Rui C Campos

Universidade de Évora | uevora · Department of Psychology - School of Social Sciences

This study examined a theoretically based mediation model including participants' perceptions of early relationships with their mother, self-criticism, dependency, and current depressive symptoms. We expect that (a) early relationships characterized by low levels of care and high levels of overprotection will be positively associated with both curr...

Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) is one of the most popular and widely investigated instruments for assessing the severity of depressive symptomatology. The authors developed a Portuguese version of the inventory. This paper presents two studies: one with a college student sample (n = 547) and another with a community sample (n = 200). Reliabi...

The present study examines whether self-criticism and depressive symptoms mediate the relationship between recollections of parental rejection and suicidality. A community sample of 200 Portuguese adults completed, in counterbalanced order, a socio-demographic questionnaire, the short form of the Inventory for Assessing Memories of Parental Rearing...

Although suicidality is associated with mental illness in general and depression in particular, many depressed individuals do not attempt suicide and some individuals who attempt to or do die by suicide do not present depressive symptoms. This paper aims to contribute to a more psychosocial approach to understanding suicide risk in nonclinical popu...

BACKGROUND: The impact of the pandemic on mental health has been demonstrated in several reports. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on multiple dimensions of psychopathology in Portuguese adults. We compare a pandemic sample assessed during the second lockdown in Portugal with a prepandemic sample. MET...

Childhood trauma presents a negative impact on development, which can lead to dysfunctionality and to suicidal behaviors, namely self-harming behaviors throughout life. The aim of this preliminary study is to test the mediation and moderation effects of different facets of psychological pain, cognitive dimension, affective dimension and avoidance i...

Self-harming behavior (SHB) represents an important public health issue and is one of the most critical predictors of completed death by suicide. The current study evaluated the incremental contribution of the Interpersonal Theory of Suicide constructs of thwarted belongingness and perceived burdensomeness for the prediction of SHB beyond that asso...

This study aims to identify the client factors that predict working alliance in career construction counselling. The sample included 49 Portuguese participants (34 females). A demographic questionnaire collected information about clients’ gender, age and educational level. Distress was assessed using the Outcome Questionnaire-45. The strength of wo...

Background and objectives The impact of death by suicide represents an important public health issue. The current study reports data relating depressive symptoms and psychological well-being to exposure to suicide in the family. Methods A final Portuguese community sample of 266 participants answered a protocol presented on a Google platform. Two...

Objectives: The association between childhood trauma and suicidal ideation has been well documented in several populations, including individuals with a substance use disorder (SUD). However, a gap still exists in the literature regarding the mechanisms by which childhood trauma later impacts suicide risk. This cross-sectional study tested the effe...

Objectives: This study tested the mediation effects of two facets of psychache - bearable and unbearable - in the relationship between exposure to suicide in the family and suicidal ideation in Portugal during the Covid-19 pandemic. Methods: Two hundred and forty-four adults aged between 19 and 64 participated. Two groups were defined: one expos...

The development of psychometrically sound measures to assess mental pain are important because research has consistently demonstrated a robust relationship to suicide risk. The current research evaluated the Three-Dimensional Psychological Pain Scale (TDPPS) structure, a suicide-relevant measure intended to articulate pain into affective, cognitive...

This 5-month, 2-wave study evaluated the mediating effects of psychache and unmet interpersonal needs on the relationship between childhood trauma and suicide ideation in 208 young adults, controlling for depression. Path analysis demonstrated that changes in depression, perceived burdensomeness, and thwarted belongingness mediated the relationship...

Objectives In this study, we tested whether the unbearable pain scale of the Psychache Scale provides value for the statistical prediction of a previous suicide attempt; we evaluated whether psychological pain has incremental value in the statistical prediction of a previous suicide attempt relative to the reporting of having had a psychiatric diag...

This study evaluated the contribution of psychological pain to self-harming behaviours, controlling for several co-variables. A convenience sample of 207 U.S. residents provided socio-demographic and clinical information and responded to the Psychache Scale. Logistic regression analysis demonstrated that when controlling for the significant co-vari...

