Nexhmedin Morina

University of Münster | WWU · Department of Psychology

Background: Since current therapies for depression are effective but not for all patients alike, we need to further improve available treatments. Existing research suggests that Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) may effectively treat Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). We compared ACT with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for depression, testi...

People’s self-concept contributes to their sense of identity over time. Yet self-perception is motivated and serves survival and thus does not reflect stable inner states or accurate biographical accounts. Research indicates that different types of comparison standards act as reference frames in evaluating attributes that constitute the self. Howev...

Background: Previous meta-analyses of psychological interventions for adult PTSD did not investigate whether efficacy is diminished in individuals with PTSD related to multiple (vs. single) traumatic events. The present work aimed to close this gap. Methods: A pre-registered meta-analysis (CRD42023407754) was conducted. PsycINFO, MEDLINE, Web of Sc...

People constantly compare their appearance and well-being to that of other individuals. However, a measure of social comparison of well-being is lacking and existing appearance-related social comparison assessment is limited to comparison tendency using predefined social situations. This limits our understanding of the role of social comparison in...

Importance Pediatric posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a common and debilitating mental disorder, yet a comprehensive network meta-analysis examining psychological interventions is lacking. Objective To synthesize all available evidence on psychological interventions for pediatric PTSD in a comprehensive systematic review and network meta-an...

Aims Although natural hazards (e.g., tropical cyclones, earthquakes) disproportionately affect developing countries, most research on their mental health impact has been conducted in high-income countries. We aimed to summarize prevalences of mental disorders in Global South populations (classified according to the United Nations Human Development...

Background Previous research has reported associations between various forms of repetitive negative thinking (RNT; e.g., rumination, worry, and the content-independent process of RNT) and the onset and maintenance of psychological disorders. Additionally, reductions in RNT are linked to improved treatment outcomes, primarily based on findings from...

Background Virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET) is a promising treatment approach for anxiety disorders. However, while its efficacy has been demonstrated in adults, research on the efficacy of VRET in the treatment of adolescents with anxiety disorders is largely lacking. Objective A pilot study was carried out to test whether exposure to a vi...

Background: Early adversity scales often display insufficient content coverage and typically assess the presence of adversity, but not its severity. Objective: To address some of these limitations, we developed the 13-item Youth and Childhood Adversity Scale. We subsequently revised and expanded the scale regarding content coverage and item wording...

Social comparison plays an important role in depression. However, the process of social comparison selection among depressed individuals remains understudied. This study investigated the choices made by individuals with elevated depression scores (assessed with the Patient Health Questionnaire-8) when exposed to vignettes depicting individuals with...

Mental health-related behaviours including addictive behaviours contribute significantly to the global burden of disease. Social norm interventions appear to be a cost-effective means of reducing addictive behaviour. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of the efficacy of social norm interventions for addictive behaviours. We searched...

ABSTRACT Background Emotion regulation (ER) plays a central role in psychopathology. Understanding person-centred patterns of ER strategies is crucial for prevention and intervention strategies. However, there is a paucity of research on ER profiles and their psychological correlates in forcibly displaced people (FDP). Objective This study aimed to...

BAckground: Childhood adversity (CA) is strongly associated with depression and anxiety in later life. Many adults with a history of CA may have internalized an insecure self-concept, which may contribute to negative evaluations of one's current well-being relative to different standards. Yet, there is lack of research on well-being comparisons in...

Background Pathological worry is associated with appraisals of worrying as uncontrollable. Worry postponement (WP) with a stimulus control rationale appears to be effective in non-clinical samples. However, preliminary research in participants with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) does not support its efficacy in reducing negative metacognitions...

Early adversity (EA) scales often display insufficient content coverage and typically assess the presence of adversity, but not its severity. To address some of these limitations, we developed the 13-item Youth and Childhood Adversity Scale. We subsequently revised and expanded the scale regarding content coverage and item wording, resulting in a 2...

