Sarah R Holley

San Francisco State University | SFSU · Department of Psychology

This second edition of the essential guide for reproductive professionals is now available in a Clinical Guide and a Case Studies Guide, presenting the most current knowledge on counseling patients with diverse needs amidst rapidly advancing modern technology. The Case Studies guide relates the accessible, real-world experiences and perspectives as...

The second edition of the essential guide for reproductive professionals is now available in a Clinical Guide and a Case Studies Guide, presenting the most current knowledge on counseling diverse patients amidst rapidly advancing modern technology. Follow an in-depth presentation of clinical concepts in this Clinical Guide for a foundational unders...

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and sociopolitical stressors have negative consequences for young adults’ mental health. The current study examined how patterns of ACEs were associated with event-related clinical distress following the 2016 United States presidential election and tested whether difficulties in emotion regulation exacerbated AC...

To date, research on traumatic stress and treatment-seeking behavior has primarily focused on Western populations. Despite experiencing similar levels of symptomatology, mental health service utilization appears lower among East Asian populations. Stigma toward mental health services may be one barrier to treatment-seeking, especially among individ...

The outflow of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) is continuous and dynamic, but its functional organization is not well understood. Whether ANS patterns accompany emotions, or arise in basal physiology, remain unsettled questions in the field. Here, we searched for brief ANS patterns amidst continuous, multichannel physiological recordings in 45 h...

In frontotemporal dementia (FTD), left-lateralized atrophy patterns have been associated with elevations in certain positive emotions. Here, we investigated whether positive emotional reactivity is enhanced in semantic variant primary progressive aphasia (svPPA), an FTD syndrome that targets the left anterior temporal lobe. Sixty-one participants (...

Reading difficulties are the hallmark feature of dyslexia, but less is known about other areas of functioning. Previously, we found children with dyslexia exhibited heightened emotional reactivity, which correlated with better social skills. Whether emotional differences in dyslexia extend to the parasympathetic nervous system—an autonomic branch c...

This chapter includes clinical cases, background, evidence-based practical management options, preventive measures, key-point summaries of emotional distress following failed IVF and answers to questions patients ask. IVF marked a major breakthrough in reproductive science. Since the first IVF baby in 1978, over 8 million other babies have been bor...

Whether activity in the autonomic nervous system differs during distinct emotions remains controversial. We obtained continuous multichannel recordings of autonomic nervous system activity in healthy adults during a video-based emotional reactivity task. Dimensionality reduction revealed five principal components in the autonomic time series data,...

Sexual violence victimization is a prevalent public health concern. However, little research has investigated the factors linking sexual violence victimization to suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STBs). The current study tested the applicability of the psychological mediation framework, a coping-mental health model, for the prevention of STBs among...

Dyslexia is a neurodevelopmental disorder mainly defined by reading difficulties. During reading, individuals with dyslexia exhibit hypoactivity in left-lateralized language systems. Lower activity in one brain circuit can be accompanied by greater activity in another, and, here, we examined whether right-hemisphere-based emotional reactivity may b...

Aging into later life is often accompanied by social disconnection, anxiety, and sadness. Negative emotions are self-focused states with detrimental effects on aging and longevity. Awe-a positive emotion elicited when in the presence of vast things not immediately understood-reduces self-focus, promotes social connection, and fosters prosocial acti...

Evidence indicates that patterns of biological reactivity underlie different forms of aggression, but greater precision is needed in research targeting biopsychosocial processes that underlie such differences. This study investigated how sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system (SNS and PNS) responses to social stress were associated with mul...

Patient-Centered Assisted Reproduction - edited by Alice D. Domar March 2020

Using daily diary data from 81 same-sex couples, we examined the link between stress experienced outside the relationship (external) and within the relationship (internal) for individuals (stress spillover) and their partners (stress crossover). Extending prior literature, we examined spillover and crossover of both common external (e.g., work stre...

Purpose: Public health and criminal justice stalking victimization data collection efforts are plagued by subjective definitions and lack of known psychosocial correlates. The present study assesses the question of stalking victimization prevalence among three groups. Psychosocial risk and protective factors associated with stalking victimization...

This study is concerned with two risk factors that have been independently associated with poor behavioral health: (a) lifetime suicide-related behavior (SRB) and (b) interpersonal violence victimization experiences. The purpose of this article was to assess whether the combination of SRB (ideation, attempt) and violent victimization exacerbates be...