Across two countries and two languages, this research examined the multidimensional associations between suicidality (e.g., past ideation/attempts, communication of intent) and empirically important psychological risk factors (e.g., mental pain, perceived burdensomeness, thwarted belongingness). For samples of 228 Canadian and 331 Portuguese univer...

Across two countries and two languages, this research examined the multidimensional associations of suicide behaviors (i.e., life-time attempts, life-time communication of intent to others, life-time self-harming, life-time suicide notes, and current suicide ideation) and empirically relevant psychological risk factors (i.e., different facets of me...

The aims of the present study were to compare a sample of individuals exposed to suicide in their familieswith a control group, on suicidal ideation, and to test possible potentiating effects for unmet interpersonal needs. Three hundred eighty-six young Portuguese adults participated. Two groupswere defined: a group exposed to suicide in the family...

O objectivo deste estudo de cariz exploratório é testar, em adultos da comunidade, a relação entre representações das figuras parentais e dor psicológica. A amostra final é constituída por 164 participantes, com idades entre os 18 e os 65 anos, que responderam à Psychache Scale e ao Inventário para Aceder às Memórias de Infância Relativas às Prátic...

Abstract Objectives: A multidimensional psychological pain model of suicide has been developed that includes three dimensions: affective, cognitive, and avoidance. In the present research, we evaluated the relationships between the three dimensions of psychological pain and suicidal ideation.Method: Two community samples from Portugal and the U.S....

In the present study, the first with a Western sample, we tested the relationship between three dimensions of psychological pain and suicidal ideation in a sample of 331 Portuguese college students. When controlling for the effect of depressive symptoms, the avoidance dimension, but not the cognitive and affective dimensions of psychological pain,...

In this article we present different perspectives on what are and what is the function of defense mechanisms, namely the perspectives of A. Freud. Vaillant. Cramer and Ihilevich and Gleser. Then we describes some instruments for assessing defense mechanisms that follow or operationalize the aforementioned perspectives. In this paper there is a spec...

Several studies have consistently related psychological pain to suicide risk. Psychache, according to Shneidman's perspective and measured by the Psychache Scale has been confirmed as an important variable in risk prediction. In the present study, we evaluated psychache as a construct related to suicide risk using data obtained with the Portuguese...

Highlights: Clinical and psychological assessments should routinely assess for past depressive experiences and not only for current symptoms, because these past experience may actually augment the risk of suicidality as indexed by suicidal ideation.

The aim of the present study was to test whether the maladaptive personality traits of self-criticism and neediness predict suicide ideation when controlling for general distress. Further, potential interactive effects on suicide ideation of the two traits and distress were also evaluated. Two studies with nonclinical samples were conducted. The fi...

The aim of the present study was to test whether perceived burdensomeness and thwarted belongingness are related to suicide ideation, when controlling for depressive symptoms. The sample consisted of elderly patients recovering from acute medical conditions who were recruited in a medical recovery clinic. Results demonstrated that depressive sympto...

O Questionário de Experiências Depressivas (QED, Blatt, D’Afflitti, & Quinlan, 1976) é uma medida de auto-relato usada na avaliação e na investigação sobre a personalidade e a psicopatologia. Avalia os constructos de Dependência, Auto-criticismo, Necessidade, Contacto e Eficácia. A versão portuguesa do QED foi previamente estabelecida por Campos, B...

The aim of the present study was to evaluate whether changes in the maladaptive personality trait of self-criticism and changes in the interaction between this trait and the intensity of perceived negative life events predict changes in distress over a period of five months. A final sample of 207 young adults participated, responding to the Depress...

Objective: The aim of the present study was to compare a sample of Portuguese individuals exposed to suicide in their families with a control group, for lifetime suicidality. This study also evaluated the incremental value of psychache (i.e., extreme psychological pain) in determining suicide risk beyond the contribution associated with having los...

