OBJECTIVE: Identifying mediators of therapeutic change is important to the development of interventions and augmentation strategies. Threat reappraisal is considered a key mediator underlying the effects of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) for anxiety disorders. The present study systematically reviewed the evidence for the threat reappraisal mediation hypothesis.

BackgroundAlthough posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been associated with disturbances in verbal memory, studies examining executive functioning in PTSD show mixed results.MethodsA systematic review and meta-analysis were performed to compare executive functioning in patients with current PTSD and controls without any psychiatric disorder. Standard mean differences (SMD) in executive functioning scores were calculated using random-effects models. Covariates were added to examine whether differences exist between subgroups.ResultsAcross 18 studies, 1080 subjects were included.

In October of 2002, a series of sniper attacks paralyzed the Washington Beltway, turning normally placid gas stations, parking lots, restaurants, and school grounds into chaotic killing fields. After the spree, ten people were dead and several others wounded. The perpetrators were forty-one-year-old John Allen Muhammad and his seventeen-year-old protégé, Lee Boyd Malvo. Called in by the judge to serve on Malvo's defense team, social worker Carmeta Albarus was instructed by the court to uncover any information that might help mitigate the death sentence the teen faced.

Many scholars have advocated that the time has come to provide empirical evidence of the mechanisms that associate community social capital with individual disaster mental health. For this purpose we conducted a study (n = 232) one year after a flood (2008) in Morpeth, a rural town in northern England. We selected posttraumatic stress as an indicator of disaster mental health. Our multilevel model shows that high community social capital is indirectly salutary for individual posttraumatic stress.