Anthony Mancini

Pace University · Department of Psychology

Previous research investigated the trajectories of mental health and well-being during and after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, less is known about the trajectories of mental health and well-being before, during, and two years after the onset of the pandemic. The aim of the current study was to investigate the trajectory of depression...

Objective: In a preregistered study, we examined whether worries about COVID-19 are simultaneously linked with enhanced well-being through social interaction and with reduced well-being through depression symptoms. Method: In August 2020, census-matched participants from high- and low-prevalence regions in the United States and Italy (N = 857) c...

Background: Prolonged media exposure after collective crises is widely shown to have adverse effects on people's mental health. Do these effects show variation across different countries? In the present study, we compared the link between media exposure related to COVID-19 and mental health-related outcomes in the United States and Italy, two coun...

Losing a loved one is both common and profoundly stressful for young adults. Little research has examined the longitudinal course of post‐loss cognitive processing, depression, and sleep difficulties. Further, little is known about the context of other stressors or the role of individual regulatory resources, such as attentional regulation, that mi...

The aims of the present study were to investigate (1) whether the COVID-19 pandemic and the restrictive measures to control its spread were associated with changes in happiness before and after the pandemic and (2) whether household size, living with a partner/spouse, living with at least one son/daughter, financial support, income loss, and job lo...

The aim of the present study was to develop and validate a self-report measure that investigates people’s general disengagement after the acute phases of the pandemic. Across three studies, we examined the psychometric features of the Pandemic Disengagement Syndrome Scale (PDSS) in four national contexts. In Study 1, we developed the instrument and...

The COVID-19 pandemic, and the response of governments to mitigate the pandemic's spread, resulted in exceptional circumstances that comprised a major global stressor, with broad implications for mental health. We aimed to delineate anxiety trajectories over three time-points in the first 6 months of the pandemic and identify baseline risk and resi...

Background: Prolonged media exposure is widely shown to have adverse effects on people’s mental health. Do these effects show variation across different countries? In the present study, we compared the link between media exposure and mental health-related outcomes in the United States and Italy, two countries with high levels of early COVID-19 prev...

Can worrying about COVID-19 have positive consequences for well-being? In a preregistered study, we examined the effect of worries about COVID-19 on well-being through divergent associations with social interaction and depression. In August 2020, participants from high and low prevalence regions in the United States and Italy (N = 857) completed as...

Interpreting a failure to replicate is complicated by the fact that the failure could be due to the original finding being a false positive, unrecognized moderating influences between the original and replication procedures, or faulty implementation of the procedures in the replication. One strategy to maximize replication quality is involving the...

How does the prevalence of COVID-19 affect people’s mental health? In a preregistered study ( N = 857), we sought to answer this question by comparing demographically matched samples in four regions in the United States and Italy with different levels of cumulative COVID-19 prevalence. No main effect of prevalence emerged. Rather, prevalence region...

How does the prevalence of COVID-19 impact people’s mental health? In a preregistered study (N = 857), we sought to answer this question by comparing demographically matched samples in four regions in the United States and Italy with different levels of cumulative COVID-19 prevalence. No main effect of prevalence emerged. Rather, prevalence region...

African Americans are more likely to die from tobacco-related diseases and less likely to quit smoking than their white counterparts. Evidence of greater prevalence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among African Americans underscores the importance of studying the effects of traumatic event exposure on tobacco dependence treatment outcomes i...

Background The COVID-19 pandemic is a rapidly evolving stressor with significant mental health consequences. We aimed to delineate distinct anxiety-response trajectories during the early stages of the pandemic and to identify baseline risk and resilience factors as predictors of anxiety responses. Methods Using a crowdsourcing website, we enrolled...

High-intensity disaster can harm psychological functioning. Could moderate-intensity disaster improve psychological and attachment functioning through its effects on social functioning? We used a prospective quasi-experimental cohort design to investigate this possibility among college students. Hurricane cohort participants (N = 209) completed ass...

Lockdowns to control the spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) have had profound effects on everyday life worldwide, but their effect on mental health remains unclear because available meta-analyses and reviews rely mostly on cross-sectional studies. We conducted a rapid review and meta-analysis of longitudinal studies and natural exper...

Lockdowns to control the spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) have had profound effects on everyday life worldwide, but their effect on mental health remains unclear because available meta-analyses and reviews rely mostly on cross-sectional studies. We conducted a rapid review and meta-analysis of longitudinal studies and natural exper...

Background The presence of personality disorders is greatly prevalent among substance users. Personality disorders could increase vulnerability to complicated grief symptoms. Bereavement is commonly overlooked among substance users. We used network analysis to estimate the structure of relations between patterns of personality disorders and complic...

