Abigail Powers
Biographic Data
| ID | 3835501 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Abigail Powers |
| GIVEN NAMES | Abigail |
| FAMILY NAME | Powers |
| SIGNATURE | POWERS A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Emory University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3197-7415 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 38 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Race-related stress, dissociation symptoms, and suicidal thoughts and behaviors in a community sample of Black Americans
Findings suggest race-related stress and dissociation symptoms are critical to consider when determining risk for suicidal thoughts and behaviors among Black Americans in underserved communities. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Caregiver Adverse Childhood Experiences, Resilience, and Mental Health in a Predominantly Hispanic Pediatric Clinic Setting
Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) increase risk for negative health outcomes, including depression and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and have intergenerational effects. Hispanic families are at heightened risk for ACEs yet remain understudied. Pediatric primary care clinics are an ideal location to identify at-risk families. The current study examined caregiver ACEs, resilience, depression, and PTSD and whether resilience moderated ass…
Investigating the Impact of Caregiver Adverse Childhood Experiences Screening and Pediatrician-Led Discussions on Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms in a Majority-Hispanic Pediatric Primary Care C…
BACKGROUND: Evidence suggests that screening and provider-led discussions of parental adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) may help identify at-risk families and be linked to positive health outcomes in caregivers and their children. However, the direct effect of ACEs screening and discussions on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has yet to be studied. OBJECTIVES: To determine if screening or provider-led discussions of parental ACEs are assoc…
Attentional Control Moderates the Relationship Between Race-Related Stress and Emotion Dysregulation in a Highly Trauma-Exposed Population of Black Women
Race-related stress contributes to emotion regulation difficulties and influences stress-related coping practices among Black women. Attentional control, a factor related to emotion regulation and coping, may shape this process; however, little research has explored its role. The present study examined whether attentional control may moderate the association between race-related stress and dimensions of emotion regulation. Participants were 84 Bl…
Risk for posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms by trauma type
Implementing brief, mindfulness-based psychotherapies that enhance self-compassion in the primary care setting may help mitigate PTSD risk among Black Americans with lower levels of physical violence and noninterpersonal trauma exposure and those with higher levels of sexual violence exposure. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
How well does the Index of Race-Related Stress-brief function in a trauma-exposed Black community sample? An item response theory examination of discrimination and difficulty parameters
These results indicate that items varied considerably in the degree to which they adequately captured race-related stress. Future research should use IRT with newly worded questions to further improve the assessment of race-related stress in Black Americans. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Predicting aggressive behaviors
Aggression is a costly public health problem with severe and multi‐faceted negative consequences and thus, identifying factors that contribute to aggression, particularly in understudied populations, is necessary to develop more effective interventions to reduce the public health cost of aggression. The goal this study was to test whether difficulties regulating emotions moderated the association between posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) sympt…
Emotion Regulation Within Context
Previous research has found that both racism and sexual assault are related to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms and chronic pain. Black women have unique relationships to these stressors situated within contexts of oppression, and little is known about factors that may exacerbate these associations among Black women. Among Black women experiencing both racism and sexual assault (n = 148), emotion clarity moderated the relation betwee…
Indirect effect of negative evaluations of therapy on the association between racial stress and posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms in pregnant Black persons
Results highlight the need for accessible and culturally competent mental health care for pregnant Black individuals. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Primary Care Providers' Knowledge, Perceptions, and Practice of Trauma-Informed Care in a Public Health Care Setting
Despite serving patients with especially high rates of trauma exposure and related sequelae, many primary care providers do not receive specialized training in the provision of trauma-informed care (TIC). This study sought to document primary care providers' baseline rates of TIC training and their knowledge, perceptions, and practice of TIC at a large, urban public hospital in the Southeastern United States. Participants (n = 67; 68.7% women; 44…
