Background: The understanding of how individuals manage their emotional experiences has flourished dramatically over the last decades, including assessing of emotion (dys)regulation. The Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS) is a well-validated and extensively used self-report instrument for emotion regulation problems. Despite the wide use of DERS in both clinical and research settings, its length potentially increases fatigue and frustration in respondents and limits its inclusion in brief research protocols. Consequently, a short-form version of the DERS (DERS-SF) was developed, which requires cross-cultural adaptations and the study of its reliability and validity. Objectives: In order to address this issue, this study aimed to analyze the factorial structure and psychometric properties of the Portuguese version of DERS-SF and examine the DERS-SF factor structure invariance between men and women. Methods: The sample comprised 646 participants aged between 18 and 66 years (M = 29.93, SD = 11.71). Results: The correlated six-factor structure of the original version has an acceptable fit, good reliability, and convergent validity. Our results also suggested the invariance of the factor structure of the DERS-SF across genders. Conclusion: The DERS-SF has good psychometric properties, and it may be useful for future research and clinical work to use this six-factor brief version and improve emotion regulation assessment.

To analyze the association between difficulties in emotion regulation and problematic pornography use (PPU) and test the mediating effect of loneliness. All 339 participants (M = 28.53 years, SD = 10.32) completed online self-report scales assessing difficulties in emotion regulation, PPU, and loneliness. Difficulties in emotion regulation are positively correlated with PPU. Loneliness partially mediates the relationship between difficulties in emotion regulation and PPU. Gender and intimate relationship status had moderating effects on the tested mediation model. Greater difficulties in emotion regulation have a significant indirect effect on PPU through loneliness.

Objectives Menopausal instruments usually assess the frequency or intensity of symptoms. The present study develops and validates an inventory to assess the severity of menopausal symptoms through the measurement of their frequency and intensity, and explores the differences between women with different menopausal status. Methods A community sample of 992 Portuguese women in pre-, peri- and postmenopause completed the proposed inventory with 47 items. Factor exploratory and confirmatory analyses, and comparative statistics for paired and independent samples, were applied using PASW Statistics v.19 and AMOS v.18 software. Results The final structure with 38 items organized in 12 factors showed overall good psychometric properties (in terms of factor analysis, convergent, discriminant and criterion validity, as well as regarding reliability, sensitivity, and measure invariance in two different and independent samples). The Wilcoxon test confirmed significant differences between frequency and intensity of symptoms. Moreover, peri- and postmenopausal women in this community sample presented low symptom severity (ranging from 0.4 to 1.4 in a scale from 0 to 4). Although postmenopausal participants presented higher levels (when compared with their perimenopausal counterparts), the two groups only diverged significantly in some physical symptoms (namely, aches and pain, vasomotor symptoms, numbness, skin and facial hair changes, urinary and sexual symptoms). Conclusion This research emphasizes that severity measurement of symptoms should account for both frequency and intensity. Moreover, it contributes a fully validated 12-dimenson inventory for menopausal symptoms, the Menopause Symptoms’ Severity Inventory-38. Regarding differences between peri- and postmenopausal women, the increment in symptoms only happens in physical symptoms, although the severity levels are not exacerbated.

Breast cancer can be perceived as a traumatic event with disturbing effects on psychological domains such as depression, anxiety, and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. In contrast, growing evidence has shown that posttraumatic growth can occur as a result of coping with breast cancer. Challenging the assumptive world, deliberate rumination, and emotional disclosure are recognized as strong predictors of posttraumatic growth. Group interventions may also increase social support, distress disclosure, and posttraumatic growth. The aim of this study is to evaluate how group-based interventions can facilitate posttraumatic growth and promote improved psychosocial adjustment to breast cancer. This article describes the study protocol and the applied research methods. To measure the impact of a group-based intervention on posttraumatic growth, a multi-center randomized control trial was developed for Portuguese breast cancer patients. 205 women with nonmetastatic breast cancer (stages 1 to 3) were recruited for the study and were randomly assigned either to the experimental group, which participated in an 8-session group intervention, or to the control group. Psychosocial variables, which consisted of posttraumatic growth, illness perception, stressfulness of the event, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, core beliefs, rumination, social support, and distress disclosure were measured at three time points. The designated points in time for the assessments were baseline, 6 months post-intervention, and follow-up (12 months after baseline). This study is the first trial to assess the efficacy of a group-based intervention designed to facilitate posttraumatic growth following a breast cancer diagnosis. If proven to be effective, group-based intervention could be recommended as a complementary program to be included in hospital health-care and clinical practice. The trial was registered on 28/10/2013 at the Current Controlled Trials ( ISRCTN02221709 ).