6-3-2010

Onderzoek kerk en grensoverschrijding

www.pthu.nl

Wij zoeken mensen die zelf seksuele grensoverschrijding
in een pastorale relatie hebben meegemaakt

"Hoe heeft u de relatie met uw gemeente door de tijd heen ervaren?"

Aanleiding tot dit onderzoek is de ervaring dat seksuele grensoverschrijding in een pastorale relatie vaak ingrijpende gevolgen heeft voor de onderlinge verhoudingen binnen de betrokken geloofsgemeenschap. En dan vooral voor de plaats van het slachtoffer in de gemeente. Maar hoe veranderen de verhoudingen dan eigenlijk? Wat speelt hierbij allemaal een rol? En vooral: wat zijn eigenlijk de ervaringen van slachtoffers met hun gemeente?
Om meer zicht te krijgen op deze vragen, willen wij mensen die zelf seksuele grensoverschrijding in een pastorale relatie hebben meegemaakt graag uitnodigen om te vertellen hoe zij de relatie met hun geloofsgemeenschap door de tijd heen hebben ervaren.

Gedacht wordt aan een eenmalig interview van ongeveer twee uur.

Op deze website vindt u meer informatie over het onderzoek.

Als u vragen heeft (voelt u zich vrij om die vrijblijvend te stellen), of als u mee wilt doen, kunt u contact opnemen met Christiane van den Berg.

Prof. dr. Henk de Roest
Dr. Hanneke Meulink-Korf
Drs. Christiane van den Berg-Seiffert
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16-12-2009

Terugdringen pesten voorkomt geweldsmisdrijf

www.telegraaf.nl

STOCKHOLM - Het aantal geweldsmisdrijven vermindert als scholen meer doen om systematisch pesten te voorkomen. Dat stellen onderzoekers van de Zweedse raad ter voorkoming van misdrijven (Bra). Ze presenteren hun bevindingen in januari, maar woensdag lekte de belangrijkste conclusie uit naar de Zweedse media.

Onderzoekers ondervroegen veroordeelden tot twintig jaar oud over hun schooltijd. 60 Procent van de jonge gedetineerden zegt systematisch te zijn gepest. Dat betekent volgens Bra dat een op de tien van alle basisschoolleerlingen gemeen wordt geplaagd. De conclusies van de organisatie worden gesteund door de Zweedse onderwijsinspectie, die in een nog lopend eigen onderzoek ontdekte dat scholen richtlijnen tegen pesten vaak niet naleven.
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26-11-2009

Staat van de Gezondheidszorg 2009: De vrijblijvenheid voorbij
SGZ, 26 november 2009

Om te kunnen garanderen dat de patiënt/cliënt goede en veilige zorg ontvangt is het noodzakelijk dat professionals, bestuurders en interne toezichthouders van zorginstellingen ieder hun verantwoordelijkheid kennen en deze ook uitvoeren. De inspectie laat in de Staat van de Gezondheidszorg zien hoe dit optimaal kan functioneren. . De inspectie heeft hiervoor onderzoek gedaan bij een aantal zorginstellingen in de GGZ, in de care (verpleeg - en verzorgingshuizen, thuiszorg, gehandicaptenzorg), en in ziekenhuizen. De inspectie is op zoek gegaan naar de principes waarom sommige instellingen goed functioneren en welke lessen geleerd zijn in zorginstellingen die door een diep dal zijn gegaan. De bevindingen zijn niet vrijblijvend: ze zijn voor iedereen in de zorg een spiegel en tegelijk een appèl om hier ernst mee te maken.

Zie:

http://www.igz.nl/publicaties/staatvandegezondheidszorg/sgz-2009
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1-7-2009

Research — In Process

www.atsa.nl

ATSA Funded Grants

Parental Behavior and the Distinction between Sexual and Nonsexual Delinquency

Michael Scherbinski
Fort Wayne, Indiana
scherbin@msn.com

The Association between Psychologists' Attachment Patterns, their Experiences of Sexual Attraction to Clients, and their Sexual Exploitation of Clients

Tracey Nigro
Victoria, BC
tnigro@uvic.ca

A 10-Year Follow-up of Children with Sexual Behavior Problems Using Justice, Child Welfare and Self-Report

Data Melissa Y. Carpentier
Oklahoma City, OK
Melissa-carpentier@ouhsc.edu

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24-4-2009

Kwaliteit&Veiligheid
Bron: Trimbos Instituut

Titel project

Onbedoelde schade in de GGz en verslavingszorg (vz)

Projectomschrijving

In dit project wordt een specifieke triggerlijst (aanwijzingenlijst) ontwikkeld voor het opsporen van onbedoelde schade in de GGz en vz. Vervolgens wordt met deze lijst retrospectief dossieronderzoek uitgevoerd in diverse ggz- en vz-instellingen. Het onderzoek moet een eerste indruk opleveren van de frequentie van voorkomen, ernst, aard en oorzaken van onbedoelde schade bij cliënten.


Samenwerkingspartner&Financier

Het onderzoek wordt in samenwerking met het NIVEL uitgevoerd en wordt gefinancierd door ZonMW in het kader van het Landelijk Actieprogramma Kwaliteit.