This paper of a theoretical nature consists of seven sections plus a conclusion. In the first, introductory, we focus on the definition of psychological assessment and in objectives, issues and methods. In the last section we weave considerations about psychodynamic diagnostic concept and we describe a proposal of psychodynamic psychological assess...

This theoretical work intends to present Sidney Blatt’s model and to discuss some of its clinical implications. The article is organized in different sections. We begin by approaching the author’s conceptualization on depression, then we describe his proposal on the development of personality and the two personality styles he has poposed:, anaclíti...

The aim of the current study was to assess suicide ideation in a sample of older adults recovering from acute conditions in a clinical recovery facility of the Portuguese Red Cross. Four indicators of suicide ideation were used. Clinical, contextual, and psychological variables-namely, previous suicide attempts, death of a family member by suicide,...

. The aim of the present study is to provide validation data regarding the Portuguese version of the Suicidal Behaviors Questionnaire-Revised in nonclinical individuals. Two studies were undertaken with two different nonclinical samples in order to demonstrate reliability, concurrent, predictive, and construct validity, and in order to establish an...

This study evaluated whether psychache (i.e., mental pain) mediates the association between general distress, assessed as the frequency and the intensity of psychological symptoms in the previous week, and suicide ideation in community adults. For a sample of 202 adults, psychache fully mediated the relationship between suicide ideation and the fre...

This study tested a prediction model of suicidality in a sample of young adults. Predictor variables included perceived parental rejection, self-criticism, neediness, and depression. Participants (N = 165) responded to the Depressive Experiences Questionnaire, the Inventory for Assessing Memories of Parental Rearing Behavior, the Center for Epidemi...

Background and aims(s): The study evaluated the contribution of coping strategies, based on the Toulousiane conceptualization of coping, to the prediction of suicide risk and tested the moderating effect of gender, controlling for depressive symptoms. Method: A two-time data collection design was used. A community sample of 195 adults (91 men and 1...

Este trabalho teve como objetivo testar dois modelos de previsão do risco de suicídio que assumem que a depressão medeia a relação entre a frequência e a intensidade de acontecimentos de vida percebidos como negativos e o risco de suicídio. Foi controlado o efeito da idade e do género dos participantes. Os dados foram recolhidos em dois momentos di...

The present study extends previous findings by examining whether defense styles, selfobject needs, attachment styles relate to Neediness and Self-Criticism, as maladaptive personality dimensions focused, respectively, on relatedness and self-definition in an Iranian sample. Three hundred and 52 participants completed a sociodemographic questionnair...

The aim of the present study is to test a theory-based model of suicide in a low-risk nonclinical sample. A community sample of convenience of 200 adults, 102 men and 98 women, responded to the Depressive Experiences Questionnaire, the Center for the Epidemiologic Studies of Depression Scale, the Psychache Scale, the Interpersonal Needs Questionnai...

Using structural equation modeling, we tested a primary model of suicide risk and 3 competing, alternative models based on 4 psychological variables deemed important in the literature (perception of parental rejection, depression, interpersonal needs comprising perceived burdensomeness and thwarted belongingness, and psychache), in a nonclinical sa...

This study aimed to test if the preference for using certain types of defense mechanisms, according to Ihilevich and Gleser's (1969, 1986) perspective, is associated with personality styles, proposed by Millon (1993), and also, aimed to test if both constructs give a contribution to the identification of global types of psychological functioning in...

Neste artigo de revisão discute-se, numa primeira secção, a controvérsia em torno da terminologia utilizada para designar os indivíduos enlutados por suicídio. Numa segunda parte do trabalho, apresenta-se uma súmula dos principais resultados que constam da literatura internacional sobre o impacto do suicídio. Posteriormente, descrevem-se os estudos...

The present study assessed the impact of suicide and distress on suicidal ideation in a sample of 93 Portuguese family members bereaved by suicide. A control community sample of 102 adults also participated. After controlling for educational level, those bereaved by the suicide of a family member were found to have higher levels of suicidal ideatio...