Background: The appraisal of a stressor substantially influences how we adapt to it. We used an experimental paradigm to test and replicate the effects of threat appraisals on subsequent intrusive memories, as well as their moderation by neuroticism. Method: In three studies (total N = 562), participants were randomly assigned to an aversive or con...

In this commentary, I argue that the mental health impact of COVID-19 will show substantial variation across individuals, contexts, and time. Further, one key contributor to this variation will be the proximal and long-term impact of COVID-19 on the social environment. In addition to the mental health costs of the pandemic, it is likely that a subs...

In this commentary, I argue that the mental health impact of COVID-19 will show substantial variation across individuals, contexts, and time. Further, one key contributor to this variation will be the proximal and long-term impact of COVID-19 on the social environment. In addition to the mental health costs of the pandemic, it is likely that a subs...

Interpreting a failure to replicate is complicated by the fact that the failure could be due to the original finding being a false positive, unrecognized moderating influences between the original and replication procedures, or faulty implementation of the procedures in the replication. One strategy to maximize replication quality is involving the...

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is unique in its longitudinal focus. To better understand how PTSD develops, we used network analysis in a longitudinal sample of survivors of the 2008 Virginia Tech campus shootings. Participants were 212 women who completed surveys at both 2 and 12 months after the shooting. Using within-group permutation test...

The appraisal of a stressful event is widely thought to play a critical role in how we adapt to it. In three studies, we used an experimental paradigm to test and replicate the causal effects of threat appraisals on subsequent intrusive memories and to test their moderation by neuroticism. In study 1 (N = 173), we randomly assigned participants to...

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is unique in its longitudinal focus. To better understand how PTSD develops, we used network analysis in a longitudinal sample of survivors of the 2008 Virginia Tech campus shootings. Participants were 212 women who completed surveys at both two and 12 months post-shooting. Using within-group permutation tests,...

Human beings are routinely exposed to varying forms of acute adversity. Our responses take varying forms too, ranging from chronic distress to resilience. Although this pronounced variability is widely recognized, one possible outcome of acute adversity has been invariably, though understandably, ignored: an improvement in psychological and social...

Background Distinguishing temporal patterns of depressive symptoms during pregnancy and after childbirth has important clinical implications for diagnosis, treatment, and maternal and child outcomes. The primary aim of the present study was to distinguish patterns of chronically elevated levels of depressive symptoms v. trajectories that are either...

Objective: Most reactions to loss can be characterized by three prototypical trajectories of resilience, gradual recovery, and chronic distress (Bonanno, ). However, research on the factors that uniquely predict these trajectories of response has been limited. We examined theoretically relevant predictors of each of the trajectory patterns. Metho...

The authors provide an original and integrative framework for understanding the complex array of factors that contribute to resilience. Their faith in the uniform benefits of positive appraisals neglects the potential costs of overly positive appraisals, however. As a result, their theory may have difficulty capturing the complexity of appraisal's...

People's responses to acute stress are largely thought to comprise four prototypical patterns of resilience, gradual recovery, chronic distress, and delayed distress. Here we present evidence of an additional response pattern: psychological improvement. Three-hundred and sixty-eight female survivors of the Virginia Tech shootings completed assessme...

This study aims to investigate the effects of dependency and attachment in adjusting to the loss of a loved one by directly comparing the relative contribution of each to bereavement outcomes among midlife adults. Comparisons among attachment and dependency are made using models that control for attachment among three groups of bereaved adults (N =...

Research increasingly indicates that prototypical trajectories of resilience, recovery, delayed, and chronic distress characterize reactions to acute adversity. However, trajectory research has been limited by the practical and methodological difficulties of obtaining pre-event and longitudinal data. In two studies, we employed a novel method in wh...

of psychological resilience to the effects of military deployment and some insight into the factors underlying it. In addition, they present evidence of a wide array of other adjustment trajectories following military deployment. In relation to resilience, 78% of Danish soldiers experienced minimal posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms befo...

The Relationship Profile Test is a widely used measure of dependency, detachment, and healthy dependency that has been examined in both clinical and nonclinical settings, though researchers have yet to validate this measure among conjugally bereaved adults. The present study examines the construct validity of a three-facet model of dependency-detac...

Understanding differences in factors leading to positive outcomes in high-risk and low-risk offspring has important implications for preventive interventions. We identified variables predicting positive outcomes in a cohort of 235 offspring from 76 families in which one, both, or neither parent had major depressive disorder. Positive outcomes were...

Research on biological and psychological functions of disgust is increasing, yet relatively little is known about how people react to facial displays of disgust. This study used the dot probe task to examine attachment-related biases for emotional faces. Anxiously-attached individuals exhibited a significant tendency both to attend away from closed...

