Raquel Guiomar

University of Coimbra | UC · Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences

Introduction: The paradigm in mental health care is progressively moving towards a recovery-focused perspective. Thus, there is a need for validated instruments to measure recovery in bipolar disorder (BD). The Bipolar Recovery Questionnaire (BRQ) is the most used instrument to assess it. The aim of this study was to translate and perform a cross-c...

Abstract International guidelines endorse psychological treatment for Bipolar Disorder (BD); however, the absence of a recognised gold-standard intervention requires further research. A Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) skills group intervention with 12 sessions was developed. This pilot randomised controlled trial (RCT) aims to evaluate the feas...

Background: Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) is a multi-component cognitive behavioural intervention with proven efficacy in treating people with borderline personality disorder symptoms. Establishing benchmarks for DBT intervention with both adults and adolescents is essential for bridging the gap between research and clinical practice, improvi...

The Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS) is considered one of the gold-standard measures to assess depression severity. To standardise the MADRS administration, a structured interview was developed (SIGMA). This study aims to translate and validate the SIGMA for European Portuguese. Twenty patients (80% women) were interviewed by ten d...

Introduction: A major aim of early intervention for psychosis is to promote recovery, both from a clinical and a personal standpoint. Consequently, adequate instruments are needed to define goals for recovery and monitor progress over time. The questionnaire about the process of recovery (QPR) is one of the shortest and most user-friendly measures...

Background: Breastfeeding promotes children's health and is associated with positive effects to maternal physical and mental health. Uncertainties regarding SARS-CoV-2 transmission led to worries experienced by women and health professionals which impacted breastfeeding plans. We aimed to investigate the impact of self-reported and country-specifi...

Background/Objective Anxiety disorders are highly prevalent and negatively impact daily functioning and quality of life. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) targeting the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), especially in the right hemisphere impacts extinction learning; however, the underlying neural mechanisms are elusive. Therefore...

Background: Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) is a multi-component cognitive behavioural intervention with proven efficacy in treating people with borderline personality disorder symptoms. Establishing benchmarks for DBT treatment with adults and adolescents is crucial to fill the gap between research and clinical practice and improve team perfor...

Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (DBT) is known to be an efficacious treatment for people with BPD, with growing evidence of its transdiagnostic efficacy in different clinical settings and significant outcome improvements for clients. However, having a research study in place, even an effectiveness study, changes the buy-in of the organisation, and...

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a potential treatment strategy across some psychiatric conditions. However, there is high heterogeneity in tDCS efficacy as a stand-alone treatment. To increase its therapeutic potential, researchers have begun to explore the efficacy of combining tDCS with psychological and pharmacological interven...

Cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) is the first line of treatment for several mental health disorders. However, not all patients show clinical improvements after receiving CBT. Machine learning allows inferences at the individual level and therefore is a promising approach for predicting who will and will not benefit from CBT. A comprehensive lite...

Background This pilot study aims to test the usability of the iACTwithPain platform, an online ACT-based intervention for people with chronic pain, to obtain information on which intervention and usability aspects need improvement and on expected retention rates. Methods Seventy-three Portuguese women with chronic pain were invited to complete the...

Purpose: Literature shows that sexual and gender minority (SGM) individuals are at higher risk of developing minority stress-related mental health problems. Recently, it has been suggested that promoting self-compassion through affirmative mental health care for SGM people can be beneficial. However, no systematic analysis has been published explor...

During the postpartum period, the paternal brain suffers extensive and complex neurobiological alterations, through the experience of father–infant interactions. Although the impact of such experience in the mother has been increasingly studied over the past years, less is known about the neurobiological correlates of fatherhood—that is, the altera...

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has been studied to enhance extinction-based treatments for anxiety disorders. However, the field shows conflicting results about its anxiolytic effect and only a few studies have observed the extinction of consolidated memories. We looked to study the effect of offline 1 mA tDCS over the right dorsola...

Objectives Evidence shows that Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is an empirically supported psychological approach for chronic pain (CP) management. Although self-compassion is not explicitly a target of ACT, it seems to be one mechanism of change in ACT for CP. However, research is lacking on the benefits of including explicit self-compassi...

Cortical thickness has been increasingly studied in the context of structural-brain-behavior associations, such as anxiety; however, the literature is scattered across methods and research fields. This scoping review aims to summarize the available data concerning the association between cortical thickness and anxiety-related measures and identify...

Purpose This study aimed to examine the moderator role of self-compassion in the relationship between self-disgust and drive for thinness, controlling for external shame, in eating disorder patients and in a community sample. Methods Sixty-two female participants with an eating disorder diagnose and 119 female participants from the community, were...

Objectives Southampton Mindfulness Questionnaire (SMQ) is one of the available instruments to assess mindfulness and has been described as particularly suited for clinical populations. The original study of the SMQ conceptualized it as having four facets, but yielded a single factor structure. The aim of this study was to confirm the SMQ factor str...

Perinatal mental illness refers to the most frequent mental health disorders that emerge during pregnancy and up to 12 months postpartum. When untreated, perinatal mental illness leads to devastating adverse impact that can affect not only newborn neurodevelopment but also the mother and family functioning, ultimately leading to negative social and...

