Major
Neuroscience
Anticipated Graduation Year
2022
Access Type
Open Access
Abstract
Mental pain also referred to as psychological pain or emotional pain originates from non-physical sources however, much of the language to describe this experience relates to physical pain. Previous mental pain research from Dr. Shneidman,who coined the term psych-ache, describes it as an acute state of intense psychological pain associated with feelings of deep guilt, anguish, panic, angst, loneliness and a sense of helplessness. It can be associated with psychiatric disorders such as depression and an increased risk for harmful behavoiral patterns including self-harm and suicide.
Depression prevalence has tripled since the start of the pandemic and continues to rise. Mental pain may be a mediating factor between increased depression and sucide rates during the pandemic, given the basis of increased community-level trauma and loss. In order to inform evidenced-based treatment and intervention, it is critical to advance knowledge of mental pain and its link with other psychological symptoms.
This research will analyze self-report data collected from N = 2,500 undergraduate students to determine whether interacting depression and anxiety symptoms contribute to increasing psychological pain, or whether depression symptoms are a contributing factor. Psychological pain frequently co-occurs with depression; however, anxiety and depression also co-occur at very high rates, but very minimal research has focused on studying psychological pain and anxiety. I plan to investigate the extent to which psychological pain decreases subjective wellbeing beyond the impact of depression and anxiety symptoms. Data analyses will be conducted in R, and analytic methods will involve correlations and regression analyses to evaluate the research aims.
Faculty Mentors & Instructors
Rebecca Silton
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Investigating the Relationship Between Psychological Pain and Co-occurring Depression and Anxiety Symptoms
Mental pain also referred to as psychological pain or emotional pain originates from non-physical sources however, much of the language to describe this experience relates to physical pain. Previous mental pain research from Dr. Shneidman,who coined the term psych-ache, describes it as an acute state of intense psychological pain associated with feelings of deep guilt, anguish, panic, angst, loneliness and a sense of helplessness. It can be associated with psychiatric disorders such as depression and an increased risk for harmful behavoiral patterns including self-harm and suicide.
Depression prevalence has tripled since the start of the pandemic and continues to rise. Mental pain may be a mediating factor between increased depression and sucide rates during the pandemic, given the basis of increased community-level trauma and loss. In order to inform evidenced-based treatment and intervention, it is critical to advance knowledge of mental pain and its link with other psychological symptoms.
This research will analyze self-report data collected from N = 2,500 undergraduate students to determine whether interacting depression and anxiety symptoms contribute to increasing psychological pain, or whether depression symptoms are a contributing factor. Psychological pain frequently co-occurs with depression; however, anxiety and depression also co-occur at very high rates, but very minimal research has focused on studying psychological pain and anxiety. I plan to investigate the extent to which psychological pain decreases subjective wellbeing beyond the impact of depression and anxiety symptoms. Data analyses will be conducted in R, and analytic methods will involve correlations and regression analyses to evaluate the research aims.