The purpose of this study is to explore the role of sex differences and personality in vulnerability to depression. Sex differences in personality and some clinical variables are described. We also assess the value of the variables that revealed significant sex differences as predictors of vulnerability to depression. In a group of adult participants (N = 112), 50% males and 50% females (mean a...

Methylmercury (MeHg) exposure from occupational, environmental, and food sources is a significant threat to public health. MeHg poisonings in adults may result in severe psychological and neurological deficits, and in utero exposures can confer embryonic defects and developmental delays. Recent epidemiological and vertebrate studies suggest that MeHg exposure may also contribute to dopamine (DA...

Neuroticism is considered a vulnerability factor for depression and anxiety but the mechanism by which this vulnerability is increased is unknown. Rumination is considered a psychological vulnerability for depression and anxiety. The current study sought to examine the mediational effects of different components of rumination (i.e., rumination on sadness, symptom-based rumination, rumination on...

BACKGROUND We studied herein the predictive value for panic severity of three well-based vulnerability factors: personality traits (neuroticism and extraversion; NEO-PI-R), anxiety sensitivity (ASI), and perceived control (ACQ-R). METHOD The sample was composed of 52 participants diagnosed with panic disorder, with or without agoraphobia, according to DSM-IV-TR criteria. RESULTS Our results...

CONTEXT Major depressive disorder is associated with impairments in processing emotional stimuli, and residual impairments are observed during remission, possibly indicating trait vulnerability. Stimuli with social context represent a distinct class of emotional stimuli, which in healthy volunteers are associated with specific neural substrates but have not previously been studied relative to v...

We assumed that, as in the case of addiction disorders, former cult members exhibit vulnerability and protective factors for cult commitment and membership. Thus, the aim of our study was to identify vulnerability factors that are involved in the commitment and in the retention in the group, as well as protective factors that are involved in the departure. We interviewed 31 former cult members,...

BACKGROUND It has been argued that the association between job strain and health could be confounded by early life exposures, and studies have shown early adversity to increase individual vulnerability to later stress. We therefore investigated if early life exposure to adversity increases the individual's physiological vulnerability job strain in adulthood. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS In ...

The serotonergic system has been found to play a crucial role in the development of affective disorders, and more recently a functional polymorphism in the serotonin transporter gene, the 5-HTTLPR has been found to be associated with different manifestations of depressive illness. Stress has also been implicated in the background of these disorders. Research increasingly implicates that the s a...

A vast body of literature has revealed that dysregulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) stress axis is associated with etiology of major depressive disorder (MDD). There are many ways that the dysregulation of the HPA axis can be assessed: by sampling diurnal basal secretion and/or in response to a stress task, pharmacological challenge, and awakening. Here, we focus on the associ...

BACKGROUND Quality of life is of significant importance in chronic hepatitis B (CHBV). We aimed to assess the psychometric properties of the Hepatitis B Quality of Life Questionnaire v1.0 (HBQOL) in a large sample of 320 Iranian patients with CHBV. METHODS After adapting the Iranian version through forward-backward translation and expert panel discussion, we administered HBQOL together with S...