https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8894-9514
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ABSTRACT
Background: There is increased recognition that traumatic events are a common experience among college students, and such events have shown to be associated with negative mental health outcomes and poorer well-being among this population. Although some work has focused on the relation between trauma exposure and mental health among college students, little work has explored the role of individual difference in fatigue severity within this group.
Purpose: Therefore, the current study sought to address this gap in the existing literature by examining the explanatory role of fatigue severity in terms of anxiety/depression and post-traumatic stress among trauma exposed college students. Further, the mechanistic role of emotion dysregulation was evaluated as a possible factor that may underlie the relation between fatigue severity and mental health.
Method: Seven hundred and thirty trauma-exposed college students were included in the present study (78.6% female, Mage = 22.59 years, SD = 5.48; 55.3% racial minority).
Results: Results revealed that individual differences in fatigue severity had a significant indirect effect on the studied internalizing symptoms through emotion dysregulation.
Conclusion: These novel findings suggest future work should continue to explore emotion dysregulation in the association between fatigue severity and internalizing symptoms among trauma-exposed college students.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. Alternate models were examined using the re-experiencing, avoidance, and arousal subscales of the PDS as 3 different outcomes. All three models displayed significant total, indirect, and direct effects. Effect sizes were 0.15, 0.17, and 0.15, respectively.
2. A second set of alternative models observed the indirect effect of anxious arousal (X1alt), general depression (X2alt), and post-traumatic stress (X3alt) on fatigue severity (Yalt) via emotion dysregulation (M). All three models displayed significant total, indirect, and direct effects. Effect sizes were 0.20, 0.16, and 0.18, respectively.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Kara Manning
Kara Manning is a doctoral student in the University of Houston’s Clinical Psychology Ph.D. program. She received her Master of Arts degree in May of 2019 in Clinical Psychology. To date, she has published over 30 peer-reviewed articles and has attended multiple professional conferences around the world. Her research program includes fatigue and substance use disorders among adult populations, as well as understanding transdiagnostic mechanisms that may exacerbate these relations.
Jafar Bakhshaie
Dr. Jafar Bakhshaie a clinical fellow in the Menninger Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences. He received his M.D. from the Tehran University of Medical Sciences and Ph.D. from the University of Houston clinical psychology program. His research is focused on examining the impact of emotional regulatory mechanisms and cognitive processes underlying health-related behaviors (e.g. substance use, problem drinking, and cannabis misuse) in patients with OCD/Anxiety disorders, with a specific focus on underserved populations. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed publications and presented several papers in scientific conferences. As a clinician-scientist, his research involves the multidisciplinary quantification of emotional regulatory processes underlying substance use-OCD/Anxiety comorbidity using information communication technology solutions.
Justin M. Shepherd
Justin M. Shepherd, M.S., is a doctoral student in the Ph.D. clinical psychology program at the University of Houston. He is particularly interested in transdiagnostic factors (e.g. anxiety sensitivity) and their role in the maintenance of alcohol and nicotine use. Justin is also interested in brief interventions that target transdiagnostic mechanisms for co-occurring affective symptoms and alcohol and nicotine use.
Jenna Jones
Jenna Jones received her B.S. in Psychology from the University of Houston in Fall 2018. During her undergraduate career, Jenna worked as a research assistant in the Developmental Psychopathology Laboratory under the direction of Carla Sharp, and the Anxiety and Health Research Laboratory under the direction of Michael Zvolensky. Currently, Jenna is the Lab Manager of the T-SCAN Lab at Rice University under the direction of Bryan Denny, where she is involved in emotion regulation studies in stressed populations. After leaving Rice, she hopes to obtain her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology. Broadly, Jenna is interested in anxiety and mood disorders in adolescents and contributing mechanisms, such as emotion regulation.
Kiara R. Timpano
Dr. Kiara R. Timpano is the Director of the Program for Anxiety, Stress, and OCD (PASO), and an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Miami. Her research interests include understanding risk and vulnerability factors that play a role in the etiology, comorbidity, and maintenance of anxiety and obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorders. Dr. Timpano oversees the PASO research team on a number of active research studies, including ongoing studies focused on the etiology of Hoarding Disorder, the maintenance of OCD, and vulnerability to anxiety disorders. In addition to considering cognitive, emotional, and social risk factors for symptom development, her research also considers vulnerability factors from a transdiagnostic perspective, including distress tolerance, anxiety sensitivity, and repetitive negative thinking.
Andres G. Viana
Dr. Andres G. Viana is Associate Professor of Psychology, a licensed clinical child psychologist, and Director of the Child Temperament, Thoughts, and Emotions Laboratory at the University of Houston. He also serves as Associate Director of the Sleep and Anxiety Center of Houston. Dr. Viana received his M.S. and Ph.D. in Clinical Child Psychology from Penn State University and completed his psychology residency training at the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC), where he remained as a tenure-track member of the Psychiatry department until 2015. Dr. Viana’s program of research is grounded in the developmental psychopathology perspective to psychological functioning and focuses on the study and assessment of risk factors for childhood psychopathologies, with an emphasis on temperamental, emotional, cognitive, and parenting factors that may exacerbate anxiety, as well as the nature of the covariation among these processes. A growing aspect of his research program involves cognitive and emotion-related factors associated with risk behaviors in children with internalizing difficulties. Dr. Viana’s research has been funded by the University of Mississippi Medical Center, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and the Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).
Michael J. Zvolensky
Dr. Michael J. Zvolensk is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Psychology at University of Houston and Director of the Anxiety and Health Research Laboratory and Substance Use Treatment Clinic. He has published over 400 scholarly works on the co-occurrence of anxiety and stress-related psychopathology with substance use disorders. In this line of work, he also has examined the physical health and health behavior correlates of anxiety-substance use disorder comorbidity, including such conditions as HIV/AIDS, asthma, cardiac disease, and chronic pain. Dr. Zvolensky's work is globally aimed at eliminating inequalities in psychopathology, addictive, and other health behaviors through translational research. He has utilized a variety of methodological tactics in his research program, including community-based participatory research (CBPR), laboratory studies, epidemiologic-field (cross-national and prospective), and randomized clinical trials. He has been involved in over 45 NIH grants as PI, Co-PI, or co-investigator, and therefore, has extensive experience leading large and multi-team projects. His research program has received awards from the numerous organizations, including the American Psychological Association, Anxiety and Depression Association of America, and Association for Advancement of Cognitive and Behavior Therapy.
