Zusammenfassung. Eines der ersten validierten Instrumente zur wissenschaftlichen Untersuchung von Emotionsregulationsprozessen, stellt der englischsprachige Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) von Gross und John (2003) dar. Dieser erlaubt es, Präferenzen für zwei häufig angewandte Strategien zur Emotionsregulation, nämlich Unterdrückung (suppression) und Neubewertung (reappraisal) zu erfassen. Die deutsche Version wurde in drei Übersetzungsschritten an jeweils einer Gruppe von Studenten (n = 113/167/174) erprobt. Dabei stand eine möglichst enge Orientierung am englischen Original sowie die Optimierung der Faktoren-Ladungen auf die zwei Komponenten im Vordergrund. Eine Faktorenanalyse mit iterativer Kommunalitätenschätzung und Varimax-Rotation wurde verwendet. Entsprechend unserem Ziel erreichten die Alpha-Werte (innere Konsistenz) als Reliabilitätsmaß für Unterdrückung und Neubewertung die Durchschnittswerte des amerikanischen Originalfragebogens. Wir entwickelten ein Instrument, das einfach und in kurzer Zeit (5–10 min) zu beantworten ist und differenziert die beiden Emotionsregulationsstile Neubewertung und Suppression erfasst. Mögliche Anwendungsbereiche sind die Untersuchung von Depressionen und Angsterkrankungen und die Bewertung psychotherapeutischer Verfahren.

Two experiments were conducted in order to investigate the effect of expression intensity on gender differences in the recognition of facial emotions. The first experiment compared recognition accuracy between female and male participants when emotional faces were shown with full-blown (100% emotional content) or subtle expressiveness (50%). In a second experiment more finely grained analyses were applied in order to measure recognition accuracy as a function of expression intensity (40%-100%). The results show that although women were more accurate than men in recognizing subtle facial displays of emotion, there was no difference between male and female participants when recognizing highly expressive stimuli.

Neuroimaging studies of depression have demonstrated treatment-specific changes involving the limbic system and regulatory regions in the prefrontal cortex. While these studies have examined the effect of short-term, interpersonal or cognitive-behavioural psychotherapy, the effect of long-term, psychodynamic intervention has never been assessed. Here, we investigated recurrently depressed (DSM-IV) unmedicated outpatients (N = 16) and control participants matched for sex, age, and education (N = 17) before and after 15 months of psychodynamic psychotherapy. Participants were scanned at two time points, during which presentations of attachment-related scenes with neutral descriptions alternated with descriptions containing personal core sentences previously extracted from an attachment interview. Outcome measure was the interaction of the signal difference between personal and neutral presentations with group and time, and its association with symptom improvement during therapy. Signal associated with processing personalized attachment material varied in patients from baseline to endpoint, but not in healthy controls. Patients showed a higher activation in the left anterior hippocampus/amygdala, subgenual cingulate, and medial prefrontal cortex before treatment and a reduction in these areas after 15 months. This reduction was associated with improvement in depressiveness specifically, and in the medial prefrontal cortex with symptom improvement more generally. This is the first study documenting neurobiological changes in circuits implicated in emotional reactivity and control after long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy.

Mentalization has been proposed as a key concept in understanding therapeutic change in patients with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). However, little is known about mentalization in chronic depression. This study investigated the role of mentalization in the long-term psychoanalytic treatment of chronic depression. Mentalization measured with the Reflective Functioning Scale (RFS) was examined in patients with chronic depression (n = 20) in long-term psychoanalytic treatment and compared to healthy controls (n = 20). Results show that global RF scores did not differ significantly between patients and controls. However, depressed patients tended to have lower RF scores concerning issues of loss. Furthermore, RF was unrelated to symptoms and distress as assessed by the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and the SCL-90. RF did not predict therapeutic outcome as measured with the BDI but predicted changes in general distress after 8 months of psychoanalytic treatment as measured by the SCL-90. Moreover, correlations between RF and the Helping Alliance Questionnaire indicated that patients with higher RF were able to establish a therapeutic alliance more easily compared to patients with low RF.

We suggest that the reported alexithymia of patients with eating disorders is complex and independent from basic facial emotion recognition.

Objective: The core clinical feature of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is recurrent intrusive memories of trauma. This study aimed to test a novel and simple intervention, inspired by the concepts of concurrent task interference and memory reconsolidation, to reduce the occurrence of intrusive memories among inpatients with complex PTSD. Method: In this open-label single case series 20 patients with longstanding complex PTSD in inpatient treatment monitored the occurrence of intrusive trauma memories (intrusions) over the course of their admission (5 to 10 weeks). Patients received study-specific intervention sessions (including a memory reminder for a specific intrusion then 25 min Tetris gameplay) on a weekly basis. A within-subjects multiple baseline AB design was used, in that the length of baseline (“A,” preintervention, monitoring only) and postintervention (“B”) phases varied within-subjects across individual intrusions. Further, some intrusions were never targeted by the intervention. The study was registered prior to analysis, ISRCTN34320836. Results: Frequency of targeted intrusions reduced by on average 64% from baseline to the postintervention phase. Conversely, never-targeted intrusions reduced in frequency by on average 11% over a comparable time-period. Of the 20 patients, 16 met our criteria for showing “response” to the intervention. Conclusions: Results provide initial evidence that this brief behavioral procedure might reduce the occurrence of intrusive traumatic memories in longstanding and complex PTSD, here delivered in an inpatient setting. The potential of this simple, focused intervention opens up new possibilities for tackling a core clinical symptom of PTSD, warranting further research.

Two distinct factors have lead in the past to the development of several psychotherapeutic treatments for patients with inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD). First, clinicians and researchers believe that psychologic and somatic factors in chronic IBD, Crohn's disease, and ulcerative colitis) are connected. In addition, IBD reduces the health-related quality of life for these patients. The purpose of the psychotherapies is to influence the somatic course of the disease, the psychological state of the patients, or the patients' health related quality of life. This report evaluates the existing studies with regard to the effectiveness of psychotherapy IBD patients received in addition to medical treatment. We have identified 10 psychotherapy studies and 4 additional studies on self management and patient education on this topic. The studies significantly differ from each other in regard to psychotherapeutic methods, inclusion criteria, and outcome assessments. The results so far lead to the conclusion that psychotherapy does not have an impact on the course of the disease but, in some cases, positively influences the patient's psychologic state (such as depression, anxiety, and health related quality of life or coping with the disease). Thus, psychotherapy cannot, in general, be recommended for all patients with chronic IBD. Patients, however, that display a tendency toward psychologic problems, especially as it pertains to their illness, might profit from it.

No abstract