Background: Sudden gains, defined as large and stable improvements of psychopathological symptoms, are a ubiquitous phenomenon in psychotherapy. They have been shown to occur across several clinical contexts and to be associated with better short-term and long-term treatment outcome. However, the approach of sudden gains has been criticized for its...

Importance Pediatric post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a common and debilitating mental disorder. Yet, a comprehensive network meta-analysis examining the efficacy of psychological interventions is lacking. Objective To synthesize all available evidence on psychological interventions for pediatric PTSD in a comprehensive network meta-analys...

Mental health research faces the challenge of developing machine learning models for clinical decision support. Concerns about the generalizability of such models to real-world populations due to sampling effects and disparities in available data sources are rising. We examined whether harmonized, structured collection of clinical data and stringen...

Exam periods are stressful for university students. To assess their exam readiness, students can use social, temporal, criteria-based, and counterfactual comparisons. Here, we used Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) to capture daily frequency and affective impact of upward comparisons and their influence on stress, negative mood, and learning am...

Memory for self-referentially (SR) encoded information is generally stronger than for other-referentially (OR) processed information. This self-reference effect (SRE) appears to co-vary with social distance, corresponding to a similar benefit for close over distant other-reference (CORE). SR/OR effects on memory are widely thought to selectively de...

The self-reference effect (SRE) refers to a memory advantage for information processed in relation to the self. Self-referential encoding seems to especially enhance recollection, the subjective "feeling of remembering" and retrieval of episodic detail. Improved memory, and a correspondingly smaller SRE, are also typically observed after reference...

Social comparison is a fundamental mechanism that enables humans to navigate the complexities of our ever-changing world. Moreover, social comparison can serve as a powerful mechanism for promoting behaviour change. Research on social comparison as a behaviour change technique (SC-BCT) has increased significantly during the last decades. We summari...

Patients with an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) often report psychological distress. Literature suggests that patients with physical disease often compare their well-being and coping to fellow patients. However, we lack knowledge on social comparison among patients with ICD. In this study, we examined psychological distress and social...

People can easily rate and express their current levels of wellbeing, but the cognitive foundations for such judgments are poorly understood. We examined whether comparisons to varying standards underlie fluctuating wellbeing judgments within-person (i.e., throughout daily episodes) and between-person (i.e., high vs. low levels of psychopathology)....

Many individuals who encounter potentially traumatic events go on to develop symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Research suggests that survivors of traumatic events frequently compare their current well-being to different standards; yet, knowledge regarding the role of comparative thinking in well-being is limited to a few cross-sect...

Background Migration and the resulting challenges in the host country can have a profound impact on the mental health of refugees and intensify preoccupation with one's own well‐being. Yet, cognitive factors underlying the adverse impact of postmigration stressors are poorly understood. Objective We aimed at exploring the frequency and nature of w...

Social comparison has a significant impact on individuals' motivation, affect, and behavior. However, we lack a scale that captures individual differences in attitudes toward social comparison. To address this gap, we developed the Attitudes Toward Social Comparison Inventory (ASCI) drawing on existing scales that tap into metacognitive beliefs abo...

Background: Anxiety is a prevalent mental health condition. Comparisons of one’s own well-being to different aversive standards may contribute to the development and maintenance of anxiety symptoms. Objectives: Our primary goal was to investigate whether aversive well-being comparisons predict anxiety symptoms and vice versa. Additionally, we aimed...

Objective Frame‐of‐reference theories suggest that individuals use different comparison types to evaluate their well‐being. Research indicates that the frequency of aversive well‐being comparisons is related to depression, with engendered comparison affective impact partly accounting for this relationship. We aimed to replicate this finding, examin...

BACKGROUND Virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET) is a promising treatment approach for anxiety disorders. However, while its efficacy has been demonstrated in adults, research on the efficacy of VRET in the treatment of adolescents with anxiety disorders is largely lacking. OBJECTIVE A pilot study was carried out to test whether exposure to a vi...

