Lia J Smith

University of Houston | U of H, UH · Department of Psychology

Exposure and cognitive-based therapies are both effective for PTSD, but knowledge of which intervention is best for which patient is lacking. This lack of knowledge is particularly noticeable for group treatments, as no study has examined whether responses to different group therapies are associated with different pretreatment characteristics. Here...

Background: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a significant burden among combat Veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. While empirically supported treatments have demonstrated reductions in PTSD symptomatology, there remains a need to improve treatment effectiveness. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) neurofeedba...

Background The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on health and well-being worldwide. There is increasing research seeking to better understand the psychological impact of COVID-19 experiences. However, this research has largely been limited in size and scope.Methods The present study examined longitudinal trajectories of COVID-19 experien...

Although treatment effectiveness among evidence-based psychotherapies (EBPs) for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been well established, treatment dropout among veterans continues to be a concern within these treatments. Due to the uniqueness of the Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF)/Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF)/Operation New Dawn (OND) vete...

COVID-19 has had a profound impact on health and well-being worldwide. There is an increasing need to understand the psychological impact of COVID-19, particularly associations with posttraumatic stress. This cross-sectional study examined associations between COVID-19 and posttraumatic stress among adults utilizing structural equation modeling met...

SBEH_A_1877341 Hope is a cognitive trait that predicts both resilience to and recovery from anxiety and stress-related disorders. The present study examines the prospective associations of hope with subsequent anxiety, stress, and well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic. Perceived emotional control, a transdiagnostic vulnerability factor, was also...

Psychiatric comorbidities are common throughout clinical practice. This article discusses the prevalence and etiology of psychiatric comorbidities, in addition to commenting on clinical implications and future directions. Modern comorbidity research frequently evaluates whether psychiatric comorbidity reflects the presence of two or more distinct c...

OBJECTIVE: Cancer diagnosis in adolescents and young adults (AYA) coincides with the developmental initiation of substance use and emergence of affective disturbance. We examined substance use behaviors and risk-stratified associations with mental and physical health, as well as objective indicators of tobacco and cannabis use and concordance with...

Objectives Trauma exposure and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are significant concerns across psychiatric inpatient populations. Sleep disturbance is implicated in the etiology and maintenance of PTSD. Mindfulness facets, including observing, describing, acting with awareness, non-judging of inner experience, and non-reactivity to inner exper...

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with suicidal ideation and suicide attempts. Distress tolerance, or the perceived capacity to tolerate negative emotional states, is a cognitive-affective factor with clinical relevance to PTSD-suicide relations. No studies to date have examined the associations of PTSD symptoms, distress tolerance...

Developing research suggests that the co-occurrence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and alcohol use disorder (AUD) is a significant clinical concern across first responder populations. This comorbidity is difficult to treat and marked by a more costly, complex, and chronic clinical course when compared to either disorder alone. Significant...

The co-occurrence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and substance use disorders (SUD) is highly prevalent and difficult-to-treat. Mindfulness, defined as nonjudgmental attention to and awareness of present-moment experiences, represents a targetable mechanism with potential to predict and improve treatment outcomes for PTSD/SUD populations. W...

Military veterans in the fire service may experience higher risk for occupational stress and impaired personal and professional functioning. This investigation compared occupational stress and functional impairment between military veterans and non-veterans within the fire service. We hypothesized that military veterans in the fire service would re...

Firefighters represent a unique population at high risk for trauma exposure, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and alcohol use. This study explored the main and interactive effects of PTSD symptom severity and impulsivity with regard to alcohol use severity. We hypothesized that higher levels of PTSD symptom severity and impulsivity would be re...

Sleep disturbance is related to a variety of health issues and represents a prominent occupational concern among firefighters. Two potential predictors relevant to disturbed sleep are alcohol use and distress tolerance, which refers to the perceived ability to withstand negative emotional states. Main and interactive effects of alcohol use and dist...

Firefighters are at elevated risk for stress, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptomatology, and alcohol use, the combination of which is highly complex and difficult-to-treat. The current study examined the indirect effects of perceived stress on probable alcohol misuse via posttraumatic stress severity using structural equation modeling. Pa...

