Eoin McElroy

• PhD
• Senior Lecturer at University of Ulster

Background Since Prolonged Grief Disorder’s (PGD) inclusion as a mental health disorder in the ICD-11 in 2018, much of the peer-reviewed research has focused on its prevalence, assessment, and co-occurrence with other mental health disorders. There is also emerging research literature on the association between PGD and physical and somatic health o...

Background Social connection factors play a key role for young people's mental health. It is important to understand how their influence may vary across contexts. We investigated structural (e.g. household size), functional (e.g. social support) and quality (e.g. feeling close) social connection factors in relation to adolescent internalising and e...

There are a significant number of instruments available to measure mental health symptoms, which can limit the comparability and integration of data. Retrospective harmonization facilitates the comparison of data from different sources; however, researchers must test measurement invariance testing before harmonization can be conducted. To date, har...

To be able to develop effective policy and targeted support for children and young people, it is vital to develop and validate measures that enable us to understand what aspects of pandemics are associated with anxiety and stress across a wide age range. We examined the psychometric properties of the Pandemic Anxiety Scale– Parent-report (PAS-P), w...

Background Pooling data from different sources will advance mental health research by providing larger sample sizes and allowing cross-study comparisons; however, the heterogeneity in how variables are measured across studies poses a challenge to this process. Methods This study explored the potential of using natural language processing (NLP) to...

Assessment tools for depression and anxiety usually inquire about the frequency of symptoms. However, evidence suggests that different question framings might trigger different responses. Our aim is to test if asking about symptom’s context, ability, duration, and botherment adds validity to Patient Health Questionnaire–9, General Anxiety Disorder–...

Despite the growing consensus that midlife appears to be a particularly vulnerable life phase for lower mental health and wellbeing, little is known about the potential reasons for this phenomenon or who the individuals at higher risk are. Our study used six waves (2013–2018) of the Swiss Household Panel (n = 5,315), to compare the distribution of...

The project aimed to i) assess whether FSME is fit for purpose as a proxy measure of socio-economic deprivation for the DE, and ii) assess the feasibility of supplementing or replacing FSME with alternative indicators of socio-economic status (SES), including both individual and composite proxies.

Background: Social connection plays a key role in young people’s mental health. It is important to know which components are involved but also how their influence might vary across contexts. We investigated the prospective association of multiple social connection factors with subsequent adolescent internalising and externalising symptoms comparing...

Background After the Syrian civil war, millions of Syrian refugees migrated to neighboring countries, with the majority settling in Turkey. The prevalence of mental disorders is notably higher among refugee populations. However, prior research on Syrian refugees have mostly used variable-centred approaches which have known limitations. Thus, the pr...

Background and Objectives Unprecedented social restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic have provided a new lens for considering the inter-relationship between social isolation and loneliness in later life. We present these inter-relationships before and during the COVID-19 restrictions and investigate to what extent demographic, socio-economic, a...

Background Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global healthcare threat promoted by all use of antibiotics. Hence, reducing overuse of antibiotics is essential. The necessary behaviour change relies on effective public health communication, but previous information campaigns—while showing some successes—have fallen short in generating a lasting inc...

Background: Despite the long-standing ongoing war in Ukraine, information regarding war-related negative mental health outcomes in children is limited. A nationwide sample of parents in Ukraine was surveyed to assess posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms in their children and to identify risk factors associated with child PTSD status. Metho...

Pooling data from different sources may help further mental health research by providing larger sample sizes and allowing cross-study comparisons; however, the heterogeneity in how variables are measured across studies poses a significant challenge to this process. This study explores the potential of natural language processing (NLP) to harmonize...

Background People who live alone experience greater levels of mental illness; however, it is unclear whether the COVID-19 pandemic had a disproportionately negative impact on this demographic. Objective To describe the mental health gap between those who live alone and with others in the UK prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods Self-...

Cyberchondria, defined as excessive concern about one's health and looking for solutions to health problems on the Internet, is becoming increasingly common. This paper examines the relations between the dimensions of stress appraisal (threat, challenge-activity, challenge-passivity, harm/loss) and cyberchondria. We also tested whether these relati...

MotivationRetrospective questionnaire harmonisation allows researchers to pool and analyse information from multiple data sources, thereby increasing reproducibility in science. Currently, harmonisation of questionnaires relies on a multi-step process where items are manually matched based on expert opinion. Harmony, a new natural-language processi...