Background Students enrolling in higher education often adopt lifestyles linked to worse mental health, potentially contributing to the peak age onset of mental health problems in early adulthood. However, extensive research is limited by focusing on single lifestyle behaviors, including single time points, within limited cultural contexts, and foc...

Many patients with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) suffer from sleep problems, leading to impairments in social functioning and quality of life. Refugees are at high risk for sleep problems due to stressful life circumstances and a high PTSD prevalence. However, limited data on the frequency of sleep problems in refugees with diagnosed PTSD ex...

Academic self-concept (ASC) is a prominent predictor of educational achievement and student mental health. Although it is widely accepted that ASC is fundamentally comparative, little is known about different comparison types driving students’ ASC construal and its impact on mental health. Therefore, we examined whether self-evaluations relative to...

Self-representation is linked to memory processes, as shown by improved retrieval of self-referentially encoded material, compared to perceptual semantic or other-referential encoding. This self-reference effect (SRE) has been extensively studied in basic and translational research contexts. While self-reference tasks enjoy ongoing popularity and t...

Imagery rescripting (ImRs) is frequently applied to treat different psychological complaints. We conducted an updated meta-analysis based on randomised controlled trials on the efficacy of ImRs for mental disorders associated with aversive memories. Medline, PsycInfo, and Web of Science were searched up to May 2023. Seventeen trials were included w...

Patients with an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) often report psychological distress. However, both physical disease severity and psychological adjustment are variable. The role of social comparison in illness coping has not been studied in these patients yet. We theorize that relative to patients without experienced shock (ICD-), thos...

People constantly compare their appearance and well-being to that of other individuals. However, there is a lack of a measure of social comparisons of well-being, and existing appearance-related social comparison scales assess social comparison tendency using predefined social situations. This limits our understanding of the role of social comparis...

Background: Comparative thinking about one's well-being is ubiquitous. Comparisons that threaten an individual's self-motives are aversive and interact with rumination and depression. Aversive well-being comparisons include upward social, past temporal, counterfactual, and criteria-based comparisons, as well as downward prospective temporal compar...

Importance: Social anxiety disorder (SAD) can be adequately treated with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). However, there is a large gap in knowledge on factors associated with prognosis, and it is unclear whether symptom severity predicts response to CBT for SAD. Objective: To examine baseline SAD symptom severity as a moderator of the associ...

Purpose Aversive appearance-related comparisons (i.e., threatening one’s own motives) show stronger associations with depression, psychological well-being, and self-esteem than appetitive comparisons (i.e., consonant with or challenging one’s motives). However, the relevance of their congruent (i.e., equal) and incongruent (i.e., unequal) presence...

The large and growing number of published meta-analyses on the efficacy of psychological interventions for PTSD make a comprehensive integration of available treatment evidence challenging. We conducted a systematic search in five databases for meta-analyses of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) on the treatment efficacy of specific psychological...

Objective: A comprehensive quantitative summary of the efficacy and acceptability of psychological interventions (PIs) for adult posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is lacking. Method: We conducted a systematic literature search to identify randomized controlled trials (RCTs) examining the efficacy and acceptability (all-cause dropout) of psych...

People can easily rate and express their current affect levels, but the cognitive foundations for such judgments are poorly understood. We examined whether comparisons to varying standards underlie fluctuating affect judgments within-person (i.e., throughout daily episodes) and between-person (i.e., high vs. low levels of psychopathology). Clinical...

Sudden gains, defined as large and stable improvements in symptom severity during psychological treatment, have consistently been found to be associated with better outcomes across treatments and diagnoses. Yet, insights on coherent predictors of sudden gains and on emotional changes around sudden gains in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are...