Objective: This study explored the range of interventions and the use of more intrusive techniques by staff of assertive community treatment (ACT) teams to promote engagement, manage problem behaviors, and reinforce positive behaviors among patients. Individual and organizational characteristics that may be associated with these practices were ide...

Complicated grief is increasingly recognized as a debilitating disorder with significant mental and health consequences. The underlying mechanisms of complicated grief remain unclear, however. In the present study, we investigated a specific mechanism of complicated grief (CG) derived from attachment theory: the accessibility of the deceased's ment...

Most previous attempts to determine the psychological cost of military deployment have been limited by reliance on convenience samples, lack of pre-deployment data or confidentiality and cross-sectional designs. This study addressed these limitations using a population-based, prospective cohort of U.S. military personnel deployed in support of the...

The first wave of research on loss and potentially traumatic events (PTEs) was dominated by either a psychopathological approach emphasizing individual dysfunction or an event approach emphasizing average differences between exposed and nonexposed groups. We consider the strengths and limitations of these approaches and then review more recent rese...

We examined degree and determinants of change in body image and sexuality over the first year following breast cancer diagnosis to differentiate body image and sexuality trajectories, and then explored if differences in trajectories predicted 6 years' psychosocial outcomes. 363/405 (90%) Chinese women receiving surgery for BC were assessed at 5-day...

To explore how initial trajectories of distress experienced during the first year following diagnosis with early-stage breast cancer (ESBC) relate to subsequent long-term(6 years) psychosocial outcomes. 285/303 Chinese women recruited 1-week post-surgery for predominantly ESBC were assessed for distress with the Chinese Health Questionnaire at 1, 4...

Treatment for prolonged grief has been controversial. However, recent studies have clarified several key issues, offering important guidance to clinicians. This review summarizes the most recent evidence on the efficacy of grief treatments, moderators of treatment response, and new treatment approaches. Recent research findings highlight that grief...

Interpersonal dependency is typically viewed as a risk factor for prolonged grief among conjugally bereaved adults. However, emerging empirical evidence and theoretical advances suggest that one manifestation of interpersonal dependency--adaptive dependency--may serve as a protective factor in coping with loss. This study compared adaptive and mala...

Resilience is the capacity to maintain stable levels of functioning, as well as positive emotions and generative experiences, following or under conditions of significant adversity. Resilience researchers have largely focused on two broad types of adversity: (1) acute and time-limited events that are outside the range of ordinary experience, such a...

Humans are remarkably resilient in the face of crises, traumas, disabilities, attachment losses and ongoing adversities. To date, most research in the field of traumatic stress has focused on neurobiological, psychological and social factors associated with trauma-related psychopathology and deficits in psychosocial functioning. Far less is known a...

As much as we might wish it otherwise, bad things happen: war, natural disaster, the death of close friends and relatives, serious accidents, senseless abuse or violence at the hand of others, and so on. Any of these things can and all too often do happen, and at every stage of life. Epidemiological data indicate that most adults experience at leas...

A recent article in New York Magazine echoed what psychological studies of parenthood have consistently demonstrated since the 1970s: "Most people assume that having children will make them happier. Yet a wide variety of academic research shows that parents are not happier than their childless peers, and in many cases are less so" (Senior, 2010). T...

Theories of complicated grief (CG) and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) posit a central etiological and maintaining role for global beliefs about the world (Janoff-Bulman, 1992). In two studies using separate bereaved samples, we examined these theoretical postulates. Study 1 included prospective data on bereaved spouses and nonbereaved control...

Bereavement is a severe stressor that typically incites painful and debilitating symptoms of acute grief that commonly progresses to restoration of a satisfactory, if changed, life. Normally, grief does not need clinical intervention. However, sometimes acute grief can gain a foothold and become a chronic debilitating condition called complicated g...

Although research has confirmed that violent losses can exacerbate grief reactions, few investigations have explored underlying mechanisms. In this study, the authors used a dataset on bereaved spouses and bereaved parents at 4- and 18-months postloss to examine the mediating effects of self-worth and worldviews (benevolence and meaningfulness beli...

Bereavement is a severe stressor that typically incites painful and debilitating symptoms of acute grief that commonly progresses to restoration of a satisfactory, if changed, life. Normally, grief does not need clinical intervention. However, sometimes acute grief can gain a foothold and become a chronic debilitating condition called complicated g...

Theorists have long maintained that people react to major life events but then eventually return to a setpoint of subjective well-being. Yet prior research is inconclusive regarding the extent of interindividual variability. Recent theoretical models suggest that there should be heterogeneity in long-term stress responding (Bonanno, 2004; Muthén &...

