Individuals with persecutory delusions have been reported to make external and stable attributions for negative events and to have a tendency towards internal attributions for positive events. It remains unclear whether this abnormality is present in individuals with non-persecutory delusions. Using the Attributional Style Questionnaire, we assessed the attributional style of 19 individuals with persecutory or grandiose delusions (PG), 12 individuals whose delusional beliefs were non-persecutory and non-grandiose (NPG) and 24 controls. The PG group displayed externality in their causal attributions for bad events but those in the NPG group did not differ from controls. Both deluded groups were significantly more stable in their attributions for bad events in comparison to controls. Such findings argue against a primary role for attributional biases in the genesis of delusions, although a role in shaping delusional content and maintaining the disorder and a role for external attributions in defending against reductions in self-esteem cannot be excluded.

We sought to investigate situation-specific inflated sense of responsibility and explanatory style in social anxiety disorder (SAD) according to the cognitive model. Participants aged 17–68 years (mean = 31.9, SD = 11.1) included waiting list patients referred to a primary care mental health service for cognitive behavioural therapy for SAD (n = 18) and non-anxious control participants (n = 65). A battery of psychometric measures, including a bespoke measure of responsibility beliefs, was used. Compared with controls, participants with SAD were more likely to demonstrate an inflated sense of responsibility (p ≤ 0.001), and to adopt a negative explanatory style specific to social interaction (p ≤ 0.01). Inflated sense of responsibility was found to correlate with SAD symptomatology (r = 0.47, p ≤ 0.05), and with increased usage of safety behaviours (r = 0.47, p ≤ 0.05). Caseness (β = 1.45, p ≤ 0.01) and stability of causal attribution (β = 0.25, p ≤ 0.001) were found to predict inflated responsibility in our sample. To our knowledge this study represents the first attempt to investigate inflated responsibility within the context of SAD. Our results support the notion of inflated responsibility as a feature of SAD.

Background: How we conceptualize mental health conditions is important as it impacts on a wide range of mediators of treatment outcome. We do not know how children intuitively conceptualize obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), nor do we know the relative impact of biomedical or cognitive behavioural conceptual explanations, yet both are being widely used in psychoeducation for children with OCD. Aims: This study identified children's naive concepts of OCD, and the comparative impact of biomedical versus cognitive behavioural psychoeducation on perceived prognosis. Method: A within- and between-subjects experimental design was used. After watching a video of a young person describing their OCD, 202 children completed a questionnaire examining their concepts of the condition. They repeated the questionnaire following a second equivalent video, this time preceded by either biomedical or cognitive behavioural psychoeducation. Results: Participants’ naive concepts of OCD reflected predominant models of OCD in healthcare. Even at the minimal dose of psychoeducation, participants’ conceptualizations of OCD changed. Prior exposure to OCD resulted in a stronger alignment with the biomedical model. Exposure to biomedical psychoeducation resulted in participants predicting a slower recovery with less chance of complete remission. Conclusion: Psychoeducation for childhood OCD is impactful. Despite its wide use by clinicians and mental health services, biomedical psychoeducation appears to have deleterious effects. Children's concepts of OCD merit attention but caution should be applied in how they are targeted.

Background: Research suggests that biological and psychological attributions for depression are related to professional help-seeking, but the association of these attributions with informal support seeking in social relationships is unknown. As social support is linked with recovery from depression and a lower likelihood of experiencing future episodes of depression, it is important to understand factors that influence an individual's decision to seek social support. Aims: The present study examined depressed individuals’ own attributions for their depressive symptoms (i.e. personal attributions), perceptions of a friend's attributions for these symptoms (i.e. perceived attributions), and the depressed individuals’ willingness to seek social support from that friend. Method: Eighty-six individuals experiencing at least mild depressive symptoms completed self-report measures of personal attributions, perceived attributions, and a social support seeking intentions scale. Results: Participants’ own attributions for depressive symptoms were unrelated to their willingness to seek social support. In contrast, perceived biological attributions were related to greater help-seeking intentions, whereas perceived psychological attributions were associated with lower support seeking intentions. Conclusions: These results suggest that decisions to seek social support are more influenced by perceptions of others’ beliefs about depression than one's own beliefs.

The general aim of this study was to examine the predictive value of both teachers' causal attributions for behavior problems and perceived efficacy for class management for forms of intervention used in the classroom and cooperations preferred in order to get help for students' problem behaviour. Primary school teachers (N = 249) were asked to rate 12 factors as the possible cause of the behaviour problem described in a vignette, and evaluate 19 statements referring to the intervention strategies they would use, as well as the cooperations they would prefer in order to respond effectively to the problem in the vignette. They also completed an 8-item questionnaire measuring perceived efficacy for class management. The teachers' responses were found to be associated with their teaching experience. Both causal attributions for behaviour problems and perceived efficacy for class management predicted specific interventions. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for future research and teacher education.

This study investigated whether anxiety in patients who have had a myocardial infarction is maintained through similar processes to those proposed in the cognitive models of panic disorder (Clark, 1986) and health anxiety (Warwick and Salkovskis, 1990). Anxious (n = 22) and non-anxious (n = 29) patients, who all had an MI 3–12 months before testing, participated. The groups were compared on self-report measures of risk perception, bodily vigilance, illness perceptions the type of causal attributions (somatic, normalizing and psychological) generated for congruent and incongruent types of anxiety-related bodily sensations (cardiac, respiratory, gastro-intestinal and cognitive dyscontrol). Anxious, compared to non-anxious, MI participants perceived themselves to be at higher risk of a further MI, had higher levels of bodily vigilance and more negative emotional and cognitive representations of their MI. Anxious participants generated significantly more somatic attributions and fewer normalizing attributions, than non-anxious participants for cardiac sensations. There was also a trend for anxious participants to generate this pattern of attributions for respiratory items. The study provides evidence that the models of health anxiety (Warwick and Salkovskis, 1990) and panic disorder (Clark, 1986) are useful in understanding persistent anxiety following an MI.