Indirect effect of race‐related stress on traumatic stress and depression symptoms via subjective social status in a Black community sample
Experiencing racism is linked to lower subjective social status (SSS), defined as one's perception of their position in society. SSS is influenced by power, prestige, and objective socioeconomic status (SES). Previous findings suggest that race‐related stress may be related to adverse mental health outcomes through SSS in Black Americans, a population that has been deeply affected by continuing legacies of oppression. The current study examines t…
Primary care-based mindfulness intervention for posttraumatic stress disorder and depression symptoms among Black adults
The findings indicate feasibility and acceptability of MBCT group interventions in urban primary care settings with trauma-exposed patients with significant psychopathology. However, substantial barriers to treatment engagement were endorsed and to improve numbers for successful engagement in the intervention, continued efforts to reduce treatment barriers and increase access to mindfulness-based interventions in underresourced communities are ne…
The role of specific emotion dysregulation facets in the association between child violence exposure and psychopathology
These findings suggest that certain components of emotion dysregulation serve as an indirect pathway of influence for community violence exposure on child behavior, and the pathways differ between externalizing and internalizing behavior outcomes. Emotion dysregulation may serve as an important potential treatment target in reducing long-term risks associated with violence exposure in urban communities of color. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024…
Psychometric Properties of the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 -Brief Form in a Community Sample with High Rates of Trauma Exposure
In the current study, we used a sample of predominantly African-American women with high rates of trauma exposure (N = 434) to examine psychometric properties of the Personality Inventory for DSM-5-Brief Form (PID-5-BF). We compared model fit between a model with five correlated latent factors and a higher-order model in which the five latent factors were used to estimate a single “general pathology” factor. Additionally, we computed estimates of…
When Anger Remains Unspoken
OBJECTIVE: Race-related lifetime stress exposure (LSE) including racial discrimination, trauma, and stressful life events have been shown to contribute to racial health disparities. However, little is known about associations between race-related stressors and premature biological aging that confer the risk of adverse health outcomes. Even less is known about the mechanisms through which race-related stressors may be associated with accelerated a…
Adverse childhood experiences in African Americans
Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) disproportionately impact African Americans because of profound subjection to historical-systemic oppression in addition to personal and intergenerational trauma exposure. This article utilizes a biopsychosocial-cultural framework to understand the correlates of ACE exposure in African Americans and attends to the cultural factors that contribute to resilience. We review the evidence base for culturally inform…
Racial Discrimination Predicts Mental Health Outcomes Beyond the Role of Personality Traits in a Community Sample of African Americans
Despite a consistent body of work documenting associations between racial discrimination and negative mental health outcomes, the utility and validity of these findings have recently been questioned as some posit that personality traits may account for these associations. To test this hypothesis in a community sample of African Americans ( n =419, x̄ age=43.96), we used bivariate relations and hierarchical regression analyses to determine whether…
When (passive) acceptance hurts
These results suggest that for Black Americans, coping with racism actively (vs. passively) may buffer the association between racial discrimination and psychological symptom severity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved
Intergenerational transmission of risk for PTSD symptoms in African American children
These results suggest that maternal emotion dysregulation may be an important factor in influencing their child's PTSD symptoms above and beyond child-specific variables. Both maternal and child emotion dysregulation could be valuable treatment targets for improving maternal mental health and parenting behaviors and bolstering child health outcomes, thus reducing intergenerational transmission of risk associated with trauma. (PsycInfo Database Re…
Trauma, psychiatric disorders, and treatment history among pregnant African American women
Results of the current study highlight elevated levels of trauma exposure, PTSD, and depression in low-income, African American pregnant women served by this urban clinic, and demonstrate the need for better identification of trauma-related disorders and appropriate linkage to culturally responsive care especially for PTSD. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)
PTSD and self-rated health in urban traumatized African American adults