Contactpersoon
Mw. dr. M. (Margo) Peeters

Algemene informatie voor instellingen over medewerking aan dossieronderzoek
Het Trimbos-instituut en het NIVEL zijn bezig met een onderzoek naar onbedoelde schade in de GGz en de Vz. Daarom zijn wij op zoek naar instellingen die een deel van hun patiëntendossiers beschikbaar willen stellen voor analyse. In dit document vindt u informatie over dit dossieronderzoek.
Achtergrond onderzoek
Patiëntveiligheid staat zowel nationaal als internationaal, in de somatische zorg (ziekenhuizen) al enige tijd hoog op de agenda. Een van de aspecten van patiëntveiligheid is het vóórkomen van onbedoelde schade. Hieronder vallen alle onbedoelde uitkomsten die ontstaan zijn tijdens de zorgverlening of behandeling waarbij de patiënt zodanig ernstige schade heeft opgelopen dat er sprake is van een tijdelijke of blijvende beperking of overlijden. De resultaten van een grootscheepse inventarisatie naar onbedoelde schade in Nederlandse ziekenhuizen, werden in april 2007 gepubliceerd in het rapport Onbedoelde schade in Nederlandse ziekenhuizen. Dossieronderzoek van ziekenhuisopnames in 2004. Uit het onderzoek bleek dat in Nederland 5,7% van alle opgenomen patiënten te maken krijgt met zorggerelateerde onbedoelde schade. Onbedoelde schade werd opgespoord aan de hand van een (inter-) nationaal ontwikkelde methode van dossieronderzoek. De eerste screening van dossiers werd gedaan met behulp van een lijst met aanwijzingen voor onbedoelde schade, een zogenaamde triggerlijst.
Tot nu toe zijn in de studies naar patiëntveiligheid zowel internationaal als nationaal de geestelijke gezondheidszorg (GGz) en de verslavingszorg (Vz) buiten beschouwing gelaten. Een belangrijke reden hiervoor is dat de triggerlijst niet is toegesneden op deze sectoren. Het Trimbos-instituut en het NIVEL zijn daarom begin dit jaar gestart met het onderzoek naar onbedoelde schade in de GGz en Vz.
Daarbij is één van de eerste activiteiten de ontwikkeling van een op de GGz en Vz toegespitste triggerlijst op basis van literatuuronderzoek, interviews en een expertmeeting. Inmiddels is deze lijst bijna gereed. De belangrijkste volgende activiteit is een studie waarin dossiers van ontslagen patiënten worden onderzocht. Hierdoor hopen we een eerste beeld te krijgen van zowel de frequentie van vóórkomen, ernst, aard en oorzaken van onbedoelde schade in de GGz en Vz, als van de kwaliteit van dossiervoering.

Methode

De dossiers zullen in twee fasen worden gescreend. De eerste fase wordt uitgevoerd door ervaren verpleegkundigen. Zij screenen dossiers aan de hand van de op de GGz en Vz toegespitste triggerlijst. In de tweede fase beoordelen ervaren psychiaters in hoeverre er bij de gevonden triggers inderdaad sprake is van schade en in welke mate deze mogelijk te voorkomen was geweest.
De verpleegkundigen en psychiaters die als beoordelaar aan het onderzoek gaan meewerken, ontvangen vooraf een training waarin hen kennis en vaardigheden worden geleerd voor het uitvoeren van het dossieronderzoek.

Selectie dossiers
We willen een steekproef trekken uit dossiers die voldoen aan de volgende criteria:
dossiers van patiënten op klinische open en gesloten opnamevoorzieningen in de GGz en Vz, incl. Paaz;
dossiers van patiënten die in de eerste helft van 2007 (januari-juli) opgenomen waren;
dossiers van patiënten die bij de start van het onderzoek ontslagen zijn van de betreffende afdeling;
geen forensische afdelingen/klinieken;
geen langdurige zorg ( over het algemeen > 2 jaar);
leeftijd cliënten: 18 jaar of ouder.

Het aantal dossiers dat we willen screenen in de eerste fase is 500:
100 dossiers per geïntegreerde GGz-instelling (3 instellingen)
25 dossiers per PAAZ (4 ziekenhuizen);
50 dossiers per instelling voor Vz (2 categorale Vz-instellingen).

We gaan ervan uit dat ongeveer de helft van de dossiers geselecteerd wordt voor de tweede fase van analyse.
Privacy
De beoordelaars mogen niet werkzaam zijn (geweest) in de instelling waarin zij dossiers onderzoeken. De verpleegkundigen en artsen die beoordelen, tekenen een verklaring waarin zij geheimhouding garanderen. Deze geheimhoudingsplicht geldt ook voor de onderzoekers. De beoordeling van dossiers wordt uitgevoerd in een aparte (afsluitbare) ruimte in de betreffende instelling, waartoe ten tijde van het onderzoek niemand anders toegang heeft.
De “online database” die voor het onderzoek wordt opgezet, voldoet aan strenge veiligheidseisen en de eisen van de Wet Bescherming Persoonsgegevens. Gegevens over de opnames worden hierin op dusdanige wijze opgeslagen dat ze niet herleidbaar zijn tot de persoon. De resultaten van het onderzoek worden in alle openbare publicaties zodanig gerapporteerd dat instellingen, zorgverleners en patiënten niet herkenbaar zijn. De deelnemende instellingen blijven dus anoniem. We maken geen vergelijkingen tussen de deelnemende instellingen en er wordt niet op naam van de instelling gerapporteerd.
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Januari 2008 APA
An elephant in the office

Experts discuss why clients withhold truth, and what practitioners can do about it.