The ongoing war in Ukraine is expected to negatively impact the mental health of the country’s population. This study aims to provide a preliminary estimate of the degree of change in the mental health problems of Ukrainian children following Russia’s invasion in February 2022, and to identify the sociodemographic and war-related risk factors assoc...

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted healthcare and may have impacted ethnic inequalities in healthcare. We aimed to describe the impact of pandemic-related disruption on ethnic differences in clinical monitoring and hospital admissions for non-COVID conditions in England. Methods: In this population-based, observational cohort study we u...

Background and Objectives: Unprecedented social restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic have provided a new lens for considering the inter-relationship between social isolation and loneliness in later life. We present these inter-relationships before and during the COVID-19 restrictions and investigate to what extent demographic, socio-economic,...

The symptom structure of ICD-11 posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and complex PTSD (CPTSD) and the validity of the International Trauma Questionnaire (ITQ) are yet to be tested among civilians in an active war zone. The present investigation examined the factor structure of the ITQ, the internal consistency of observed scores, and their associat...

Background The Memories of Home and Family Scale (MHFS; Shevlin et al., 2022) was developed as a multidimensional measure of subjective memories of experiences at home and with family during childhood. Due to the length of the scale, a short version of the MHFS (MHFS-SF) has been developed. Data were from Wave 7 of the COVID-19 Psychological Resear...

MotivationRetrospective questionnaire harmonisation allows researchers to pool and analyse information from multiple data sources, thereby increasing reproducibility in science. Currently, harmonisation of questionnaires relies on a multi-step process where items are manually matched based on expert opinion. Harmony, a new natural-language processi...

MotivationRetrospective questionnaire harmonisation allows researchers to pool and analyse information from multiple data sources, thereby increasing reproducibility in science. Currently, harmonisation of questionnaires relies on a multi-step process where items are manually matched based on expert opinion. Harmony, a new natural-language processi...

Objectives: To describe the mental health gap between those who live alone and those who live with others, and to examine whether the COVID-19 pandemic had an impact on this gap. Design: Ten population based prospective cohort studies, and a retrospective descriptive cohort study based on electronic health records (EHRs). Setting: UK Longitudinal p...

The associations among psychotic experiences (i.e., hallucinations and delusions), trauma exposure, and posttraumatic stress symptoms are complex and multidirectional. Using network analysis to understand how psychotic experiences and symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) relate to one another may identify new interventional targets to t...

Whether complex posttraumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) and borderline personality disorder (BPD) diagnoses differ substantially enough to warrant separate diagnostic classifications has been a subject of controversy for years. To contribute to the nomological network of cumulative evidence, the main goal of the present study was to explore, using ne...

Background: High rates of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have been documented in war-affected populations. The prevalence of Complex PTSD (CPTSD) has never been assessed in an active war zone. Here, we provide initial data on war-related experiences, and prevalence rates of ICD-11 PTSD and CPTSD in a large sample of adults in Ukraine during...

This paper has now been accepted for publication for the Journal of Personality Disorders

Background Studies using symptom‐based screeners have suggested that mental ill‐health has increased in adolescents in recent decades, however, few studies have tested the equivalence of their instruments, which is critical for inferring changes in prevalence. In addition, little research has explored whether socioeconomic position (SEP) and sex in...

A nationwide survey of 2,004 adult Ukrainian parents who reported on their experiences of the war, how their own mental health has changed since the invasion in February 2022, and how the mental health of their children has changed. These data were collected between July and September 2022.

The current paper presents a five-factor measurement model of anger summarizing scores on public-domain self-report measures of anger. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of self-report measures of anger (UK, n = 500; USA, n = 625) suggest five replicable latent anger factors: anger-arousal, anger-rumination, frustration-discomfort, anger-...

Background: It is expected that the ongoing war in Ukraine will have a considerable negative impact on the mental health of the country’s population. This study aims to provide a preliminary estimate of the degree of change in the mental health problems of Ukrainian children following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and identify the...

Background Evidence on associations between COVID-19 illness and mental health is mixed. We aimed to examine whether COVID-19 is associated with deterioration in mental health while considering pre-pandemic mental health, time since infection, subgroup differences, and confirmation of infection via self-reported test and serology data. Methods We...

Background Firstly, we aim to describe any differences in the mean levels of correlates and indicators of mental health and wellbeing between young (25-39 years) and middle-aged adults (40-55 years). Secondly, we aim to compare the network models depicting interrelations between correlates and indicators of mental health and wellbeing among these a...

