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Eline Frison (University of Leuven) will present her findings at the 67th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association in San Diego, CA. From 2013-2014, Frison set up a large-scale longitudinal panel study to investigate the relationships between Flemish adolescents' social networking site use and their well-being. Students filled out paper-and-pencil surveys between 6 month periods. The surveys asked students about their use of social networking sites like Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram, and their well-being (depressive symptoms, life satisfaction, loneliness). The data analyzed revealed that frequent use of Instagram at one point was related to greater depression six months later. However, using Instagram at one point was also related to increased closeness to friends (perception that they are a ppreciated and loved by their friends) six months later, which in turn was related to lower levels of depression. Various researchers have investigated the i...

Intrusive memories often spring to mind without warning after someone has experienced some form of trauma and they can bring back specific sights, sounds and emotions attached to the original incident. In some cases, intrusive memories go hand in hand with the development of acute stress disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder, as well as with conditions such as depression and severe grief. Iyadurai and her colleagues used their insights into neuroscience and findings from previous experimental research to test whether one dose of a brief psychological intervention including playing a highly visual-spatial computer game such as Tetris could prevent intrusive symptoms building up. The participants were 71 patients waiting in the emergency department at John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford who all experienced a traumatic motor vehicle accident. Participants in the intervention group were asked to bring the memory to mind, given specific instructions of how to play the game, and th...

New research indicates that mothers with a history of mental health disorders feel less ready for discharge from the NICU than with mothers without a mental health history. The research, entitled "Maternal Mental Health and Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Discharge Readiness in Mothers of Preterm Infants," has been published in  The Journal of Pediatrics . The research team was led by Elisabeth C. McGowan, MD, a neonatologist at Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island, a Care New England hospital, and assistant professor of pediatrics at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, and also includes Women & Infants/Brown University colleagues Katheleen Hawes, PhD, RN; Richard Tucker, BA; Melissa O'Donnell, MSW; and Betty Vohr, MD; as well as Nan Du, BS, MD, from Yale New Haven Children's Hospital. "Our primary objective was to evaluate the association between maternal mental health disorders and discharge readiness," said Dr. McGowan. ...