Caroline Cummings

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor (Assistant) at Texas Tech University

Language is an essential part of psychotherapy and experts in cultural competence encourage the consideration of language as an element in cultural adaptation to therapy. Providing clients with services in their native language is associated with lower dropout and better outcomes. Therapies such as prolonged exposure therapy (PET) for posttraumatic...

Background Greater overall positive emotion has been linked with increased physical activity and overeating. High approach positive emotions (HAPEs), a subtype of positive emotion, are theorized to facilitate this goal-driven behavior. However, the day-to-day associations of HAPE and physical activity and overeating, including both at the individua...

We examined the prospective associations of COVID-19 fears and behavior, and daily physical activity and dysregulated eating. Adolescents (N=31) aged 11–17 completed selected subscales of the Fear of Illness and Virus Evaluation and completed a 7-day health behavior diary. Greater fear of contamination was associated with lower daily physical activ...

Objective: The development of habit (i.e., behavioral automaticity, the extent to which a behavior is performed with decreased thresholds for time, attention [effort], conscious awareness, and goal dependence), for goal-directed health behaviors facilitates health behavior engagement in daily life. However, there is a paucity of research examining...

Background Prior studies suggest that mobile health physical activity programs that provide only weekly or daily text-based health coaching evidence limit the efficacy in improving physical activity in adolescents with overweight or obesity. It is possible that incentives, combined with health coaching and daily feedback on goal success, may increa...

Background Positive alcohol expectancies are linked to increased alcohol use among college students. Difficulties regulating emotion have been shown to moderate this relationship, though little research accounts for differences based on the valence of the emotion being regulated. Objective To examine the independent moderating roles of positive an...

Stressful family environments are critical in shaping adolescent sleep health; yet it remains unclear how both average levels and day-to-day fluctuations in parent-adolescent conflict may relate to daily adolescent sleep health. A community sample of adolescents ( N = 47; M age = 13.61, 91.5% White, non-Hispanic and 68.1% female) completed a 7-day...

Objective Adolescent emotion regulation (ER) has been positively linked to caregiver–adolescent sexual communication. With ER becoming increasingly conceptualized as an interpersonal process, it is likely that both adolescent and caregiver ER impact communication patterns to some extent; thus, each must be accounted for in scientific inquiry and in...

Family caregivers of individuals with Alzheimer’s Disease and Alzheimer’s Disease Related Dementia (AD/ADRD) may experience pre-death grief (PDG). Behavioral activation (BA) and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) improve grief outcomes for bereaved individuals but neither have been investigated in the context of PDG. Notably, there are high...

The current conceptual review highlights considerations surrounding the potential for non-beneficence and undue coercion within the practices of psychologists and other clinicians providing substance use treatment for youth. The potential for nonbeneficence and undue coercion is assessed at three key stages of treatment for youth with substance use...

Objective Digital health tools (e.g., apps, text messaging, telehealth, and social media) have been employed with pediatric populations for approximately two decades. As such, digital health is a scientifically mature field, ready for critical evaluation of the challenges and opportunities of using technology to equitably improve child health and h...

Objetivo: Existen diferencias en los procesos cognitivos automáticos entre personas con sobrepeso y obesidad, por lo que existe la necesidad de ampliar nuestra conceptualización del sobrepeso y la obesidad para enfatizar la utilidad predictiva de estos procesos automáticos, en lugar de centrarse únicamente en los resultados conductuales. Las prueba...

The present cross-sectional study evaluated whether traditional and/or cyber peer victimization served as mechanisms linking ADHD symptoms to sleep disturbance and sleep impairment in a sample of 284 third- through fifth-grade students (51.9% boys; 50.4% Hispanic/Latine) from two elementary schools in the United States. ADHD symptoms were assessed...

There are emerging data linking positive emotion to health behaviors, yet the self-regulatory processes underlying this link are understudied. The purpose of the current study was to examine the associations between daily positive emotion and daily attentional focus on physical activity and overeating as well as the moderating role of trait positiv...

Objective The links from youth sleep problems to emotional, behavioral, and academic functioning are well documented. Latent variable mixture modeling (LVMM) has been used to explore these relations; however, additional research is needed in diverse samples and with self-reports of sleep-related difficulties. The objectives of the current study wer...

Increased social power—defined as one’s influence on anoth- er’s behavior—guides activation of one’s behavioral activation system which, in turn, elicits greater positive emotion. Positive emotion has also been linked to greater health. The current research assessed whether power and positive emotion are related to health. In Study 1, participants...

The purpose of the study is to evaluate whether clinician's acknowledgement and adherence to Clinical Best Practice Advisories (BPA) system's alerts improves the outcome of patients with chronic diabetes. We used deidentified clinical data of elderly (65 or older) diabetes patients with hemoglobin A1C (HbA1C) >= 6.5 that were extracted from the cli...

Objectives: This study evaluated whether COVID-19-specific risk factors (e.g., feeling guilty for not being present with the deceased at the time of the loss and feeling emotionally distant from the deceased prior to the loss) were associated with prolonged grief disorder (PGD) symptomatology or diagnosis among young adults bereaved due to any cau...

UNSTRUCTURED Objective Diabetes distress among adolescents with type 1 diabetes has been associated with suboptimal diabetes outcomes. The present study examined the feasibility and acceptability of a scalable self-led mindfulness-based intervention to reduce diabetes distress in adolescents with type 1 diabetes. Methods Adolescents (N=25) aged 14...

Background Diabetes distress among adolescents with type 1 diabetes has been associated with suboptimal diabetes outcomes, including lower quality of life, increased diabetes self-management challenges, and suboptimal glycemic outcomes. Objective This study examined the feasibility and acceptability of a scalable self-led mindfulness-based interve...