Background Non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) techniques have been suggested as alternative treatments to decrease depression symptoms during the perinatal period. These include brain stimulation techniques that do not require surgery and that are nonpharmacological and non-psychotherapeutic. NIBS that have showed antidepressant effect so far in...

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) has been widely tested for chronic pain, with demonstrated efficacy. Nevertheless, although there is meta-analytical evidence on the efficacy of face-to-face ACT, no reviews have been performed on online ACT in this population. The aim of this meta-analysis is to determine the efficacy of online ACT for adult...

The COVID-19 pandemic has altered the normal course of life, with measures to reduce the virus spread impacting motherhood expectations and, in particular, breastfeeding practices. This study aimed to review evidence regarding the impact of COVID-19 on breastfeeding plans and how these relate to women’s psychological outcomes. Searches were conduct...

Background Chronic pain (CP) has serious medical and social consequences and leads to economic burden that threatens the sustainability of healthcare services. Thus, optimized management of pain tools to support CP patients in adjusting to their condition and improving their quality of life is timely. Although acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT...

Introduction: Recent studies have been focusing on the development of borderline features in adolescents, given the developmental nature of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and the early use of health services due to borderline symptoms. A negative relationship with the self is associated with borderline features, often as feelings of self-dis...

Health applications have increasingly been used to improve physical, mental and social well-being. Chronic pain (CP) is defined as pain that lasts for a period of three months and causes sporadic or constant discomfort. In Portugal, the treatments for this type of pain are almost exclusively pharmacological and with known limited effects. Endowing...

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has been studied as an add-on enhancer of extinction-based treatments for anxiety disorders. However, previous studies have failed to address one issue of translational significance: the to-be extinguished fear memory must be consolidated. Additionally, extant literature shows conflicting results about...

Background Extinction-based procedures are often used to inhibit maladaptive fear responses. However, because extinction procedures show efficacy limitations, transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has been suggested as a promising add-on enhancer. Objective In this study, we tested how cathodal tDCS over the right dorsolateral prefrontal...

Background Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has been studied as an add-on enhancer of extinction-based treatments for anxiety disorders. Previous studies have showed that although anodal tDCS enhances fear extinction it also leads to decreased stimuli discrimination and consequent generalization of the fear response. Here we aim to un...

Background Extinction-based procedures are used to inhibit maladaptive fear responses. However, due to extinction efficacy limitations, transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has been studied as a promising add-on enhancer. Previous fundamental research found anodal tDCS to have an adverse effect in increasing generalization of the fear res...

Anxiety sensitivity (AS; the degree of fear of experiencing or imagining experiencing anxiety symptoms and its possible consequences) is associated with expression of conditioned fear responses. However, findings regarding the relationship between AS and fear acquisition indexed by skin conductance responses are rather conflicting. Here we aim to c...

Extinction-based procedures are often used to inhibit maladaptive fear responses. However, because extinction procedures show efficacy limitations, transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has been suggested as a promising add-on enhancer. In this study, we tested the effect of cathodal tDCS over extinction, to unveil the processes at play th...

Background: Self-compassion has been described as having a protective role in various forms of psychopathology. Therefore, compassion-based interventions have been emerging with promising results particularly among samples with diagnosis associated with self-criticism and shame issues. Nevertheless, authors have stressed the possibility of fears of...

Contextual CBT approaches aim at a recovery-based broader conceptualization of psychotic symptoms(1) and treatment studies found promising results(2–4). Specifically, regarding compassion-based approaches results are encouraging(5–7). COMPASS is a 12-session group intervention developed based on the available research on mindfulness, acceptance and...

Background Empowerment has been defined as the ability to act autonomously, the willingness to take risks and being aware of responsibility. The importance of this construct in psychosis has been emphasized by recovery models. An integrant part of the Clinical Interview for Psychotic Disorders (CIPD), the EWPSS is a visual analog scale in which the...

Background Suicide risk is an important variable to consider both in assessment and throughout the therapeutic process in psychotic disorders. The SRS-P is an 18-item scale computed from the patient and clinician-rated scores obtained in the CIPD. The scale comprises lifetime assessment of depressed mood, anhedonia and its current interference and...

In the present chapter, we will begin to review the definitions and types of negative symptoms following the NIMH-MATRICS Consensus Statement on Negative Symptoms (Kirkpatrick, Fenton, Carpenter, & Marder, 2006). Limitations of pharmacological treatments of negative symptoms will be discussed and psychological treatments will be introduced. Results...

This chapter will focus on the role of mindfulness as a strategy for adaptive self-regulation of emotional dysregulation and impulsivity, specifically in Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and Bipolar Disorder (BD). We will begin by presenting definitions of mindfulness and its proposed psychological and neurological mechanisms of action and ben...

Introdução: O bullying nas escolas continua a ser um problema comum e preocupante. Por isso, torna-se importante identificar a(s) população(ões) em maior risco, para assim mais facilmente sinalizar e prevenir. O objectivo deste estudo é comparar entre rapazes e raparigas do ensino básico e secundário quanto à tendência para serem vítimas de bullyin...