Background The aim of this study is to provide a better understanding of the central symptoms of DSM‐5 posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in children and adolescents from the perspective of the child and its caregiver. Identifying core symptoms of PTSD can help clinicians to understand what may be relevant targets for treatment. PTSD may present itself differently in children and adolescents compared to adults, and no study so far has investigated the DSM‐5 PTSD conceptualization using network analysis. Methods The network structure of DSM‐5 PTSD was investigated in a clinical sample of n = 475 self‐reports of children and adolescents and n = 424 caregiver‐reports using (a) regularized partial correlation models and (b) a Bayesian approach computing directed acyclic graphs (DAGs). Results (a) The 20 DSM‐5 PTSD symptoms were positively connected within the self‐report and the caregiver‐report sample. The most central symptoms were negative trauma‐related cognitions and persistent negative emotional state for the self‐report and negative trauma‐related cognitions, intrusive thoughts or memories and exaggerated startle response for the caregiver‐report. (b) Similarly, symptoms in the negative alterations in cognitions and mood cluster (NACM) have emerged as key drivers of other symptoms in traumatized children and adolescents. Conclusions As the symptoms in the DSM‐5 NACM cluster were central in our regularized partial correlation networks and also appeared to be the driving forces in the DAGs, these might represent important symptoms within PTSD symptomatology and may offer key targets in PTSD treatment for children and adolescents.

The present study was designed to examine the effects of a 16-week exercise intervention on several aspects of psychological and physical well-being in a sample of HIV-1 positive individuals. An exercise group (n = 19) was compared with a control group (n = 14) prior to and following the intervention on several outcome variables, including health related quality of life, psychological well-being (depression, anxiety, global symptoms), immune parameters, and cardiopulmonary parameters. The exercise group experienced a significant improvement in cardiopulmonary fitness, and health related quality of life improved significantly in that group relative to the control group. Psychological well-being improved similarly in both groups, however, while immune indices did not change in either group. Consistent with earlier studies, it is suggested that a moderate exercise intervention enhanced the health related quality of life in HIV-1 positive individuals.

Rescue workers are exposed to enduring emotional distress, as they are confronted with (potentially) traumatic mission events and chronic work-related stress. Thus, regulating negative emotions seems to be crucial to withstand the work-related strain. This cross-sectional study investigated the influence of six emotion regulation strategies (i.e., rumination, suppression, avoidance, reappraisal, acceptance, and problem solving) on perceived work-related stress and stress-related depressive, post-traumatic, and somatic symptoms in a representative sample of 102 German rescue workers. Multiple regression analyses identified rumination and suppression to be associated with more work-related stress and stress-related symptoms. Acceptance was linked to fewer symptoms and, rather unexpectedly, avoidance was linked to less work-related stress. No effects were observed for reappraisal and problem solving. Our findings confirm the dysfunctional role of rumination and suppression for the mental and physical health of high-risk populations and advance the debate on the context-specific efficacy of emotion regulation strategies.

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Objective: Narratives of autobiographical events contain rich information about an individual’s private experience, his/her deepest thoughts, feelings, and emotions. The present study investigates linguistic markers of emotion expression and subjective well-being in adults during one session of positive, negative, and neutral expressive writing. Participants (N = 28 healthy participants, N = 7 adults with depressive symptoms), all native speakers of German were instructed to write expressively about personally relevant autobiographical life events of negative, positive, and neutral content.Methods: Quantitative text analysis was performed to determine the amount of emotional words, first person pronouns (singular vs. plural), and cognitive function words used in positive, negative, and neutral narratives and to examine the potency of these classes of words as linguistic markers of positivity/negativity, self-reference, and cognitive reappraisal. Additionally, the relationship between expressive writing and subjective well-being was explored by assessing changes in self-reported psychosomatic symptoms and in bodily and emotional awareness immediately after positive, negative, and neutral writing.Results: Regarding healthy participants, negative narratives contained significantly more negative emotional words than positive or neutral narratives. However, negative narratives also contained more positive emotional words compared to negative emotional words in positive narratives. Moreover, negative narratives contained more cognitive function words than positive narratives, suggesting that healthy participants tried to reappraise negative experiences while writing about negative personal life events. Positive narratives were characterized by an increased use of positive words and of pronouns of the first person plural (“we”), supporting a positivity bias and an extension of self-reference from first person singular to plural (we-reference) during positive expressive writing. Similarly, writing about neutral events was characterized by a positivity bias. Although based on descriptive analysis only, preferential use of positive words and cognitive function words in negative narratives was absent in participants reporting depressive symptoms. Positive, negative, and neutral expressive writing was accompanied by differential changes in bodily sensations, emotional awareness, and self-reported psychosomatic symptoms in all participants.Discussion: The findings are discussed with respect to previous research, a self-positivity bias, and a universal positivity bias in language use highlighting the relevance of these biases as markers of subjective well-being.