By Tori DeAngelis
Print version: page 33


Most of us do it: We lie, equivocate, fudge, withhold the truth and bend reality to suit our purposes. Given the ubiquity of such behavior, it isn't surprising it should arise regularly in therapy as well.

"A large part of what we do in psychotherapy is to try and understand people's motivations for distorting reality," says APA's Director of Ethics Stephen Behnke, PhD, JD.

"In fact, you could say it is psychologists' stock in trade."

Indeed, a survey by University of Minnesota–Twin Cities psychologist Caroline Burke, PhD, found that all 52 psychotherapists surveyed had either been lied to by clients, or suspected they had been lied to.

Clients' reasons for lying vary from wanting to avoid painful consequences to feeling too ashamed to share the truth, finds another study by Leslie Martin, PhD, of Wake Forest University's counseling center. In surveying 109 psychology graduate students currently or previously in therapy, Martin found that of the 37 percent who reported lying, most did so "to protect themselves in some way—mostly to avoid shame or embarrassment, to avoid painful emotions and to avoid being judged or rejected by the therapist," she says.

Many such behaviors have their roots in early experiences, notes Melba Vasquez, PhD, an independent practitioner in Austin, Texas, and co-author with therapy researcher Kenneth Pope, PhD, of "How to Survive and Thrive as a Therapist" (APA, 2005) and "Ethics in Psychotherapy and Counseling: A Practical Guide" (3rd edition, Jossey-Bass, 2007).

"The ability to be honest requires either good modeling in families or having developed good mental health," she says.

Those who haven't learned this strength may use lying to cope with life's difficulties; others may use it to fortify a shaky self-image, she notes.

Deception tends to arise more in some therapy contexts than others, adds Jane Brodie, PhD, a private practitioner in St. Paul, Minn. In her experience, clients tend to prevaricate about substance abuse and marital affairs, especially when they are in marital therapy with their spouse. Some also withhold information about childhood sexual abuse or embarrassing feelings about other deep-seated issues, she and colleagues have found.

What therapists can do

Fortunately, practitioners can help clients edge toward the truth.

For one, it is important to establish a safe, respectful environment that allows people to reveal difficult information, says Vasquez. She recommends doing this explicitly: "Early on, you can tell people they'll get more out of therapy the more authentically genuine they can be about their life," she says.

To aid this process, she tries to model honesty herself. For instance, one day she was running late for a session and found her client waiting at her office. When the client asked if the traffic was bad, she answered with the truth: "No, I just didn't plan my morning well enough," she admitted. She also likes to inject a sense of humor when possible, especially in benign areas where people may find it easy to equivocate, such as whether they've done their therapy homework or not.

Martin works gently with clients to discuss the truth when they are ready, and not before.

"I don't want them to feel they've dug themselves a hole by lying about something that's really important to them, that it will later be important to be honest about," she says. She also sets a tone of unconditional positive regard: "I want them to know I'll still accept and care about them no matter what they have to tell me," she notes.

Into the thicket

Cases of long-standing deception or suspected deception, such as affairs or substance abuse, require more delicate footwork, Brodie notes.

If she senses such a secret, she might comment to clients that therapy feels bogged down, and that maybe it's because something important isn't being discussed.

If a secret emerges at someone else's hand—for example, if someone has found an incriminating object that leads them to think their spouse is cheating on them—Brodie will wait and see if the spouse admits it. If not, she will ask the suspicious party how they feel about their discovery.

"At that point the person may still try to cover it up," she says, "but often they know it's something that needs to be addressed, and they'll start to talk about it."

When major secrets do erupt, it can be painful but also a huge relief, Brodie adds. For example, when a client was able to confront a parent who sexually abused her as a child, Brodie was astounded by how quickly the parent broke down and admitted guilt. Such admissions can lead the way to healing for the client and the perpetrator, she says.

Such revelations can catalyze further therapeutic change as well, says Brodie. "What is really helpful about exposing a lie is getting the person whatever extra help they may need," she says, whether it's a recovery program, more intensive therapy or other interventions.

Indeed, a survey of 21 therapy clients in the August 2006 issue of Psychotherapy Research (Vol. 16, No. 4, pages 463–469), by Columbia University psychology professor Barry Farber, PhD, and colleagues, found that clients report clear benefits from finally revealing difficult material.

"Whereas distressful feelings such as shame often precede and accompany self-disclosure," the authors write, "positive feelings such as relief and pride tend to predominate during and after disclosure."

Potential blind spots

Of course, therapists bring their own issues into therapy as well, including whatever experiences they have had withholding the truth.

In fact, to keep compassion at the forefront, it is instructive for therapists to remember how hard it may have been to reveal embarrassing information to supervisors while in graduate school, says Pope, who has investigated how psychologists handle their own difficult material such as anger, hate, fear and suicidal impulses. An article on therapists' own experiences in therapy by Pope and Barbara Tabachnick, PhD, in Professional Psychology: Research and Practice (Vol. 25, No. 3, pages 247–258), found that about a fifth of 800 therapists surveyed admitted there was something important they had kept secret in therapy. In most cases it involved sexual issues.