Objectives: We investigated associations between multiple sociodemographic characteristics (sex, age, occupational social class, education and ethnicity) and self-reported healthcare disruptions during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Design: Coordinated analysis of prospective population surveys. Setting: Community-dwelling particip...

Background: There is currently limited information on how Russia’s war on Ukraine has affected the mental health of people living in Ukraine. Understanding the mental health effects of the war, and identifying who has been worst affected, is critical to informing mental health responses. A nationwide sample of parents in Ukraine were surveyed to (1...

Background: High rates of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have been documented in war-affected populations. The prevalence of CPTSD has never been assessed in an active war zone. Here, we provide initial data on war-related experiences, and estimated prevalence rates of ICD-11 PTSD and Complex PTSD (CPTSD) in the general adult population of Uk...

Background Health inequity in relation to COVID-19 infection and socioeconomic consequences is a major global concern. Mental health issues in vulnerable populations have received special attention in research and practice during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, there is limited evidence on the nature of the anxieties experienced as a result of COVI...

Cross-study research initiatives to understand change across time are an increasingly prominent component of social and health sciences, yet they present considerable practical, analytical and conceptual challenges. First, we discuss the key challenges to comparative research as a basis for detecting societal change, as well as possible solutions....

There is a burgeoning evidence base highlighting the positive influence of benevolent childhood experiences (BCEs), even in the context of adversity. However, few measures are available to assess BCEs. The current study sought to develop and validate a measure which assesses positive recollections of experiences and emotions at home and with family...

Background Evidence on associations between COVID-19 illness and mental health is mixed. We examined longitudinal associations between COVID-19 and mental health while considering: 1) pre-pandemic mental health, 2) time since infection; 3) subgroup differences; and 4) confirmation of infection via self-reported test, and serology data. Methods Usi...

Although a negative association between socio-economic inequalities and health has been established, there is a dearth of robust longitudinal studies examining this relationship in adolescents. This study used a large, nationally representative longitudinal data set to investigate the association between socio-economic inequality, subjective health...

Importance: How population mental health has evolved across the COVID-19 pandemic under varied lockdown measures is poorly understood, and the consequences for health inequalities are unclear. Objective: To investigate changes in mental health and sociodemographic inequalities from before and across the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in 11...

Cyberchondria refers to a clinical phenomenon in which repeated Internet searches regarding medical information result in excessive concerns about physical health. Due to the lack of research on the psychometric properties of CCS-12 and the lack of appropriate tools cyberchondria measurement in Iran, this study was conducted to examine the psychome...

Background Studies using symptom-based screeners have suggested that mental health problems have increased in adolescents in recent decades, however, few studies have explicitly tested the equivalence of their instruments, which is critical for inferring changes in prevalence. In addition, few studies have explored whether changes in socioeconomic...

Depression and anxiety are highly comorbid constructs. However little is known about the mechanisms that underpin this comorbidity/connectivity or the divergence between constructs that seems to occur in adolescence. The current study targeted emotion regulation (ER) as a potential plausible mechanism for explaining how anxiety and depression sympt...

Background: How population mental health has evolved across the COVID-19 pandemic under varied lockdown measures is poorly understood, with impacts on health inequalities unclear. We investigated changes in mental health and sociodemographic inequalities from before and across the first year of the pandemic in 11 longitudinal studies. Methods: Data...

Disruptions related to the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated virus suppression measures have affected many worldwide but those already suffering from psychological distress may have been especially vulnerable. We investigated associations between pre-pandemic psychological distress and disruptions to healthcare, economic activity, housing, and c...

Like other health systems worldwide, the UK, the National Health Service (NHS) has faced major disruptions due to high Covid-19 burden and repeated lockdown measures. These disruptions can have both short and long-term health impacts. The NHS provides free healthcare and prioritises equity of delivery, but despite this, inequalities in access to he...

Background The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted lives and livelihoods, and people already experiencing mental ill health may have been especially vulnerable. Aims Quantify mental health inequalities in disruptions to healthcare, economic activity and housing. Method We examined data from 59 482 participants in 12 UK longitudinal studies with data...

Background Previous research has examined individual-level and place characteristics as correlates of subjective wellbeing, with many studies concluding that individual factors (e.g. health, finances) are more strongly related to wellbeing. However, this ‘dualistic’ approach has been challenged, with some arguing that it is impossible to disentangl...

Background The COVID-19 pandemic with its associated virus suppression measures have disrupted many domains of life for many people. Increasingly it is recognised that negative disruptive impacts of the pandemic are not experienced equally and may exacerbate existing inequalities. People already suffering from psychological distress may have been e...

