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Posttraumatic Personality Disorders
Published in Rolland S. Parker, Concussive Brain Trauma, 2016
The defenses of denial and avoidance: Denial is a psychological defense against admitting to oneself the existence of a condition that reduces the person’s value in his own self-esteem or in the opinion of others. It is an anxiety-reducing mechanism in which the meaning of an event is repudiated. It can be a component of any defense (Lewis, 1991), and has meaningful, motivational, and adaptive aspects (Weinstein, 1991). To admit to a weakness is a blow to one’s self-esteem. The loss of a better condition of life or higher capacity to achieve is so painful that self-concealment is common. Denial is to be distinguished from “agnosias” and inability to express emotional pain (Parker, 1972). Individuals avoid facing situations in which they are unable to succeed, or that will create anxiety.
Sexuality, sexual intimacy and sexual health in later life
Published in V. Minichiello, I. Coulson, Contemporary Issues in Gerontology, 2012
Victor Minichiello, Samantha Ackling, Chris Bourne, David Plummer
Three landmark studies specifically examined the relationship between adjustment to later life and being gay (Berger 1982; Vacha 1985; Lee 1987). Berger's (1982) study refutes some of the stereotypes about older gay men, showing that they are not lonely, unwanted or isolated. However, Lee (1987) reported a correlation between self-concealment and greater life satisfaction and more negative attitudes towards growing old and being gay. Likewise, Vacha (1985) illustrates that the discrimination that comes with ageing is compounded by the discrimination of being gay. Although a few of Vacha's informants expressed gerontophobia, the majority interviewed accepted their sexual identity and old age. He found the following recurring themes in the lives of these gay older men: the importance given to sex at all stages of a gay man's life; non-acceptance and harassment by families, police and doctors; the need to deny their homosexuality in their early lives and the influence this had on establishing and maintaining a long-term partnership; and the frequent use of drugs and alcohol. The majority of the informants had lived through the danger of being fired from jobs, receiving dishonourable discharges from the military, being rejected by families and assaults by other men. On the positive side, Vacha observed that because these men had survived difficult times in their lives they seemed unusually buoyant and sure of themselves in their old age.
Does self-concealment and self-compassion differentially influence substance use for male versus female adolescents?
Published in Journal of Substance Use, 2023
Doris Chinelo Chinweuba, Chuka Mike Ifeagwazi, Anthonia Ukamaka Chinweuba, JohnBosco Chika Chukwuorji
Self-concealment reflects “a predisposition to actively conceal from others personal information one perceives as distressing or negative” (Larson & Chastain, 1990, p. 440). Those who indulge in self-concealment are behaviorally disposed to consciously hide worrying and possible shameful information about oneself from other people (Fridlander et al., 2012). Self-concealment is located in substance use within the ego-depletion model that posits that several acts of self-regulation and volition such as impulse restraint, thought suppression, and decision-making draw from a single resource that is both limited and renewable (Baumeister et al., 2000). Empirical studies have shown that self-concealment predicted greater resistance to change drug use among Iranian drug users (Basharpoor & Ahmadi, 2019). Among sexual minority men, that is, men with unusual sexual identity, orientation or practice, self-concealment was positively related to drug dependence severity (Cortopassi et al., 2017); however, greater self-concealment predicted less substance use in another sample of sexual minority respondents (Livingston et al., 2015), indicating that the association may be unequivocal. Greater understanding of the role of self-concealment in substance use may lead to some useful ways to develop appropriate tools in order to assist adolescents who conceal feelings of distress that manifest in the use of psychoactive substance use. We hypothesize in this study that high levels of self-concealment will be associated with increased levels of substance use.
Information-seeking barriers and strategies in maternity care: a framework analysis of nurses’ goals, plans, and actions
Published in Journal of Communication in Healthcare, 2022
Elizabeth D. Dalton, Laura E. Miller, Ivanka Pjesivac, Scott A. Eldredge
Participants described a variety of topics that pregnant people are often hesitant or unable to disclose, barring participants from their expressed goals of effective information seeking and optimal patient outcomes. This was usually information about the person’s own health history, previous pregnancies, or current condition that the patient neglects or refuses to disclose. From these patterns, two overarching themes about informational barriers emerged. The first was intentional self-concealment. Self-concealment is the active withholding of information from another that one perceives as distressing or negative [26]. The second theme was the unintentional omission of information. In response to these barriers, participants also revealed their strategic plans and actions used to deal with these gaps in needed health information, which varied according to the perceived intentionality of the non-disclosure. When participants suspected self-concealment on the part of patients, they enacted strategies that enabled them to continue pursuing the information from the patients themselves: education, rapport building, strategic questioning, and creating a privacy zone for the patient; when patient non-disclosure was thought to be unintentional, the participants strategically sought out information from other sources, and suggested the more therapeutic approach of postnatal debriefing sessions as a way to mitigate informational gaps moving forward.
The Relation between Self-Concealment and Self-Reported Mental Health Symptoms in a Sample of Canadian Armed Forces Personnel
Published in Military Behavioral Health, 2021
Madeleine T. D’Agata, Joshua A. Granek, Ronald R. Holden, Anthony Nazarov
Indeed, self-concealment manifests itself in interpersonal behaviors and is linked to: 1) poorer well-being, to a certain degree, as a result of secret-keeping, 2) maladaptive emotion regulation, and 3) engaging in suppressive or avoidance-based coping techniques (Larson et al., 2015). Moreover, self-concealment is associated with suicidal behaviors (Friedlander et al., 2012) and suicide ideation (D’Agata & Holden, 2018), as well as depression and anxiety (Larson et al., 2015). In addition, individuals higher in self-concealment are believed to be at risk for mental health concerns when their tendency to conceal information conflicts with the desire to disclose to others in an attempt to alleviate their distress (Larson et al., 2015). Larson and colleagues (2015) hypothesize that this conflict leads to pathological consequences. Thus, self-concealment is not only relevant to suicide, but also to other mental health concerns and alcohol use (e.g., Livingston & Callinan, 2015); continued efforts to conceal symptomatology or plans from others should effectively reduce the likelihood of attenuating the severity of such symptoms.