Firefighters who have previously served in the military may be at potentially higher risk for worsened mental health outcomes. This investigation examined the mental health of military veterans, as compared to non-veterans , in the fire service. We hypothesized that firefighters who endorsed military veteran status would have higher rates of mental...

Background: Firefighters are at elevated risk for posttraumatic stress and alcohol use, with research indicating that individuals with posttraumatic stress are likely to use alcohol as a coping strategy. A behavioral mechanism of clinical relevance to these associations is sleep disturbance. Thus, it was hypothesized that higher posttraumatic stre...

One social determinant of health construct that is reliably related to health disparities among the Latino population is subjective social status, reflecting subjective ratings of social standing. Yet, little research has explored factors that may undergird variability in subjective social status among this population or in general. Accordingly, th...

Cue reactivity has great potential to advance our understanding of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), substance use disorder (SUD), and PTSD/SUD comorbidity. The present investigation examined distress tolerance (DT) with regard to trauma and substance cue reactivity. Participants included 58 low-income, inner-city adults (49.1% women; M<sub>age...

Past research indicates that firefighters are at increased risk for suicide. Firefighter-specific occupational stress may contribute to elevated suicidality. Among a large sample of firefighters, this study examined if occupational stress is associated with multiple indicators of suicide risk, and whether distress tolerance, the perceived and/or ac...

Background: Firefighters represent an occupational group at increased suicide risk. How suicidality develops among firefighters is poorly understood. The depression-distress amplification model posits that the effects of depression symptoms on suicide risk will be intensified in the context of anxiety sensitivity (AS) cognitive concerns. The curre...

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and substance use disorders (SUD) are complex psychiatric conditions that commonly co-occur. No preferred, evidence-based treatments for PTSD/SUD comorbidity are presently available. Promising integrated treatments have combined prolonged exposure therapy with cognitive-behavioral relapse prevention therapy for...

Although primary care settings represent strategic locations to address mental health disparity among Latinos in the USA, there has been strikingly little empirical work on risk processes for anxiety/depression among this population. The present investigation examined the interactive effects of subjective social status and mindful attention in rela...

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms are positively related to suicide risk among firefighters. One mechanism that may account for this relationship is anxiety sensitivity (AS) cognitive concerns-the fear that cognitive symptoms of anxiety will have catastrophic consequences. We sought to replicate the mediating effect of AS cognitive conc...

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and substance use disorders (SUD) are complex psychiatric conditions that commonly co-occur. No evidence-based, 'gold standard' treatments for PTSD/SUD comorbidity are currently available. The present pilot randomized clinical trial was designed to evaluate the feasibility and preliminary efficacy of a novel, in...

Media exposure is a risk factor and parental monitoring is a protective factor against adolescent alcohol and tobacco use. Music-related media, however, are underexplored. The National Survey of Parents and Youth was utilized to examine music-related media as a risk factor and parental monitoring as a protective factor for alcohol and cigarette use...

Aims: Longitudinal studies are integral in addiction research but retention of participants over time can be challenging. While statistical algorithms for missing data have advanced, they remain less desirable than collecting actual data with high retention rates. An update to methodological primers with consideration of evolving technology and pr...

Depression, posttraumatic stress, and alcohol use are highly prevalent among firefighters. However, no study has evaluated the interactive effects of depression and posttraumatic stress with regard to alcohol use among firefighters. The current study examined main and interactive effects of depression and posttraumatic stress in terms of alcohol de...

Introduction: Second generation electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS; also known as e-cigarettes, vaporizers or vape pens) are designed for a customized nicotine delivery experience and have less resemblance to regular cigarettes than first generation "cigalikes." The present study examined whether they generalize as a conditioned cue and ev...

Use and awareness of electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS; also known as electronic cigarettes or e-cigarettes) has increased rapidly in recent years, particularly among young adults. As use of ENDS resembles traditional smoking in both hand-to-mouth movements and inhalation and exhalation behaviors, we determined whether exposure to e-cigare...

Background: Passive exposure to combustible cigarette use has been shown to act as a cue to increase smoking urge. Given the resemblance of e-cigarettes and other electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) to combustible cigarettes, we examined whether these devices could also act as a cue to increase smoking desire and urges in those passively e...