Suicide is a pressing community mental health problem, yet remains under investigated in certain vulnerable populations such as the bondage and sadomasochism (BDSM) community. As reflected by the Need for Affect (NFA), the present paper aims to test a new approach to understanding suicide risk from a Preferences in Information Processing perspectiv...

The demand/withdraw pattern is a detrimental set of communication behaviors in which one partner nags or pressures while the other partner avoids or withdraws. Past studies evaluating the influence of depression on this pattern have shown mixed findings. The present study sought to advance what is known by investigating whether difficulties in emot...

Background: Suicide and interpersonal violence (i.e. victimization and perpetration) represent pressing public health problems, and yet remain mostly addressed as separate topics. Aims: To identify the (1) frequency and overlap of suicide and interpersonal violence and (2) characteristics differentiating subgroups of violence-related experiences...

This article introduces the special issue on contemporary lesbian relationships. The beginning notes some of the prominent changes that have occurred in the past 15 years in the visibility and positive representation of lesbian couples in our popular U.S. culture. The remainder focuses on identifying and summarizing the primary themes of the specia...

Objectively coded interpersonal emotional behaviors that emerged during a 15-min marital conflict interaction predicted the development of physical symptoms in a 20-year longitudinal study of long-term marriages. Dyadic latent growth curve modeling showed that anger behavior predicted increases in cardiovascular symptoms and stonewalling behavior p...

Objective: To determine the extent to which fertility patients and partners received mental health services (MHS) and were provided with information about MHS by their fertility clinics, and whether the use of MHS, or the provision of information about MHS by fertility clinics, was targeted to the most distressed individuals. Design: Prospective...

Emotion regulation deficits and executive functioning deficits have independently been shown to increase vulnerability toward engaging in aggressive behaviors. The effects of these risk factors, however, have not been evaluated in relation to one another. This study evaluated the degree to which each was associated with aggressive behaviors in a sa...

“I never really was into the dating thing when I was younger. At 37, I'd had few years of looking for the ‘right’ man to start a family with, and I'd come to realize I probably didn't have the time I needed anymore to grow to trust a man enough, and that I didn't know if I really needed one. I read Single Mothers by Choice by Jane Mattes which made...

Susan (businesswoman, age 40) and Evan (lawyer, age 31) are a married couple in a major metropolitan city in California. Susan is female and Evan is a female-to-male transgender individual. They married in 2008 when same-sex marriages were first allowed, so they had legal marital status in the state. They had their first child (a daughter) in 2011,...

To examine the prevalence and predictors of major depressive disorder (MDD) for women and their partners during the course of fertility treatment. Prospective cohort study during an 18-month period. Participants completed interviews and questionnaires at baseline and at 4, 10, and 18 months of follow-up. Five community and academic fertility practi...

Demand-withdraw communication is a set of conflict-related behaviors in which one partner blames or pressures while the other partner withdraws or avoids. The present study examined age-related changes in these behaviors longitudinally over the course of later life stages. One hundred twenty-seven middle-aged and older long-term married couples wer...

Objective: Although clinical training programs aspire to develop competency in violence risk assessment, little research has examined whether level of training is associated with the accuracy of clinicians' evaluations of violence potential. This is the first study to compare the accuracy of risk assessments by experienced psychiatrists with those...

The present study investigates victim sexual orientation in a sample of 641 violent crime victims seeking emergency medical treatment at a public-sector hospital. Victim sexual orientation was examined as it: (a) varies by type of violent crime and demographic characteristics, (b) directly relates to psychological symptoms, and (c) moderates the re...

Alzheimer’s disease (AD), frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and semantic dementia (SD) are neurodegenerative diseases that differ in their socioemotional presentations. Mutual gaze (i.e. when two individuals make eye contact) is a building block of social behavior that may be differentially affected by these diseases. We studied 13 AD patients, 11 FTD...

Previous studies have demonstrated that 1 function of positive emotion is the undoing of physiological arousal produced by negative emotions. These studies have used single-subject paradigms, in which emotions were induced by films in college-age individuals. In the present study, we examined the relationship between physiological down-regulation a...

During marital conflict, wives tend to demand and husbands tend to withdraw. These behaviors were historically thought to stem from essential differences between men and women. An alternative explanation implicates one form of power differences-wives desire more change and, therefore, demand; husbands desire less change and withdraw to maintain sta...

We studied the impact of 2 types of dementia on marital satisfaction and on the emotional language that spouses use during conflictive marital interactions. Fifteen frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and 16 Alzheimer disease (AD) patient-caregiver couples, and 21 control couples, discussed a relationship problem in a laboratory setting. Marital satisfac...