Pairing a cue (e.g., an image of a geometrical figure) with an outcome (e.g., an image with aversive content) can result in the cue eliciting thoughts of that outcome (i.e., thought conditioning). Previous research suggests an advantage of counterconditioning over extinction in reducing thoughts of (aversive) outcomes. However, it is unclear how ro...

Sampling theories suggest that quantitative judgments are comparison-based and, therefore, fundamentally relative, and susceptible to continuous revision based on information sampled from our environment. Body satisfaction and weight judgment in women are a domain of clinical relevance in this context, as they have been shown to be related to unfav...

Objective Numerous randomized controlled trials (RCTs) demonstrate the efficacy of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), metacognitive therapy (MCT), and methods to reduce intolerance of uncertainty (IU-CBT) in the treatment of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). However, few studies have investigated these treatments under conditions of routine clin...

Background: Many refugees report high levels of psychopathology. As a countermeasure, some psychological interventions aim at targeting mental health difficulties in refugees transdiagnostically. However, there is a lack of knowledge about relevant transdiagnostic factors in refugee populations. Objective: To inform intervention efforts empirically...

We aimed at mapping the meta-analytic evidence base on the efficacy of psychological treatments for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in specific populations. We conducted a systematic search until January 2022 in MEDLINE, PsycINFO, PTSDpubs, Web of Science, and the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews for metaanalyses of randomized controlle...

Objectives: Individuals frequently engage in comparisons on how they are doing relative to different standards. According to the general comparative-processing model, comparisons can be perceived as aversive (appraised as threatening the motives of the comparer) or appetitive (appraised as consonant with, or positively challenging the motives). Re...

Background: Two systematic reviews indicated that higher treatment frequency of psychological interventions for adult PTSD may lead to higher efficacy and less dropout. Yet, a quantitative review is missing. Methods: We conducted a thorough systematic literature search and included trials meeting the following criteria: a) random allocation, 2)...

Background: People are constantly preoccupied with how they are doing compared to different standards. This preoccupation influences judgments of well-being, including depression. However, research on well-being comparisons is scarce, also due to a lack of a measure of multi-standard comparisons. Methods: Our research goals were twofold. First, we...

Background: Previous meta-analyses of psychotherapies for children and adolescents with PTSD did not investigate whether treatment efficacy is diminished when patients report multiple (vs. single) traumas. Aims: The present work aimed to close this gap. Method: We systematically searched PsycINFO, MEDLINE, Web of Science and PTSDpubs on April 21st...

Background: Participants are allowed to stay on their prescribed psychotropic medication in most trials examining psychological interventions for adult post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Objectives: We aimed to conduct the first meta-analysis investigating the potential influence of such concurrent medication on efficacy. Method: To this e...

Numerous randomized controlled trials have shown cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) to be effective in treating social anxiety disorder (SAD). Yet, less is known about the effectiveness of CBT for SAD conducted by psychotherapists in training in routine clinical practice. In this study, 231 patients with SAD were treated with CBT under routine condit...

We introduce a novel approach to assess habitual comparison processes, while distinguishing between different types of comparison standards. Several comparison theories (e.g., social) suggest that self-evaluations use different standards to inform self-perception and are associated with wellbeing and personality. We developed the Comparison Standar...

Traumatic events often lead to counterfactual comparison (CFC), defined as comparing one’s current attributes to that of a hypothetical mentally simulated alternative that might have occurred but is counter to the facts. CFC can differ in its direction and in terms of the referent of action. The mentally simulated alternative may be evaluated as mo...

Zusammenfassung: Imagery Rescripting (ImRs) erhält zunehmend Aufmerksamkeit als eine innovative und effektive Methode zur Behandlung der Posttraumatischen Belastungsstörung (PTBS). Die PTBS gehört zu den häufigsten psychischen Störungen bei geflüchteten Menschen. ImRs stellt einen vielver-sprechenden Behandlungsansatz für diese Indikation bei Geflü...

