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According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 17% of Latinx high school students report considering attempting suicide within the United States. Given that a large proportion of Latinx youth have an immigrant caregiver, there is a clinical need to address the sociocultural, practical, and resource-related barriers of immigrant Latinx families who have youth experiencing acute suicide risk. To support effective and culturally aligned clinical approaches at the acute, indicated level of care (eg, emergency department, psychiatric hospitalization), we present 3 recommendations contextualized within the flexible and often time-limited nature of clinical responses to acute youth suicidality. The recommendations assume the presence of suicide risk assessment, safety planning, and disposition planning for a level of care that is optimally therapeutic and least restrictive (referred to as standard care).1 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Black individuals who smoke in the United States experience health disparities related to tobacco use (e.g., greater nicotine dependence, less success in quitting smoking) and interoceptive distress (e.g., somatic symptoms, anxiety). Individual difference factors that amplify interoceptive distress and contribute to poorer smoking behaviors and outcomes warrant further attention and investigation. Thus, the present study sought to explore the association between anxiety sensitivity and clinically-relevant smoking variables of perceived barriers for quitting, smoking inflexibility, and problems experienced during past quit attempts. Participants in the current study included 98 Black adult smokers (71.4% male; Mage = 44.08 years, SD = 11.44 years). Results indicated greater levels of anxiety sensitivity were associated with greater levels of perceived barriers for quitting smoking (b = 0.10, SE = 0.08, p = 0.01), smoking inflexibility (b = 0.02, SE <.001, p <.001), and problems experienced during past smoking quit attempts (b = 0.17, SE = 0.07, p = 0.02). Clinical implications and future directions are further discussed as it relates to anxiety sensitivity and efforts to reduce or quit smoking for this health disparities population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Pain affects a significant proportion of college students in the United States and has been linked to anxiety and depressive symptoms. Rumination and worry, two transdiagnostic factors linked to comorbidity, may explain the relationship between pain and mental health symptoms. Current Study: The current study examined worry and rumination as explanatory factors in the relationship between pain and anxiety and depressive symptoms in a sample of college students with pain (n = 1,577; 79.9% female). Results: Results indicated that both rumination and worry explained the relationship between pain and depressive and social anxiety symptoms, while rumination alone explained the relationship between pain and anxious arousal symptoms. Conclusion: The current study provides novel empirical evidence that worry and rumination each help explain the relationship between pain and anxiety and depressive symptoms among college students with current pain, and college students in pain may benefit from targeted psychosocial strategies aimed at decreasing worry and ruminative responses.

Author(s): Michael J. Zvolensky [sup.1] [sup.2] [sup.3] , Lorra Garey [sup.1] , Nubia A. Mayorga [sup.1] , Andrew H. Rogers [sup.1] , Michael F. Orr [sup.1] , Joseph W. Ditre [...], The present study examined past-month pain severity in relation to e-cigarette dependence, perceived barriers for quitting e-cigarettes, and beliefs about risks associated with using e-cigarettes. Participants were 322 e-cigarette users from the United States (60.2% female, M.sub.age= 36.78 years, SD = 10.62). Results indicated that pain severity was significantly and positively related to e-cigarette dependence, perceived risks of e-cigarette use, and perceived barriers to quitting e-cigarettes. The observed effects were evident above and beyond the variance accounted for by sex, age, education, income, dual cigarette use, frequency of e-cigarette use, and perceived health status. The present study provides novel empirical evidence that pain experience is related to a moderate, yet clinically-meaningful, proportion of the variance in e-cigarette dependence, perceived barriers for quitting e-cigarettes, and beliefs about e-cigarette risks. These findings suggest there is merit to exploring the role of pan experience in the onset and maintenance of e-cigarette use.

Background: Latinx individuals experience significant tobacco cigarette smoking-related diseases and illnesses. Although most Latinx smokers report a desire to quit smoking, evidenced-based cessation treatments are underutilized in this group, which may partially be due to lower likelihood of receiving advice from a healthcare professional. Further, there are a lack of cessation treatments that account for comorbid symptoms/conditions (e.g., co-occurring pain) and social determinants of health (e.g., perceived discrimination). Extant work has established the reciprocal relation between pain and smoking trajectories. Additionally, although social determinants, such as perceived racial/ethnic discrimination, have demonstrated clinical relevance to a variety of health-related behaviors, limited work has examined the role of perceived discrimination in pain-smoking relations. The current study examined the effects of perceived discrimination and pain severity in relation to smoking cessation problems and self-efficacy for quitting among Latinx cigarette smokers. Method: Participants included 226 (Mage = 34.95 years, SD = 8.62; 38.5% female) adult Latinx daily cigarette smokers. Results: Results indicated that the interaction of pain and perceived discrimination was predictive of greater quit problems (p = 0.041) as well as greater confidence in the ability to refrain from smoking in response to internal (p < 0.001) and external stimuli (p < 0.001). Conclusions: Overall, this work provides a more nuanced understanding of the psychosocial contexts in which Latinx smokers may encounter problems related to quitting, and this data is important for future smoking cessation research and treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a multi-systemic disease, COVID-19 infection engendered a rise in co-occurring mental and physical health symptoms, particularly affecting the Latinx population. The current work sought to evaluate the main and interactive influence of acculturative stress and anxiety sensitivity in terms of mental and physical health symptoms among 181 Latinx persons (30.4% female, Mage = 34.1 years, SD = 8.20). Data were collected during a period of high COVID-19 impact (2020–2021) and analyses included five separate, two-step hierarchical regressions that were conducted for each of the criterion variables: (1) fear of coronavirus; (2) somatic symptoms; (3) fatigue severity; (4) anxiety symptoms; and (5) depression symptoms. For all analyses, step 1 covariates included years living in the U.S. COVID-19 impact, gender identity, education, and work life distress and home life distress. Results revealed an interactive effect of anxiety sensitivity and acculturative stress on COVID-19 fear, unique main effects for both anxiety sensitivity and acculturative stress on COVID-19 related fear and somatic symptoms, and main effects for anxiety sensitivity alone in relation to fatigue severity, anxiety, and depression. Overall, this study represents an initial investigation of the associations between acculturative stress, anxiety sensitivity, and a range of salient COVID-19 related outcomes among Latinx persons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the present investigation was to develop and test a measure of negative emotional reactivity to racial/ethnic minoritized stress. In Study 1, we developed item content for a measure of negative emotional reactivity to racial/ethnic minoritized stress. We then evaluated item performance and produced a refined 15-item scale among a large sample of racial/ethnic minority adults (N = 1,343). Results supported a unidimensional construct and high levels of internal consistency. The factor structure and internal consistency were replicated and extended to a sample of Latinx persons who smoke (N = 338) in Study 2. There was evidence of convergent validity of the Emotional Reactivity to Minoritized Stress (ERMS) total score in terms of theoretically consistent and statistically significant relations with indices of mental health problems, social determinants of health, and substance use processes. There was also evidence that the ERMS demonstrated divergent validity in that it was negatively associated with psychological well-being, health literacy, subjective social status in Study 1, and positive abstinence expectancies in Study 2. Overall, the present study establishes the reliability and validity of measuring individual differences in negative emotional reactivity to racial/ethnic minority stress with the ERMS and that such responsivity is associated with behavioral health problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]