Indeed, therapist factors appear to play a role in why people lie in therapy, Martin found in her study. There was a highly significant relationship between those who reported such deceptions and those who reported poorer relationships with their therapists, she found. Those unhappy with their therapists cited issues such as not trusting the therapist, feeling their boundaries were being violated and feeling that the therapist didn't care about them, she notes.

While that finding could as easily signal a problem on the part of the client as on the part of the therapist, it's wise to keep alert to countertransference issues you may notice in yourself around lying, and to get therapy in that area if you feel it's an issue for you, Brodie says.

"I really believe it can do nothing but increase your own effectiveness, because it puts you in touch with your own issues," she says. "I also think it helps you understand how important it is for a therapist to be there with clients when they have difficulty expressing something because of shame or other issues."



Tori DeAngelis is a writer in Syracuse, N.Y.

26-1-2008 APA Press Release 6-5-2007

EXPOSURE TO TRAUMA CAN AFFECT BRAIN FUNCTION IN HEALTHY PEOPLE SEVERAL YEARS AFTER EVENT; MAY INCREASE SUSCEPTIBILITY TO MENTAL HEALTH PROBLEMS IN THE FUTURE
Study shows increased amygdala activity in those who were closer to the 9/11 disaster


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WASHINGTON, DC—Exposure to trauma may create enough changes in the brain to sensitize people to overreact to an innocuous facial gesture years later, even in people who don’t have a stress-related disorder, says new research. It appears that proximity to high-intensity traumas can have long lasting effects on the brain and behavior of healthy people without causing a current clinical disorder. But these subtle changes could increase susceptibility to mental health problems later on. These findings are reported in the May issue of Emotion, published by the American Psychological Association (APA).

Evidence that trauma can have long-term effects on the brains of healthy individuals was demonstrated by measuring adults’ reactions to emotional stimuli several years after witnessing a trauma, said lead author Barbara Ganzel, PhD, and colleagues. In the experiment, 22 healthy adults viewed fearful and calm faces while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure their bilateral amygdala activity (part of the brain that judges emotional intensity, and that forms and stores emotional memories) between 3.5 and 4 years after September 11, 2001.

All of the participants had some level of exposure to the events of September 11. The authors wanted to determine whether close proximity to a traumatic event - September 11 - sensitized parts of the brain to emotional stimuli 41 and 48 months after the terrorist attacks. Eleven of the participants were within 1.5 miles of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 and the other 11 participants lived at least 200 miles away [control group]. The control group – those participants living at least 200 miles from New York on 9/11/01 – subsequently moved to the New York metropolitan area at the time of the MRI scanning.

According to the study, participants who were within 1.5 miles of the World Trade Center on 9/11 had significantly higher bilateral amygdala activity to fearful versus calm faces compared to those who were living more than 200 miles away. These results show that exposure to traumatic events in the past was associated with emotional responses several years later in people who were close to the initial trauma. Yet, the participants did not meet the criteria for a diagnosis of PTSD, depression or anxiety at time of imaging. All the participants were screened for psychiatric, medical and neurological illnesses.

This finding indicates that a heightened amygdala reactivity following high-intensity trauma exposure may be slow to recover and can be responsible for heightened reactions to everyday emotional stimuli, said the authors. Furthermore, the group closest to the World Trade Center on 9/11 reported more current symptoms and more symptoms at the time of the trauma than the group further from 9/11. These symptoms included increased arousal (e.g., difficulty sleeping, irritability, hypervigilance), avoidance (e.g., not wanting to go downtown when they used to enjoy doing so), and intrusion (e.g., recurrent and distressing memories or dreams). And, those who reported 9/11 as their worst and most intense trauma experienced in their life time also had more brain activity when viewing the fearful faces.

“Our findings suggest that there may be long-term neurobiological correlates of trauma exposure, even in people who appear resilient. Since these effects were observable using mild, standardized emotional stimuli (not specific trauma reminders), they may extend further into everyday life than previously thought,” said Dr. Ganzel. “We have known for a long time that trauma exposure can lead to subsequent vulnerability to mental health disorders years after the trauma. This research is giving us clues about the biology underlying that vulnerability. Knowing what’s going on will give us a better idea how to help.”

Article: “The Aftermath of 9/11: Effect of intensity and recency of trauma on outcome,” Barbara Ganzel, PhD, Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology, Weill Medical College of Cornell University; B.J. Casey, PhD, Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology, Weill Medical College of Cornell University; Gary Glover, PhD, Lucas Magnetic Resonance Image Center, Stanford University; Henning U. Voss, PhD, Citigroup Biomedical Imaging Center, Weill Medical College of Cornell University; Elise Temple, PhD, Cornell University; Emotion, Vol. 7, No. 2.
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15-9-2008
www.advocateweb.org

Clergy Sexual Abuse Research By Baylor Social Work Dean Awarded $200,000 by Ford Foundation
May 19, 2008
Contact: Vicki Kabat, Baylor University School of Social Work, (254) 710-4417


Baylor University has received a $200,000 grant from the Ford Foundation to conduct the first national research on clergy sexual abuse of adults. The unprecedented initiative - announced by Dr. Diana Garland, dean of Baylor's School of Social Work and director of the study - will help communities and congregations develop new practices and policies to prevent clergy sexual abuse and ensure that survivors receive appropriate care.