Theorists have long maintained that people react to major life events but then eventually return to a setpoint of subjective well-being. Yet prior research is inconclusive regarding the extent of interindividual variability. Recent theoretical models suggest that there should be heterogeneity in long-term stress responding (Bonanno, 2004; Muthén &...

The formal acceptance of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a legitimate diagnostic category in the 1980 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders stimulated a torrent of research on psychological trauma. Not surprisingly, PTSD and its treatment had dominated that research. Another common approach has been to measure the average im...

Job-loss is a rapidly growing concern as we witness the greatest and most rapid economic downturn in a century. The negative psychological effect of unemployment has increasingly garnered attention. Previous literature has offered a formidable prognosis, stating that in response to job-loss, people typically follow a pattern of rapid decline in lif...

Initial research on loss and potentially traumatic events (PTEs) has been dominated by either a psychopathological approach emphasizing individual dysfunction or an event approach emphasizing average differences between exposed and nonexposed groups. We consider the limitations of these approaches and review more recent research that has focused on...

To investigate trajectories of PTSD and depression following traumatic injury using latent class growth curve modeling. A longitudinal study of 330 injured trauma survivors was conducted and participants were assessed during hospitalization, and at 1, 3, and 6 months follow-up. Acute Stress Disorder (ASD) was assessed during hospitalization using t...

Although there is marked variation in how people cope with interpersonal loss, there is growing recognition that most people manage this extremely stressful experience with minimal to no impact on their daily functioning (G. A. Bonanno, 2004). What gives rise to this resilient capacity? In this paper, we provide an operational definition of resilie...

The distinct trajectories of psychological distress over the first year of the diagnosis with breast cancer (BC) and its determinants have not been explored. 285 of 405 Chinese women receiving surgery for BC were assessed at 5-day, 1-month, 4-month, and 8-month post-surgery on measures of psychological distress, optimism, treatment decision-making...

Previous research has been inconsistent about the role of attachment avoidance in coping with loss. The present study sought to resolve this issue by examining the potential moderating role of relationship quality with the deceased. The authors used longitudinal data on bereaved spouses (N=50) collected at 4 and 18 months postloss. Three-way effect...

This study identified barriers and facilitators to the high-fidelity implementation of assertive community treatment. As part of a multistate implementation project for evidence-based practices, training and consultation were provided to 13 newly implemented assertive community treatment teams in two states. Model fidelity was assessed at baseline...

We examined the impact of negative affectivity, chronic shame, and emotion regulation skills on eating disorder symptoms in undergraduate women (N = 154). We hypothesized that self-reported emotion regulation skills would mediate the well-documented relationship between chronic shame and eating disorder symptoms. Results revealed that chronic shame...

Recovery is an increasingly important concept in mental health services research and policy-making. However, despite burgeoning interest in the concept, no overarching theoretical or empirical framework has been offered to support its key ideas. Further, it is often unclear how recovery ideas translate into routine practices of mental health progra...

For decades, researchers have documented remarkable levels of resilience in children who were exposed to corrosive early environments, such as those in which poverty or chronic maltreatment were present; however, relatively little research has examined resilience in children or adults who were exposed to isolated and potentially traumatic events. T...

Alumni of Columbia University's Public Psychiatry Fellowship were surveyed to assess their use of recovery-oriented practices. A de novo survey designed specifically for psychiatrists was developed on the basis of prior measures and theories of recovery. A total of 144 graduates completed the survey. Fellowship alumni reported using a variety of pr...

Objective: Alumni of Columbia University's Public Psychiatry Fellowship were surveyed to assess their use of recovery-oriented practices. Methods: A de novo survey designed specifically for psychiatrists was developed on the basis of prior measures and theories of recovery. A total of 144 graduates completed the survey. Results: Fellowship alumni r...

In 1999, Kendra's Law established court-ordered Assisted Outpatient Treatment (AOT) in New York State for individuals who are determined to be at-risk of having difficulty living safely in the community without close monitoring and mandatory participation in treatment. Kendra's Law has been the subject of an often passionate debate among advocates...

There is growing interest in complicated grief reactions as a possible new diagnostic category for inclusion in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. However, no research has yet shown that complicated grief has incremental validity (i.e., predicts unique variance in functioning). The authors addressed this issue in 2 studies b...

Socioemotional selectivity theory (SST) posits that emotionally close relationships are increasingly valued as people perceive constraints on time. Based on SST, this study of 1,532 older married persons hypothesized that emotional dimensions of marriage would more strongly predict adjustment at higher levels of functional disability. High levels o...

Many persons exposed to loss or potentially traumatic events manage the stresses of these experiences with minimal to no impact on their daily functioning. The prevalence of this resilient capacity has surprised researchers and clinicians alike and refocused clinical practice. We review three key points about resilience: resilience is different fro...