Across the health and social sciences, addressing many key scientific or policy questions requires an understanding of whether a given quantity has changed over time—e.g., by year of data collection or by birth year. For example, has the occurrence of—or socioeconomic inequity in—a given health outcome changed across time? Or has social mobility im...

In the present study, we employed network analysis that conceptualizes internet addiction (IA) as a complex network of mutually influencing symptoms in 108 adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to examine the network architecture of IA symptoms and identify central/influential symptoms. Our analysis revealed that defensive and secretive b...

Background While research demonstrates that somatisation is highly correlated with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the relationship between International Classification of Diseases 11th edition (ICD-11) PTSD, complex PTSD (CPTSD) and somatisation has not previously been determined. Objective To determine the relationship between frequency a...

Background: Health systems worldwide have faced major disruptions due to COVID-19 which could exacerbate health inequalities. The UK National Health Service (NHS) provides free healthcare and prioritises equity of delivery, but the pandemic may be hindering the achievement of these goals. We investigated associations between multiple social charact...

Loneliness is a common experience in adolescence and is related to a range of mental health problems. Such feelings may have been increased by social distancing measures introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic. We aimed to investigate the effect of loneliness, social contact, and parent relationships on adolescent mental health during lockdown in t...

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic and its associated virus suppression measures have disrupted lives and livelihoods, potentially exacerbating inequalities. People already experiencing mental ill-health may have been especially vulnerable to disruptions. Aim: Investigate associations between pre-pandemic psychological distress and disruptions durin...

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic and its associated virus suppression measures have disrupted lives and livelihoods, potentially exacerbating inequalities. People already experiencing mental ill-health may have been especially vulnerable to disruptions. / Aim: Investigate associations between pre-pandemic psychological distress and disruptions dur...

Background Childhood socioeconomic position (SEP) is robustly associated with cognitive function later in life. However, it is unclear whether this reflects a direct relationship, or an indirect association via modifiable factors such as educational attainment and occupation. We sought to clarify these associations using retrospectively harmonised...

Background Existing evidence on profiles of psychological distress across adulthood uses cross-sectional or longitudinal studies with short observation periods. The objective of this research was to study the profile of psychological distress within the same individuals from early adulthood to early old age across three British birth cohorts. Meth...

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and physical health problems, particularly somatic symptom disorder, are highly comorbid. Studies have only examined this co‐occurrence at the disorder level rather than assessing the associations between specific symptoms. Using network analysis to identify symptoms that act as bridges between these disorders m...

General and specific dimensions of psychosis have been identified in both clinical and general population samples. Demographic and clinical correlates, however, have only been explored within models derived from clinical data. Data were drawn from Wave 3 of the National Epidemiological Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (N = 36,309). Confirma...

Objective: There is little evidence that posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is more likely to follow traumatic events defined by Criterion A than non-Criterion A stressors. Criterion A events might have greater predictive validity for International Classification of Diseases (ICD)-11 PTSD, which is a condition more narrowly defined by core featu...

Objectives The mental health consequences of COVID‐19 are predicted to have a disproportionate impact on certain groups. We aimed to develop a brief measure, the Pandemic Anxiety Scale, to capture the specific aspects of the pandemic that are provoking anxiety, and explore how these vary by health and demographic factors. Design Data were from a c...

Explore the measures used to assess diverse aspects of cognition within and across five British birth cohort studies

This study aimed to examine the effects of different types of maltreatment on psychiatric outcomes. The second aim was to examine patterns of comorbidity among different types of child maltreatment. Participants were randomly selected from the total birth cohort of all children born in Denmark in 1984. Data were then linked to information drawn fro...

Objectives The mental health consequences of COVID-19 are predicted to have a disproportionate impact on certain groups. We aimed to develop a brief measure, the Pandemic Anxiety Scale, to capture the specific aspects of the pandemic that are provoking anxiety, and explore how these vary by health and demographic factors. DesignData were from a con...

Background: Dimensional models of psychopathology are increasingly common, and there is evidence for the existence of a general dimension of psychopathology (‘p’). The existing literature presented two ways to model p: as a bifactor or as a higher-order dimension. Bifactor models typically fit sample data better than higher-order models, and are of...

Irritability and aggression (IA) are highly prevalent in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Although clinical correlates of IA in this population have been previously examined, findings from existing studies capturing symptoms as a set of latent variables do not fully explain meaningful associations between the symptoms themselves. In...

