Beliefs about the malleability of global attributes like personality and intelligenceknown as mindsetsare well-established predictors of resilience to challenges in educational contexts. Recent research further suggests that mindsets about anxiety may act in a similar fashion with mental health resilience. In this study we examined whether anxiety mindset would moderate relations between history of stressful life events and psychological distress and coping. Consistent with predictions, relations between number of stressful life events and posttraumatic stress symptoms, depression, substance use, and motivations for non-suicidal self-injury were weaker among those with more of a growth mindset relative to those with more of a fixed mindset. These initial results suggest that anxiety mindsets function in a similar way for mental health resilience as how mindsets of intelligence function for academic outcomes.
Mind-sets are beliefs regarding the malleability of self-attributes. Research suggests they are domain-specific, meaning that individuals can hold a fixed (immutability) mind-set about one attribute and a growth (malleability) mind-set about another. Although mind-set specificity has been investigated for broad attributes such as personality and intelligence, less is known about mental health mind-sets (e.g., beliefs about anxiety) that have greater relevance to clinical science. In two studies, we took a latent variable approach to examine how different mind-sets (anxiety, social anxiety, depression, drinking tendencies, emotions, intelligence, and personality mind-sets) were related to one another and to psychological symptoms. Results provide evidence for both domain specificity (e.g., depression mind-set predicted depression symptoms) and generality (i.e., the anxiety mind-set and the general mind-set factor predicted most symptoms). These findings may help refine measurement of mental health mind-sets and suggest that beliefs about anxiety and beliefs about changeability in general are related to clinically relevant variables.
This study extended previous theory and research on interpersonal heterogeneity in depression by identifying groups of depressed young adults who differ in their type and degree of interpersonal problems, and by examining patterns of pathological personality traits and alcohol abuse among these groups. We examined the interpersonal problems, personality traits, and alcohol-related problems of 172 college students with at least moderate levels of self-reported depression on the Patient Health Questionnaire (Spitzer, Kroenke, & Williams, 1999). Scores from the Inventory of Interpersonal Problems – Short Circumplex (Soldz, Budman, Demby, & Merry, 1995) were subjected to latent profile analysis, which classified individuals into five distinct groups defined by the types of interpersonal problems they experience (dominant, warm, submissive, cold, and undifferentiated). As hypothesized, groups did not differ in depression severity, but did show predicted patterns of differences on normative and maladaptive personality traits, as well as alcohol-related problems. The presence of clinically meaningful interpersonal heterogeneity in depression may have important implications for designing more individualized treatments and prevention efforts for depression that target diverse associated interpersonal problems.
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