The immediate goals of the project are:


• to determine the prevalence of clergy sexual abuse of adults;
• to teach religious leaders, congregants and the general public that sexual activity between a religious leader and a congregant cannot be considered consensual;
• to communicate to survivors and their families that they are not alone and that they deserve support and professional care;
• to provide promising policy and prevention strategies; and
• to communicate that the church can respond to ethical violations with compassionate care for the vulnerable as its major focus instead of institutional self protection.

"Our faith communities have been dismayed to learn that trusted spiritual leaders have used their roles to abuse children and that others covered up the abuse and thus allowed it to continue," said Garland, noted social scientist and author of the award-winning Family Ministry (InterVarsity Press, 1999) and Sacred Stories of Ordinary Families (Jossey-Bass, 2003) and co-author of Flawed Families of the Bible (Brazos Press, 2007).


"This project intends to shed light on the problem of spiritual leaders who abuse their power with adults and how that abuse can be prevented. The goal is to strengthen congregations with protective policies and structures that take human vulnerabilities seriously," she said.


"Because of the spiritual power of the clergy role, this form of abuse has the potential for even greater devastation of victims and communities than abuse of power in employment or educational settings," said Marie Fortune, founder and senior analyst at FaithTrust Institute and an expert in the study of clergy sexual abuse. Clinical reports indicate high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder, other anxiety disorders, depression, physical illness and suicide.


Questions for Garland's study are included in the General Social Survey 2008, one of the most rigorous and respected surveys in existence. The GSS is conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago every two years. It is the only full-probability, personal-interview survey designed to monitor social characteristics and attitudes in the United States.


The total sample size of the GSS will be approximately 3,500 with a representative sample of English- and Spanish-speaking adults in the nation. Complete anonymity of respondents is guaranteed. Data from the survey will be delivered in January 2009. Research consultants for the project include Mark Chaves of Duke University and an advisory committee.


Garland will further interview members of at least 30 Christian and Jewish congregations directly affected by clergy sexual abuse.


"We anticipate, based on case studies and anecdotal reports, that the opportunity to contribute to a study on this topic will be healing and empowering for survivors and their families and congregations," Garland said.


"Every attempt will be made to give them opportunity to tell their story in ways in which they feel comfortable and that their courage in participating in this project is respected," she said.


The Ford Foundation is an independent, nonprofit grant-making organization. For more than half a century it has been a resource for innovative people and institutions worldwide, guided by its goals of strengthening democratic values, reducing poverty and injustice, promoting international cooperation and advancing human achievement. With headquarters in New York, the foundation has offices in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, and Russia.


Garland previously had received $31,000 combined funding for this project from the Baptist General Convention of Texas and the JES Edwards Foundation of Fort Worth, Texas.
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24-12-2008

Is Crying Beneficial?
Door:
Jonathan Rottenberg, Lauren M. Bylsma, and Ad J.J.M. Vingerhoets

Is Crying Beneficial?
Jonathan Rottenberg,1 Lauren M. Bylsma,1 and Ad J.J.M. Vingerhoets2
1University of South Florida and 2Tilburg University
Address correspondence to Jonathan Rottenberg, Department of Psychology, University of South Florida, 4202 E. Fowler Ave., PCD 4118G, Tampa, FL 33620-7200; e-mail: jrottenb@cas.usf.edu.

ABSTRACT
—Lay opinion and extensive survey data indicate that crying is a cathartic behavior that serves to relieve distress and reduce arousal. Yet laboratory data often indicate that crying exacerbates distress and increases autonomic arousal.
In this article, we present a framework for explaining variations in the psychological effects of crying as a function of (a) how the effects of crying are measured, (b) conditions in the social environment, (c) personality traits of the crier, and (d) the affective state of the crier.
Recognizing the heterogeneity of crying effects represents a step toward a more nuanced understanding of this behavior, including its implications for psychosocial adjustment.

KEYWORDS
—crying; well-being; distress; arousal; catharsis

Psychological
It is a relief to weep; grief is satisfied and carried off by tears. Ovid (43 BC – 17 AD) Tristium (IV.3.37) [can you provide an exact source/page reference? ] Crying behavior punctuates the lifecourse, from our start as helpless infants through adulthood, where tears can mark both our most important moments (e.g., weddings, births, and deaths) and the most mundane of events (e.g., a petty squabble).
A capacity to cry is part of being human. Is it important for our well-being? If one consults Western folk psychology about crying in adulthood, this question is answered strongly in the affirmative.
In one analysis of 140 years of popular articles about crying, 94% promoted crying as beneficial and warned readers that suppressing tears would be deleterious to the body and mind (Cornelius, 2001).
Likewise, the average respondent to a scientific survey also answers affirmatively: In a sample spanning 30 countries, in every nation both men and women reported feeling better after crying, even though cultural norms are often less favorable to male crying than to female crying (Becht&Vingerhoets, 2002).
Indeed, it seems that people will even pay to cry. Films we colloquially refer to as “tearjerkers” gross millions of dollars worldwide every year (Lutz, 1999).