Introduction Since a high proportion of refugees in Germany suffer from mental disorders, culturally adapted treatments are needed that target a broad range of symptoms. There is much evidence for the efficacy of culturally adapted cognitive behavioural therapy (CA-CBT). Given the promising results of CA-CBT, the combination with problem solving tr...

Background: Guilt and shame regulate basic human processes such as social cognition and relations. Both emotions are also involved in the aetiology and maintenance of trauma-related mental disorders such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, a concise scale that adequately captures these constructs is currently lacking, impeding researc...

Background Humans constantly compare their attributes to different reference frames. According to the theoretical framework of the general comparative-processing model, such comparisons may be perceived as aversive (i.e., appraised as threatening the motives of the comparer) or appetitive (i.e., appraised as consonant with, or positively challengin...

Background: Academic self-concept (ASC) is a prominent predictor of educational achievement and plays a critical role in student mental health. Although it is widely accepted that ASC is fundamentally comparative, little is known about the comparison types driving students’ ASC construal and its impact on mental health. Therefore, we examined wheth...

Although well-established therapies exist for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), barriers to seek mental health care are high. Technology-based interventions may play a role in improving the reach of efforts to treat, especially when therapist availability is low. The goal of the current randomized controlled trial was to pilot the efficacy of...

Background Humans constantly compare their attributes to different reference frames. According to the theoretical framework of the general comparative-processing model, such comparisons may be perceived as aversive (i.e., appraised as threatening the motives of the comparer) or appetitive (i.e., appraised as consonant with, or positively challengin...

Background: People are constantly preoccupied with how they are doing compared to different standards. This preoccupation influences judgments of well-being, including depression. However, research on well-being comparisons is scarce, also due to a lack of a measure of multi-standard comparisons. Methods: Our research goals were twofold. First, we...

Background Attention on harmful effects of psychological interventions for adult post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has increased, yet a comprehensive meta-analysis is lacking. Aims To summarise incidences and relative risks of deterioration, adverse events (AEs) and serious adverse events (SAEs) in trials of psychological interventions for adu...

The implantation of cardiac devices significantly reduces morbidity and mortality in patients with cardiac arrhythmias. Arrhythmias as well as therapy delivered by the device may impact quality of life of patients concerned considerably. Therefore we aimed at conducting a systematic search and meta-analysis of trials examining the impact of the imp...

The implantation of cardiac devices significantly reduces morbidity and mortality in patients with cardiac arrhythmias. Arrhythmias as well as therapy delivered by the device may impact quality of life of patients concerned considerably. Therefore we aimed at conducting a systematic search and meta-analysis of trials examining the impact of the imp...

Syncopes are a very common phenomenon and have a high recurrence rate. The differentiation between the psychogenic and physical, especially of arrhythmic origin, remains difficult. In many cases, an implantable loop recorder is used for the detection of possible arrhythmias, leading to syncopes. Yet, the existing literature suggests that psychologi...

Aims: The role of physical activity (PA) in the promotion of mental wellbeing and prevention of psychological disorders in population groups at increased risk for mental health conditions, such as migrant populations, has never been systematically investigated. Methods: We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis according to the Preferred...

The perceptual Self-Prioritization effect (SPE) refers to an advantage in attending to stimuli associated with the self relative to those associated with another individual. In the perceptual matching task, arbitrary pairings between oneself and other persons, and a geometric shape need to be learned. Apart from the SPE, this task also produces hig...

Background Self-discrepancy theory posits that greater discrepancy between the actual and ideal self is related to dysphoria and greater discrepancy between the actual and ought self to anxiety. Despite both being transdiagnostically associated with psychopathology, differential effects of actual:ideal and actual:ought discrepancies have not been c...

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a severe condition that is associated with trauma-related guilt. We aimed at providing a comprehensive quantitative systematic review on the relationship between trauma-related guilt and adult PTSD. Database searches in Medline, PsycINFO, PTSDpubs and Web of Knowledge resulted in the inclusion of 163 eligible...