 0.05). Men reported mainly boredom (χ 2 = 11.82, gl = 1, p < 0.001). Dependent employees experienced more boredom, anxiety, distress, sleep problems, an inability to relax, and a lack of concentration than the self-employed (p's < 0.05). While the latter reported future concerns about employment and finances ( p 's < 0.001), dependent employees reported them on their general and mental health ( p 's < 0.001). Regarding psychological support, 22% of participants were receiving it before lockdown. They showed more perceived psychological impact than those who were not ( p 's < 0.01), and 7% of them had online psychotherapy, reporting excellent (32.1%) or odd but working (65.2%) results. Finally, of the total sample, almost half of the participants (43.8%) felt they would need emotional support after this pandemic, and these are the ones that also showed higher perceived psychological impact ( p 's < 0.001). This study confirms the presence of perceived negative emotional impact and concerns about the future. Also, there are vulnerable groups, such as women, younger people, the self-employed, and people with psychological processes that were interrupted.

Clients', therapists', and observers' identification of change was studied in 27 therapeutic processes, and agreement on the amount, temporal location, and content of change was related to outcome. Results show that clients reported more changes in successful therapies. Client-therapist temporal match of change moments was low irrespective of outcome. Results from all three perspectives were consistent in that manifestation of new behaviors and emotions was the most representative content of change among all therapies. Meanwhile, client-therapist agreement on the frequency of grouped change indicators reported was associated with positive outcome, whereas client-observer agreement was related to negative outcome. Therapists and observers agreed in both successful and nonsuccessful therapies. The relationship between agreement and therapeutic outcome is discussed in relation to each dimension of analysis.

The present study examines the heterogeneity of the therapeutic process through the analysis of the conversation between therapists and clients in psychotherapy. The Communicative Intentions dimension of the Therapeutic Activity Coding Sys-tem (TACS) was applied to 69 change episodes taken from 100 sessions that belong to five brief psychotherapies. Depending on what the participants are trying to achieve with their communication, the TACS distinguishes three types of Communicative Intentions: Exploring, Attuning, and Resignifying. Client and therapist verbalizations corresponding to these categories were analysed searching for differences between (a) both speakers, (b) initial, middle and final change episode stages, and (c) initial, middle and final phases of the whole therapeutic process. Results indicate that, in general, therapists resignify and attune more frequently, while clients explore more often. The analysis of Communicative Intentions within change episodes and during the whole therapeutic process reveals that there is an evolution in both: Even small therapy segments, as change episodes are, show that the process is not homogeneous, since in initial stages, the use of Exploring is more frequent than the use of Resignifying, especially for clients, while during the end of the episode clients and therapists increase their use of Resignify-ing. The analysis of the whole process confirms that Resignifying surpasses the use of Exploring in the final phases of therapy.

Drawing on the speech acts theory, a linguistic pattern was identified that could be expected to be associated to therapeutic change, characterized by being uttered in the first person singular and present indicative, and by being self-referential in its propositional content. The frequency of the pattern was examined among verbalizations defined as change moments in three therapies with different theoretical orientation. Results show that the majority of change moments have the specified pattern, and that this pattern is significantly more frequent in change moments than in random non-change-related verbalizations, and so, it does not pertain to therapeutic conversation in general. Implications are discussed concerning the possibility of using the linguistic pattern as an additional and complementary criterion in the identification of moments of change in the therapeutic process.

Background: Depressive disorder is one of the main health problems worldwide. Many risk factors have been associated with this pathology. However, while the association between risks factors and adult depression is well established, the mechanisms behind its impact remains poorly understood. A possible, yet untested explanation is the mediating impact of levels of personality functioning, i.e., impairments with regard to self and interpersonal.Method: Around 162 patients were assessed at the beginning of their therapy, with regard to risk factors, such as sociodemographic, physical, hereditary (Information Form), and adverse childhood experiences (ACE; CTQ). Depressive symptoms (Beck Depression Inventory, BDI) and personality functioning (OPD-SQ) were also measured. Associations between the related variables as well as other possible covariates were examined by means of zero-order correlations and bootstrapping-based mediation analysis.Results: Of all the risk factors taken into account, level of education and physical illness were associated with depression. On the other hand, the most significant predictor of depressive symptomatology was ACE, and this relationship was mediated by personality functioning. This indicates that patients presenting adverse childhood experiences are more likely to develop deficiencies in personality functioning, which in turn increases their likelihood of developing depressive symptomatology.Conclusion: These results reaffirm the importance of incorporating risk and vulnerability factors such as personality functioning in understanding depression.

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The purpose of this study is to improve the current understanding of the relation between depression and attachment through the evaluation of the role of personality styles (dependent vs self-critical) and social support in this association. These variables were studied in a clinical sample of 70 depressed outpatients (83% women; M=41.47 years, SD=12.91). Depressive symptomatology was assessed through the Beck Depression Inventory, adult attachment through the Experiences in Close Relationships Scale, social support through the Social Support Questionnaire and dependency and self-criticism through the Depressive Experiences Questionnaire. Mediational and moderation regression analyses were performed. Results show that the association between the dimensions of attachment (anxiety and avoidance) and depression was partially mediated by self-criticism. Furthermore, results demonstrate the role of social support as a moderating variable: when the level of satisfaction with social support was low and the anxiety dimension in the attachment scale was high, as avoidance increased, depressive symptoms increased as well. Results are discussed in relation to their importance for understanding the complex interplay of the variables involved in depression.