Moreover, more formal theories—from psychodynamic theories that view the blocking of tears as a form of repression that produces psychological damage, to biochemical theories that view tears as a means to rid the body of harmful toxins—also affirm the idea that crying is beneficial (Cornelius, 2001).
Finally, if one consults clinicians, most will say that crying is a positive therapeutic experience for their clients, with over 70 percent of clinical practitioners reporting active encouragement of client crying (Nelson, 2005).

A FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING THE ELUSIVE EFFECTS OF CRYING

Given this chorus of opinion, one might naturally expect to find overwhelming evidence that crying provides tangible psychological benefits. For this, one would search in vain: The empirical record is at best spotty, with many studies finding no benefits of crying. In this article, we present a framework for understanding the psychological consequences of crying in adulthood, including why its benefits have been elusive in past research.
As displayed in Figure 1, this framework considers (a) how the effects of crying are measured, (b) the crier’s social environment, (c) the crier’s personality traits, and (d) the crier’s affective state. Reviewing each of these domains, the psychological consequences of crying behavior appear more heterogeneous and contextually dependent than previously believed.
Recognizing the heterogeneity of crying is part and parcel of developing a nuanced account of this behavior. Finding Benefitsof Crying Depends on the Research Paradigm
When asked on surveys to consider past episodes of crying, 60 to 70% of people report that crying brings them psychological benefits (Bylsma, Vingerhoets,&Rottenberg, in press).
Subjectively, this is reported as a release of tension and feeling of relief, a pattern captured by the term catharsis. However, when crying episodes are induced in a laboratory setting (e.g., by presenting a sad film clip), people rarely report that their tears provide any immediate mood benefits.
In fact, in most laboratory studies, people who cry to an eliciting stimulus actually report feeling worse (e.g., increased sadness and distress) than do people who view the same stimulus without crying (e.g., Rottenberg, Gross, Wilhelm, Najmi,&Gotlib, 2002; Gross, Fredrickson,&Levenson, 1994).
Moreover, when indices of physiological arousal are concurrently measured, criers are more activated on these indices than are noncriers (e.g., increased heart rate or sweat-gland activity; Rottenberg et al., 2002)—a profile one would expect to accompany feelings of distress during crying. In sum, survey data suggest that crying is cathartic, whereas laboratory studies often indicate that crying increases distress and arousal (see Bylsma et al., in press, for review).

While it is possible that these divergent findings are irreconcilable and in direct conflict, another possibility is that the use of different assessment methods across studies is influencing whether benefits of crying are found.
One reason crying benefits may be elusive is that studies vary in when the effects of crying are measured. Survey data finding benefits of crying tend to examine the effects of crying retrospectively, often long after the crying episodes have ended.
Unfortunately, this measurement lag makes it impossible to reconstruct when the positive effects of crying occurred. By contrast, in most laboratory studies, the time frame of effects is better specified but very limited in duration (i.e., just the few minutes after crying are assessed).

Few investigations have carefully tracked the effects of crying minute-by-minute as crying episodes unfold. Interestingly, a recent physiological study found that crying involved both arousing effects (e.g., increased heart rate) and calming effects (e.g., slowed breathing). Importantly, the calming effects associated with crying lasted 2 to 3 minutes longer than the arousing effects did (Hendriks, Rottenberg,&Vingerhoets, 2007).

These findings underscore the possibility that the calming effects of crying arise later than the arousing effects, and point to a need for precisely timed measurements to better characterize the course of crying’s effects.
Another reason why crying benefits may be elusive is that the effects of crying are subjectto the social context surrounding crying episodes.
Input from the social environment may be critical for activating the benefits of crying. Theorists have long commented on the social salience of crying: Through infancy and adulthood, crying has potent signal value and moves others to provide solace and physical contact (Nelson, 2005).
Perhaps one reason why mood benefits have been elusive is that field studies (which find benefits) and laboratory studies (which usually do not) examine crying in radically different social contexts.
For example, laboratory settings are typically devoid of social support (e.g., solitary viewing of a movie; Cornelius, 2001), and laboratory crying rarely involves situations that others can remedy (e.g., a dispute). Finally, crying in the laboratory often involves being captured on video or watched by strangers, conditions that might produce negative social emotions in criers (e.g., embarrassment) that neutralize crying-related benefits.
In sum, the inconsistent literature suggests there is value in paying careful attention to social and contextual factors that surround crying episodes to explain when crying might be beneficial.

Benefits of Crying Depend on Social-Environmental
Conditions
To gain some empirical purchase on the role of contextual factors in shaping the mood benefits of crying, we analyzed over 3,000 detailed reports of recent crying episodes in which respondents described the surrounding social context and the effects of crying on mood (Bylsma et al., in press).
Consistent with previous field studies, the majority of participants reported mood benefits after crying. However, respondents showed significant variation in their reporting of mood benefits, with a third reporting no mood improvement and a tenth even reporting feeling worse after crying.
Importantly, variation in social-environmental factors tracked the mood benefits of crying: Criers who received social support during their crying episode were more likely to report mood benefits than were criers who did not report receiving social support.
Likewise, mood benefits were more likely when the precipitating events of a crying episode had been resolved than they were when events were unresolved.
Finally, criers who reported experiencing negative social emotions like shame and embarrassment were less likely to report mood benefits.
These findings demonstrate that crying may have diverse psychological consequences and that variation in the social context surrounding crying episodes helps to explainthis heterogeneity.