Relationships between Axis II personality disorders and Sidney Blatt constructs of dependency and self-criticism were explored in a late adulthood women sample. The sample consisted of 102 women (M = 72.07 years of age, SD = 7.04) who were administered two measures, the Personality Diagnostic Questionnaire-4+ and the Depressive Experiences Question...

Background and Objectives: This exploratory study simultaneously tests the contribution of socio-demographic, clinical, distress, and personality variables for identifying suicide risk in a non-clinical sample. Methods: A convenience sample of 810 adults ranging in age from 19 to 67 years (M = 36.34, SD = 12.46) and living in various Portuguese reg...

The research literature consistently indicates that self-criticism is related to suicidality. Evidence for the role of dependency, however, is more controversial. This study examines the extent to which these personality vulnerabilities are mediated by psychological distress in the prediction of suicidality. As part of a study of adolescent psychop...

The present study examined the impact of several sociodemographic and suicide related variables on the distress of family members bereaved by suicide. A sample of Portuguese family members bereaved by suicide (N=93) living in the Alentejo region completed a sociodemographic and suicide information questionnaire and the Brief Symptom Inventory. Forw...

In a 6-month longitudinal design, the authors examined the links between neediness and increases in depressive symptoms in women. Neediness was assessed with the self-report Depressive Experiences Questionnaire (DEQ), supplemented by a projective measure that assessed an important component of dependency, oral dependency, on the Rorschach. Results...

In this chapter, we present the theories of Sidney Blatt and Heinz Kohut regarding normal and abnormal psychological development, the clinical implications of those theories, and links between them. We begin by describing Blatt's model. In the second section of the chapter, we present Kohut's model of psychological development and how the failure b...

The Depressive Experiences Questionnaire (DEQ, Blatt, D’Afflitti, & Quinlan, 1976, 1979), a self-report measure used in personality research, assesses the constructs of Dependency and Self-Criticism as vulnerability factors in depression (Blatt, 1974, 1990, 2004) and psychopathology more generally (Blatt, 2008; Blatt & Shichman, 1983). This study e...

This paper proposes a depressive personality organization—a unique set of traits. It proposes a psychodynamic and psychiatric operationalization and reports on a preliminary validation through the construction of a questionnaire and the investigation of its psychometric properties in three nonclinical samples and a clinical sample of depressed pati...

As part of the research relating personality and depression, this study seeks to predict depressive experiences in aging women according to Sidney Blatt's perspective based on the Five-Factor Model of Personality. The NEO-Five Factor Inventory and the Depressive Experiences Questionnaire were administered. The domains Neuroticism, Agreeableness, an...

Relationships between Axis II personality disorders (DSM-IV) and Sidney Blatt (1990, 2008) constructs of relatedness (dependency) and self-definition (self-criticism) were explored in a sample of autonomous aging women. The sample consisted of 102 women participants (M = 72,07 years of age, SD = 7,04). The Portuguese version (Henriques-Calado & Dua...

Objectives The present study examines the role of dependency (interpersonal relatedness) and self-criticism (self-definition) in internalising and externalising problems. Methods Three hundred forty-six suburban Portuguese high-school students age 14-18 (mean = 16.14, standard deviation = 1.19) responded to the Depressive Experiences Questionnaire...

A diagnosis of cancer can be extremely stressful, and for that reason, cancer patients' adjustment has been widely studied. Little is known, however, about how patients' personality vulnerabilities affect their adjustment to cancer. The present study examined the moderating role of several psychological strategies of adjustment to cancer in the ass...

The present study examined whether distress mediates the relationship between suicidality and the personality predispositions of Self-Criticism, Dependency/Neediness, and Efficacy. A community sample of Portuguese young adults (N = 105) completed, in a counterbalanced order, a sociodemographic questionnaire, the Depressive Experiences Questionnaire...