Valid inference from the investigation of mental health relies – among others – on the assumption of no measurement error. However, it is well known that data from self-reported measures are likely to be biased by some process that is driven by the respondent’s personality and/or circumstances. We capitalised on data available in two nationally rep...

Cyberchondria refers to an emotional-behavioural pattern whereby excessive online searches lead to increased anxiety about one's own health status. It has been shown to be associated with health anxiety, however it is unknown whether existing cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) interventions targeting health anxiety also improve cyberchondria. This...

Cyberchondria is defined as an increase in anxiety about one's health status as a result of excessive online searches. McElroy and Shevlin (2014) developed the first multidimensional, self-report measure of this construct-the Cyberchondria Severity Scale (CSS). The CSS consists of 33 items which can be summed to form a total score, and/or 5 subscal...

Background The co‐occurrence of internalizing disorders is a common form of psychiatric comorbidity, raising questions about the boundaries between these diagnostic categories. We employ network psychometrics in order to: (a) determine whether internalizing symptoms cluster in a manner reflecting DSM diagnostic criteria, (b) gauge how distinct thes...

Background There are suggestions that denser network connectivity (i.e., the strength of associations between individual symptoms) may be a prognostic indicator of poor treatment response in depression. We sought to examine this aspect of depressive symptom networks in the context of early responses to treatment in adolescents. Methods Routine psy...

2 Word count (not including abstract, refs etc.): 9,174 Abstract Different aspects of the neighbourhood social environment have been linked with mental ill-health, however the mechanisms underlying these associations remain poorly understood because of the number and complexity of the components involved. We used a novel statistical approach, netwo...

The network approach suggests that psychopathology arises from complex associations between symptoms and may offer insight into the mechanisms that underpin psychiatric comorbidities. The transition from childhood to adolescence is a key period in the development of psychopathology, yet has rarely been considered from a network perspective. As such...

Objective Frequent co-occurrence and bidirectional longitudinal associations have led some researchers to question the boundaries between depression and anxiety. A longitudinal investigation of the interconnected symptom structure of these constructs may help determine the extent to which they are distinct, and whether this changes over development...

Table S1. Means (SD), construct reliability (H), and standardized factor scores at age 2. Table S2. Means (SD), construct reliability (H), and standardized factor scores at age 3. Table S3. Means (SD), construct reliability (H), and standardized factor scores at age 5. Table S4. Means (SD), construct reliability (H), and standardized factor scor...

Introduction Child maltreatment (CM) encompasses a range of abusive acts which rarely occur in isolation. Therefore, rather than focusing on specific forms of abuse, a more methodologically sound approach may be to concentrate research on subgroups of CM. Knowledge of the context in which different types of abuse occur is limited, and specific type...

Background: Recent research indicates that the best-fitting structural model of psychopathology includes a general factor capturing comorbidity (p) and several more specific, orthogonal factors. Little is known about the stability of these factors, although two opposing developmental processes have been proposed: dynamic mutualism suggests that sy...

This data linkage study aims to examine associations between subgroups of child maltreatment and a range of demographic (e.g., gender) familial (e.g., parental unemployment) and health outcomes. Structured interviews were conducted on 2,980 participants. Data were then linked with information drawn from Danish registries. Multinomial logistic regre...

Objectives Despite being commonly used in research and clinical practice, the evidence regarding the factor structure of the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) remains equivocal and this has implications on how the scale scores should be aggregated. Researchers continue to debate whether the BDI-II is best viewed as a unidimensional scale, or wh...

Background: Heterotypic psychopathological continuity (i.e. one disorder predicting another at a later time point) contradicts the conventional view that psychiatric disorders are discrete, static entities. Studying this phenomenon may help to tease out the complex mechanisms that underpin psychiatric comorbidity. To date, no studies have explicit...

Purpose While research has consistently identified an association between cannabis use and psychosis, few studies have examined this relationship in a polydrug context (i.e. combining cannabis with other illicit substances). The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach The present study sought to examine the association betwee...

Purpose: The World Health Organization's 11th revision to the International Classification of Diseases manual (ICD-11) will differentiate between two stress-related disorders: PTSD and Complex PTSD (CPTSD). ICD-11 proposals suggest that trauma exposure which is prolonged and/or repeated, or consists of multiple forms, that also occurs under circum...

Background: Research examining the association between internalizing and externalizing dimensions of psychopathology has relied heavily on variable-centered analytical techniques. Person-centered methodologies complement the variable-centered approach, and may help explain the medium-to-large correlations that exist between higher order dimensions...