Recent calls have been made to evaluate the range, rather than the frequency of use, of strategies within adolescents’ emotion regulation repertoire. It is unknown whether an emotion regulation intervention may increase adolescents’ emotion regulation repertoire. To examine the direct effect of an emotion regulation intervention on adolescents’ per...

Research regarding daily acute pain and its correlates has primarily been conducted with adolescents who have had major surgery or musculoskeletal pain, restraining efforts towards adapting interventions for adolescents with other sources of acute pain. We explored the trajectories and correlates of pain intensity. Adolescents with an opioid prescr...

Emotional awareness (EA) and access to emotion regulation strategies (ER) are often conceptualized as being on a single continuum, yet discrepancies in these associations are found across samples. We conducted a person-centered analysis to identify distinct profiles of adolescents’ perceived EA and ER. Secondary analyses were conducted to compare d...

Objective: Parental separation and parental death during childhood are common but understudied forms of adverse childhood events (ACEs), thus little is known about the impact on psychological functioning in adulthood. We examined whether parental death and parental separation during childhood was associated with risk of diagnostic criteria for depr...

Objective Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is characterized by inflammation in the gastrointestinal tract with painful and distressing symptoms periods of exacerbations and remissions. Youth with IBD are at increased risk of experiencing challenges across psychosocial functioning. Mental health concerns (i.e., anxiety, depression) are commonly asse...

Mental health disparities directly tie to structural racism. Digital mental health (DMH), the use of technologies to deliver services, have been touted as a way to expand access to care and reduce disparities. However, many DMH fail to mitigate the persistent disparities associated with structural racism that impact delivery (e.g., costs, dependabl...

Background The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on diabetes self-management behaviors is unclear. Objectives This paper is a scoping review of studies examining health behaviors among people with type 2 diabetes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Eligibility Criteria We searched articles available in English using the Search terms “COVID” and “diabetes...

We investigated how COVID-19 has disrupted the work of health professionals who address behavioral and psychosocial needs of people with diabetes (PWD). English language emails were sent to members of five organizations that address psychosocial aspects of diabetes, inviting them to complete a one-time, anonymous, online survey. On a scale from 1=n...

INTRODUCTION Youth with Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) are at significantly increased risk for depression and anxiety, with 25%-40% of youth with IBD reporting internalizing symptoms. These data are based on general measures of anxiety and depression without accounting for the confounds of disease-related processes. Disease-distress, on the other...

The purpose of this mixed methods study was to discover if and how clinicians integrate cultural factors into treatment, what specific 'culturally sensitive' practices clinicians utilize, and who clinicians use these practices with. In Study 1(N = 9) qualitative interviews were conducted with psychologists who shared information about the culturall...

Burnout, secondary traumatic stress (STS) and vicarious trauma (VT) are three highly prevalent work-related stress reactions experienced in helping professions, but prevalence rates and protective/risk factors of these stress reactions in protective services workers have been understudied. The purpose of the current study was to examine coping mech...

Summary: Social workers fulfill vital roles, servicing clients from vulnerable populations and maintaining their welfare. As a result of frequent interaction with clients who have often experienced trauma, these workers are susceptible to experiencing burnout, secondary traumatic stress, and vicarious trauma. This study aimed to identify if purpose...

The Framingham Stroke Risk Profile (FSRP) is a validated model for predicting 10-year ischemic stroke risk in middle-aged adults, yet has not been demonstrated to consistently translate in older populations. This is a systematic review of independent risk factors measured among > 65 year olds, with subsequent first ischemic stroke, using PRISMA gui...

Past research has investigated the rates of compassion satisfaction (CS), compassion fatigue (CF), and burnout within health-care providers. Findings indicate higher levels of CS and lower levels of CF predict lower rates of burnout. The current study extended prior research by replicating past research findings, but with victim advocates. This stu...

Objective: To explore a 5-year comparison of disparities in intravenous t-PA (IV t-PA) use among acute ischemic stroke (AIS) patients based on race, gender, age, ethnic origin, hospital status, and geographic location. Methods: We extracted patients' demographic information and hospital characteristics for 2010 and 2014 from the New York Statewi...

Helping professionals play an essential role in the recovery of victims of trauma. However, research has demonstrated that, as a result of their work, helping professionals’ indirect exposure to clients’ trauma increases the likelihood of experiencing negative psychological responses, including vicarious trauma (VT), secondary traumatic stress (STS...

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) executive order intended to protect undocumented youth from deportation and mitigate the negative impact of their undocumented status. Using qualitative methods, eight DACA recipients were interviewed. Participants were primarily females, ranged in age from 19 and 27 years old, and had immigrated fr...

Secondary traumatic stress (STS) is a pattern of psychological symptoms that approximates the symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and occurs in professionals who are exposed to individuals who have experienced trauma. While victim advocates are frontline health professionals who are trained to support victims of crime and interpersonal...

Vicarious trauma is referred to as the detrimental change in the manner that professionals understand and interpret material, as a result of exposure to second-hand traumatic material (McCann & Pearlman [1990] Journal of Traumatic Stress, 3:131). According to Aparicio et al. (Health & Social Work, 2013, 38:199), vicarious trauma comprises both affe...

Child sexual abuse is a type of a traumatic event that may involve “unwanted and inappropriate sexual solicitation of, or exposure to, a child by an older person; genital touching or fondling; or penetration in terms of oral, anal or vaginal intercourse or attempted intercourse” (Andrews, Corry, Slade, Issakidis, & Swanston, 2004). A national surve...

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a social problem and public health issue in the United States that various states and the federal government have taken special precautions to alleviate. Two studies were conducted to address the problem. Study 1 examined archival data from a study that administered the Revised Conflict Tactic Scale to students ta...