This study examined the relationships between defenses and depressive experiences. Two questionnaires, in counterbalanced order, were administered to a community sample of 205 adults: the Depressive Experiences Questionnaire (DEQ; S. Blatt, J. D'Afflitti, & D. Quinlan 1976, 1979) and the Defense Mechanisms Inventory (DMI; D. Ihilevich & G. C. Glese...

In this work we have studied the relationship between depression and parental representations, following the psychodynamic perspective, verifying if depressive traits can be a mediation variable between negative parental representations, which are the result of disruptive interactions with significant objects, and the depressive symptomatic state....

The Depressive History Questionnaire is shown to have a single factor and acceptable internal consistency reliability in a sample of 205 community participants.

Estudo sobre a relação entre diversas dimensões das representações das figuras parentais e a presença de traços disfuncionais de personalidade tipicamente associados às diferentes perturbações de personalidade

O objectivo do presente trabalho foi estudar a relação entre representações parentais e traços desadaptativos de personalidade em sujeitos adultos da população não-clínica. Participaram neste estudo 177 estudantes universitários, dos quais 104 eram mulheres e 73 eram homens. As idades variaram entre os 18 e os 43 anos (M=22,66, DP=4,054). Foi aplic...

O objectivo do presente trabalho foi estudar a relação entre experiências relacionais na infância com as figuras significativas e estilos de vinculação amorosa no adulto. Participaram 187 estudantes universitários, 109 mulheres e 78 homens. As idades variaram entre os 18 e os 43 anos (M= 22,82; DP= 4,20). Foi aplicado o Protocolo de Avaliação dos M...

A Portuguese questionnaire was developed to assess the history of depressive symptoms. The Depressive History Questionnaire was based on the Depressive Experience Subscale from the Thalbourne Manic Depressiveness Scale, which was translated into Portuguese. The Depressive History Questionnaire was administered to 459 college students. Female studen...

The present exploratory study evaluates the presence of dependent characteristics of personality (a low value of the Egocentricity Index (Ego Index), a high value of the Sum of texture responses (Sum T), a number of passive movement responses higher than the number of active movement responses plus one (p>a+1), the presence of food content response...

In the present work we propose a conceptualization for the relationship between chronic career indecision and psychopathology. We assume a dimensional and psychodynamic approach to psychopathology. We consider four general structures of psychopathology: borderline, psychotic, depressive and neurotic. Considering psychopathology to elaborate about t...

Folowing the publication of another work, describing Coimbra de Matos’ model of depression and its treatment, we present in the present work a clinical case of depression, where can be seen in practice, some of the concepts and ideas of that model. After the presentation of the most important aspects of the case, not folowing any particular model o...

No presente trabalho apresentamos os estudos leva-dos a cabo para adaptar o Questionário de Experiências Depressivas (Q.E.D.) de Sidney Blatt e colegas para a população portuguesa. Iniciamos o artigo com uma breve exposição dos aspectos centrais da conceptualização de Sidney Blatt sobre a depressão. Descrevemos depois a versão original do Q.E.D. e...

In this article we present the most important aspects of Sidney Blatt's theoretical perspective on depression. We present some general aspects of his model, the characteristics of the two depression types proposed by Blatt, some notes about the development of objectal representations and about the depression's antecedents and also the multi-causal...

A partir da análise dos dados normativos de uma amostra de 60 crianças portuguesas, 30 de cada sexo, de 10 anos de idade, vivendo na cidade de Lisboa, os autores procedem ao exame de um certo número de variáveis cujos valores médios ou frequência de ocorrência se afastam, de modo acentuado, de idênticos dados obtidos por Exner e Weiner , nos EUA. O...

The present exploratory work, aims to study the manifestations of dependency and self- criticism, as personality styles that can predispose to depression (following the conceptualisation of Sidney Blatt), in Rorschach, in non depressed individuals, using the Rorschach Comprehensive System. Rorschach was administered to three groups: to a group with...