Benefits of Crying Depend on the Traits of the Crier Psychological science has often regarded a focus on personality variation as complementary to examining the situational determinants of behavior. For this reason, we were interested in whether self-reported personality variation and other individual-difference characteristics might explain for whom crying is beneficial.
Moreover, crying research has often focused on person-specific factors as predictors of crying behavior. Indeed, person characteristics have a pronounced influence on who cries and when.
Perhaps most notably, adult women cry more frequently and more intensely than adult men do (Vingerhoets&Scheirs, 2000).
Another robust finding in this area is that people scoring higher on the personality trait neuroticism (i.e., a susceptibility to experiencing negative emotions) report having more frequent crying episodes than do people lower in neuroticism.

Do person features also predict who benefits from crying? Thus far, the record is mixed.
Interestingly, gender and neuroticism do not predict whether benefits of crying are reported. In a large international sample, gender explained only negligible variance in reported mood benefits (Becht&Vingerhoets, 2002).
Likewise, a recent study failed to find an association between self-reported neuroticism and reported mood benefits after crying: Even though neurotics cried more often, they reported benefits from crying similar to those reported by non-neurotics (Rottenberg, Bylsma, Wolvin,&Vingerhoets, 2008).
Moreover, several other standard personality factors (e.g., extraversion) were unrelated to mood benefits after crying.

The strongest personality predictor to date is alexithymia, a characteristic that involves difficulties in understanding the sources and meanings of emotions.
We found that reports of alexithymia were associated with both fewer reported crying episodes and lack of mood benefitsfrom crying: Those reporting high alexithymia reported worsened mood following crying (Rottenberg, Bylsma, et al., 2008).
Theorists have argued that cognitive changes (such as achieving a new perspective on a sad event) can be important in explaining crying-related benefits; thus, we speculate that alexithymics’ lack of insight into the causes and meanings of their crying behavior may perpetuate negative mood after crying.

Benefits of Crying Depend on the Affective State of the Crier The affective antecedents of crying can vary, with sadness, anger, and joy being among the commonest affective antecedents.
Is the crier’s affective state related to the psychological benefits of crying?

We recently found that patients with mood disorders—a group that frequently experiences a sad, dysphoric state—reported crying more frequently to negative antecedents and reported experiencing less postcrying mood improvement than did a non-patient control group individuals (Rottenberg, Cevaal,&Vingerhoets, 2008; Vingerhoets, Rottenberg, Cevaal,&Nelson, 2007).
Moreover, individuals who reported anxiety symptoms and those who currently reported an inability to experience pleasure (a condition known as anhedonia) were less likely to report mood benefits from crying (Rottenberg, Bylsma, et al., 2008). Thus, preliminary evidence suggests that variations in affective states between participants may partly explain why the effects of crying are elusive.
To strengthen inferences about state effects (as opposed to trait effects) it would help to examine crying-related benefits in the same people in different affective states (e.g., patients in and out of depression episodes).

WHAT ABOUT PHYSICAL HEALTH BENEFITS?
In the service of brevity, this article has focused on crying and psychological health, skirting theissue of whether crying might have beneficial physical health effects.
However, the story with physical health is similar: Conventional wisdom propounds health benefits of cryingbeyond what empirical data support. For example, the idea that crying confers health benefits has been repeatedly articulated in the psychosomatic tradition, in which crying is seen as a means to release physiological tension; it is claimed that tension that is not reduced through crying might find an outlet in bodily diseases such as headaches, ulcers, hypertension, and insomnia.
Our recent review of the health benefits of crying finds a large number of null results, and where positive findings exist, they are often accompanied by methodological problems, including case-study designs, retrospective reports of health and/or crying, or the lack of control groups (Vingerhoets&Bylsma, 2007).

TOWARD A DIFFERENTIATED UNDERSTANDING OF HUMAN CRYING
Is crying beneficial, as suggested by folk wisdom and some psychological theories?
As documented in this review, we have repeatedly found that the psychological effects of crying are heterogeneous.
At the same time, this heterogeneity is systematic in nature. For example, benefits of crying are more likely in naturalistic settings when people are recalling past crying episodes, when the cry-eliciting event is a resolvable problem, when criers are people who are comfortable expressing their emotions, and when criers are not depressed or anxious.
These findings suggest that our initial question must be asked in a new way: Under what conditions and for whom is crying likely to be beneficial?

Our approach to studying the psychological effects of crying may appear obvious, but it should be noted that this area of study has often struggled to pose the right questions. In fact, the recognition of crying as a multifaceted behavior with complex antecedents, correlates, and moderators is only recent (Vingerhoets, Cornelius, Van Heck,&Becht, 2000).

