Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) website provides a data collection platform with quick and inexpensive access to diverse samples. Numerous reports have lauded MTurk as capturing high-quality data with an epidemiological sample that is more representative of the U.S. population than traditional in-person convenience samples (e.g., undergraduate subject pools). This benefit, in combination with the ease and low-cost of data collection, has led to a remarkable increase in studies using MTurk to investigate phenomena across a wide range of psychological disciplines. Multiple reports have now examined the demographic characteristics of MTurk samples. One key gap remains, however, in that relatively little is known about individual differences in clinical symptoms among MTurk participants. This paper discusses the importance of assessing clinical phenomena in MTurk samples and supports its assertions through an empirical investigation of a large sample (N = 1,098) of MTurk participants. Results revealed that MTurk participants endorse clinical symptoms to a substantially greater degree than traditional nonclinical samples. This distinction was most striking for depression and social anxiety symptoms, which were endorsed at levels comparable with individuals with clinically diagnosed mood and anxiety symptoms. Participants' symptoms of physiological anxiety, hoarding, and eating pathology fell within the subclinical range. Overall, the number of individuals exceeding validated clinical cutoffs was between 3 and 19 times the estimated 12-month prevalence rates. Based on the current findings, it is argued that MTurk participants differ from the general population in meaningful ways, and researchers should consider this when referring to this sample as truly representative. (PsycINFO Database Record

A common assumption among clinicians and researchers is that war trauma primarily involves fear-based reactions to life-threatening situations. However, the authors believe that there are multiple types of trauma in the military context, each with unique perievent and postevent response patterns. To test this hypothesis, they reviewed structured clinical interviews of 122 active duty service members and assigned the reported index (principal, most currently distressing) events to one or more of the following categories: Life Threat to Self, Life Threat to Others, Aftermath of Violence, Traumatic Loss, Moral Injury by Self, and Moral Injury by Others. They found high interrater reliability for the coding scheme and support for the construct validity of the categorizations. In addition, they discovered that certain categories were related to psychiatric symptoms (e.g., reexperiencing of the traumatic event, guilt, anger) and negative thoughts about the world. Their study provides tentative support for use of these event categories.

Within dysphoria, rumination has been identified as a particularly maladaptive emotion regulation strategy linked to prolonged negative affect and the onset of depressive episodes. Until now, the majority of research assessing naturally occurring rumination has utilized trait rumination measures; however, additional information may be obtained by assessing state rumination. The current study examined the association between state rumination and participants’ emotional recovery from stress. In addition, biased attention toward emotional information was investigated as a mechanism that might underlie state rumination. Participants completed the exogenous cuing task to assess attentional engagement and disengagement from emotional facial expressions followed by a psychosocial stressor. State rumination and self-reported sadness were measured during the recovery period. As expected, state rumination was associated with less recovery in sadness scores, even after controlling for trait rumination and depressive symptoms. Moreover, within the high dysphoria group, participants who had more difficulty disengaging from emotional expressions reported higher levels of rumination in response to the stressor. Results highlight an important association between state rumination and individuals’ recovery from stress, and suggest that difficulty disengaging attention from emotional expressions might be one mechanism underlying state rumination in dysphoria.

Little is known about the relation between individual differences in emotion regulation (ER) and the maintenance of clinical depression. This study examined whether frequency of use of four ER strategies (i.e., cognitive reappraisal, expressive suppression, reflection, and brooding) predicts recovery from a major depressive episode. At an initial appointment (Time 1), participants diagnosed with current major depressive disorder completed measures assessing symptom severity and use of ER strategies. Six months later (Time 2), participants were reassessed to determine diagnostic status (i.e., recovered or non-recovered). Results demonstrated that, after controlling for symptom severity, use of ER strategies predicted recovery status at Time 2. Specifically, use of reflection at Time 1 was a unique and significant predictor of greater chance for recovery. Results indicate that ER strategies may be utilized to predict long-term symptom maintenance and provide support for the proposition that reflection may be used adaptively among individuals diagnosed with depression.

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