Background/Introduction Psychological and physical well-being of health personnel has been significantly affected by COVID-19. Work overload and continuous exposure to positive COVID-19 cases have caused them fatigue, stress, anxiety, insomnia and other detriments. This research aims: 1) to analyze whether the use of cognitive reevaluation and emotional suppression strategies decreases and increases, respectively, stress levels of health personnel; 2) to quantify the impact of contact with patients with COVID-19 on stress levels of medical staff. Method Emotion regulation strategies (cognitive reevaluation and emotional expression) and stress levels were evaluated in 155 Dominican physicians who were treating people infected with COVID-19 at the moment of the study (67.9% women and 32.1% men; mean age = 34.89; SD = 9.26). In addition, a questionnaire created by the researchers quantified the impact that contact with those infected had on their stress levels. Results Contact with patients with COVID-19 predicts increased use of emotion suppression strategies, although is not associated with the use of cognitive reevaluation. These findings lead to an even greater increase in stress on health care providers. Conclusions Contextual contingencies demand immediate responses and may not allow health personnel to use cognitive re-evaluation strategies, leaning more towards emotion suppression. However, findings regarding high levels of stress require the implementation of intervention programs focused on the promotion of more functional emotion regulation strategies. Such programs may reduce current stress and prevent post-traumatic symptoms.

A common method to collect information in the behavioral and health sciences is the self-report. However, the validity of self-reports is frequently threatened by response biases, particularly those associated with inconsistent responses to positively and negatively worded items of the same dimension, known as wording effects. Modeling strategies based on confirmatory factor analysis have traditionally been used to account for this response bias, but they have recently become under scrutiny due to their incorrect assumption of population homogeneity, inability to recover uncontaminated person scores or preserve structural validities, and their inherent ambiguity. Recently, two constrained factor mixture analysis (FMA) models have been proposed by Arias et al. (2020) and Steinmann et al. (2021) that can be used to identify and screen inconsistent response profiles. While these methods have shown promise, tests of their performance have been limited and they have not been directly compared. Thus the objective of the current study was to assess and compare their performance with data from the Dominican Republic of the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (N = 632). Additionally, as this scale had not yet been studied for this population, another objective was to show how using constrained FMAs could help in the validation of mixed-worded scales. The results indicated that removing the inconsistent respondents identified by both FMAs (≈8%) reduced the amount of wording effects in the database. However, whereas the Steinmann et al. method only cleaned the data partially, the Arias et al. (2020) method was able to remove the great majority of the wording effects variance. Based on the screened data with the Arias et al. method, we evaluated the psychometric properties of the RSES for the Dominican population, and the results indicated that the scores had good validity and reliability properties. Given these findings, we recommend that researchers incorporate constrained FMAs into their toolbox and consider using them to screen out inconsistent respondents to mixed-worded scales.

Background/Introduction. Psychological and physical well-being of health personnel has been significantly affected by COVID-19. Work overload and continuous exposure to positive COVID-19 cases have caused them fatigue, stress, anxiety, insomnia and other detriments. This research aims: 1) to analyze whether the use of cognitive reevaluation and emotional suppression strategies decreases and increases, respectively, stress levels of health personnel, 2) to quantify the impact of contact with patients with COVID-19 on stress s level of medical staff. Method. Emotion regulation strategies and stress level were evaluated in 155 Dominican physicians by means of psychological tests with adequate levels of reliability. In addition, a questionnaire created by the researchers quantified the impact that contact with those infected had on their stress levels. Results. Contact with patients with COVID-19 predicts increased use of emotion suppression strategies, although is not associated with the use of cognitive reevaluation. These findings lead to an even greater increase in stress on health care providers. Conclusions. Contextual contingencies demand immediate responses and may not allow health personnel to use cognitive re-evaluation strategies, leaning more towards emotion suppression. However, findings regarding high levels of stress require the implementation of intervention programs focused on the promotion of more functional emotion regulation strategies. Such programs may reduce current stress and prevent post-traumatic symptoms.

Measurement of depressive comorbidity in drug dependents: Validity and diagnostic efficiency of Beck's Depression Inventory (BDI-II) in Dominicans with multiple substance consumption. The present study proposed two main objectives, a) evaluate the validity of BDI-II for the identification of comorbid depressive symptoms in people with multiple substance abuse (i.e. Known-Groups Validity); and b) verify the diagnostic efficacy of the inventory for the distinction between general population and clinical drug dependents. From a two-stage sampling, a total of 116 Dominicans was selected, of whom 50% were drug-dependent. Analysis of differences between groups and analysis of COR curves were applied. The results show statistically significant and large effect size differences in depression levels in favor of the substance abuse group. In addition, COR curve analyses indicate that depression scores derived from BDI-II have adequate diagnostic performance indices. In short, evidence is provided in favor of the appropriateness and validity of the BDI-II to be applied in a population of drug dependents. Keywords: Drug dependents; depression; BDI-II; comorbidity; known-groups validity; COR curves; Dominican Republic.  Resumen: El presente estudio se propuso como objetivos, a) evaluar la validez del BDI-II para la identificación de sintomatología depresiva comórbida en personas con múltiple abuso de sustancias (i.e. Known-Groups Validity); y b) verificar la eficacia diagnóstica del inventario para la distinción entre población general y drogodependientes clínicos. A partir de un muestreo bietapico, se seleccionó un total de 116 dominicanos de los cuales el 50% era drogodependiente. Se aplicaron análisis de diferencias entre grupos y análisis de curvas COR. Los resultados muestran diferencias estadísticamente significativas, y de tamaño del efecto grande, en los niveles de depresión en favor del grupo de personas con problemática de abuso de sustancias. Además, los análisis de curvas COR indican que los puntajes de depresión derivados del BDI-II presentan índices de rendimiento diagnóstico adecuados. En suma, se aporta evidencia a favor de la adecuación y validez del BDI-II para ser aplicado en población de drogodependientes.  Palabras clave: Drogodependencia; depresión; BDI-II; comorbilidad; known-groups validity; curvas COR; República Dominicana.

Fear to contamination is an easy-to-provoke, intense, hard-to-control, and extraordinarily persistent fear. A worsening of preexisting psychiatric disorders was observed during the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) outbreak, and several studies suggest that those with obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) may be more affected than any other group of people. In the face of worsening OCD symptoms, there is a need for mental health professionals to provide the support needed not only to treat patients who still report symptoms, but also to improve relapse prevention. In this line, it is recommended to improve alternative strategies such as online consultations and digital psychiatry. The aim of this study is to develop augmented reality (AR) stimuli that are clinically relevant for patients with cleaning OCD and assess their efficiency to obtain emotionally significant responses. Four AR stimuli were developed: a plastic bag full of garbage, a piece of bread with mold, a dirty sports shoe, and a piece of rotten meat. All stimuli were shown to a clinical group (17 patients with cleaning OCD) and a control group (11 patients without OCD). Relevant results were the design of the AR stimuli. These stimuli were validated with the statistical difference in perceived anxiety in the meat stimuli between the clinical and control groups. Nevertheless, when looking at effect sizes, all stimuli present effect sizes from small (plastic bag) to large (meat), with both shoe and bread between small and medium effect sizes. These results are a valuable support for the clinical use of these AR stimuli in the treatment of cleaning OCD.