Crying research has long been hindered by the strong and often unquestioned power of folk beliefs about crying and by the practical difficulty of conducting crying research, in which the object of study is arelatively rare event that is hard to elicit ethically in a laboratory context. Because empirical research on crying is in its infancy, frameworks to guide future work on the psychological effects of crying are particularly important.
In this spirit, we close by highlighting three extensions of our framework.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS
Our approach to date challenges the idea that crying is a unified phenomenon.
However, understanding crying may require further disaggregation. For example, most research (including ours) has focused on crying in response to negative events.
Consequently, little is known about crying in response to positive events (e.g., a wedding), including its processes or even its prevalence. Furthermore, one might even take the view that there are fundamentally different types of crying. Recently Nelson (2005) proposed an attachment typology of crying, in which she distinguished between (a) protest crying, designed to undo the situation and characterized by loud and irritating screaming; (b) sad—silent and subdued—crying, designed to create new attachment bonds after a loss; and (c) detached crying, characterized by a lack of tears, representing extreme hopelessness.
Nelson further predicts different mood effects dependent on the type of crying (e.g., sad crying of despair will be associated with greater mood improvement than protest crying will be). Empirical tests of ideas like this are needed.
Second, when crying is beneficial, what are the exact proximal mechanisms? For example, we have studied crying-related increases in heart-rate variability, a hypothesized marker of physiological and psychological recovery (e.g., Hendriks et al., 2007; Rottenberg, Wilhelm, Gross,&Gotlib, 2003).
Likewise, additional laboratory and field studies are needed to isolate specific features in the social environment that mediate psychological benefits, whether these are situational characteristics, physical comforting behaviors (e.g., an arm around one’s shoulder), orother types of social support (e.g., verbal behaviors).
Third, when benefits occur, how long do they last? To examine whether crying behavior may have longer-term benefits, we are testing the hypothesis that crying at the time of a serious medical diagnosis (the HIV virus) will predict improved psychological and/or physical health functioning 6 months later.
Longer-term prospective studies are badly needed to strengthen the description and causal modeling of the beneficial effects of crying.

Recommended Reading Hendriks, M.C.P., Rottenberg, J.,&Vingerhoets, A.J.J.M. (2007). (See References).
A laboratory study that presents a new analysis of the time course of crying effects to better characterize the mental and physical effects of crying. Vingerhoets, A.J.J.M., Cornelius, R.R., Van Heck, G.L.,&Becht, M.C. (2000). (See References).
A clearly-written review of crying research that presents a model of adult crying. Vingerhoets, A.J.J.M.,&Cornelius, R.R. (Eds). (2001). Adult crying: A biopsychosocial approach. Hove, UK: Brunner-Routledge.
An edited book that showcases contemporary research on crying. REFERENCES Becht, M.,&Vingerhoets, A.J.J.M. (2002). Crying and mood change: A cross-cultural study. Cognition and Emotion, 16, 81–101.
Bylsma, L.M., Vingerhoets, A.J.J.M.,&Rottenberg, J. (in press).
When is crying cathartic? An international study. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology.
Cornelius, R.R. (2001). Crying and catharsis. In A.J.J.M. Vingerhoets&R.R. Cornelius (Eds.), Adult crying: A biopsychosocial approach (pp. 199–212). Hove, UK: Routledge. Gross, J.J., Fredrickson, B.F.,&Levenson, R.W. (1994).
The psychophysiology of crying. Psychophysiology, 31, 460–468. Hendriks, M.C.P., Rottenberg, J.,&Vingerhoets, A.J.J.M. (2007).
Can the distress-signal and arousal-reduction views of crying be reconciled? Evidence from the cardiovascular system. Emotion, 7, 458–463. Lutz, T. (1999). Crying.
The natural and cultural history of tears. New York: Norton Nelson, J.K. (2005). Seeing through tears: Crying and attachment. New York: Brunner-Routledge.
Rottenberg, J., Gross, J.J., Wilhelm, F.H., Najmi, S.,&Gotlib, I.H. (2002). Crying threshold and intensity in major depressive disorder. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 111, 302–312. Rottenberg, J., Wilhelm, F.H., Gross, J.J.,&Gotlib, I.H. (2003).
Vagal rebound during resolution of tearful crying episodes among depressed and nondepressed individuals. Psychophysiology, 40, 1–6. Rottenberg, J., Cevaal, A.,&Vingerhoets, A.J.J.M. (2008). Do mood disorders alter crying? A pilot investigation. Depression and Anxiety, 25, E9–E15. Rottenberg, J., Bylsma, L.M., Wolvin, V.,&Vingerhoets, A.J.J.M. (2008).
Tears of sorrow, tears of joy: An individual differences approach to crying in Dutch females. Personality and Individual Differences, 45, 367–372. Vingerhoets, A.J.J.M.&Bylsma, L.M. (2007). Crying as a multifaceted health psychology conceptualisation: Crying as coping, risk factor, and symptom. The European Health Psychologist, 9, 68–74.
Vingerhoets, A.J.J.M., Cornelius, R.R., Van Heck, G.L.,&Becht, M.C. (2000). Adult crying: A model and review of the literature. Review of General Psychology, 4, 354–377. Vingerhoets, A.J.J.M., Rottenberg, J., Cevaal, A.,&Nelson, J.K. (2007). Is there a relationship between depression and crying? A review. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 115, 340–351. Vingerhoets, A.J.J.M.,&Scheirs, J.G.M. (2000).
Sex differences in crying: Empirical findings and possible explanations. In A.H. Fischer (Ed.), Gender and emotion: Social psychological perspectives (Studies in Emotion and Social Interaction 2, pp. 143–165). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.















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