Our findings suggest that emotion dysregulation may play a significant role in the PTSD-health relationship for African Americans. Future research investigating culturally relevant emotion regulation strategies are warranted given likely consequences for both physical and mental health outcomes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)
Cognitive and neural facets of dissociation in a traumatized population
Dissociative phenomena are frequently experienced by psychologically traumatized people. However, little is known about the cognitive profiles of highly dissociative traumatized individuals, and corresponding patterns of neural connectivity when attentional networks are engaged in the context of emotion. One hundred seventeen traumatized women completed the multiscale dissociation inventory (MDI) and neuropsychological testing; MDI scores were us…
The mediating role of emotion dysregulation and depression on the relationship between childhood trauma exposure and emotional eating
The mediating role of emotion dysregulation and depression on the relationship between childhood trauma exposure and emotional eating
When (passive) acceptance hurts
These results suggest that for Black Americans, coping with racism actively (vs. passively) may buffer the association between racial discrimination and psychological symptom severity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved
Racial Discrimination Predicts Mental Health Outcomes Beyond the Role of Personality Traits in a Community Sample of African Americans
Despite a consistent body of work documenting associations between racial discrimination and negative mental health outcomes, the utility and validity of these findings have recently been questioned as some posit that personality traits may account for these associations. To test this hypothesis in a community sample of African Americans ( n =419, x̄ age=43.96), we used bivariate relations and hierarchical regression analyses to determine whether…
Indirect effect of race‐related stress on traumatic stress and depression symptoms via subjective social status in a Black community sample
Experiencing racism is linked to lower subjective social status (SSS), defined as one's perception of their position in society. SSS is influenced by power, prestige, and objective socioeconomic status (SES). Previous findings suggest that race‐related stress may be related to adverse mental health outcomes through SSS in Black Americans, a population that has been deeply affected by continuing legacies of oppression. The current study examines t…
The mediating role of emotion dysregulation and depression on the relationship between childhood trauma exposure and emotional eating
Cognitive and neural facets of dissociation in a traumatized population
Dissociative phenomena are frequently experienced by psychologically traumatized people. However, little is known about the cognitive profiles of highly dissociative traumatized individuals, and corresponding patterns of neural connectivity when attentional networks are engaged in the context of emotion. One hundred seventeen traumatized women completed the multiscale dissociation inventory (MDI) and neuropsychological testing; MDI scores were us…
Trauma, psychiatric disorders, and treatment history among pregnant African American women
Results of the current study highlight elevated levels of trauma exposure, PTSD, and depression in low-income, African American pregnant women served by this urban clinic, and demonstrate the need for better identification of trauma-related disorders and appropriate linkage to culturally responsive care especially for PTSD. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)
PTSD and self-rated health in urban traumatized African American adults
Our findings suggest that emotion dysregulation may play a significant role in the PTSD-health relationship for African Americans. Future research investigating culturally relevant emotion regulation strategies are warranted given likely consequences for both physical and mental health outcomes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)
Intergenerational transmission of risk for PTSD symptoms in African American children
These results suggest that maternal emotion dysregulation may be an important factor in influencing their child's PTSD symptoms above and beyond child-specific variables. Both maternal and child emotion dysregulation could be valuable treatment targets for improving maternal mental health and parenting behaviors and bolstering child health outcomes, thus reducing intergenerational transmission of risk associated with trauma. (PsycInfo Database Re…
Psychometric Properties of the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 -Brief Form in a Community Sample with High Rates of Trauma Exposure
In the current study, we used a sample of predominantly African-American women with high rates of trauma exposure (N = 434) to examine psychometric properties of the Personality Inventory for DSM-5-Brief Form (PID-5-BF). We compared model fit between a model with five correlated latent factors and a higher-order model in which the five latent factors were used to estimate a single “general pathology” factor. Additionally, we computed estimates of…
When Anger Remains Unspoken
OBJECTIVE: Race-related lifetime stress exposure (LSE) including racial discrimination, trauma, and stressful life events have been shown to contribute to racial health disparities. However, little is known about associations between race-related stressors and premature biological aging that confer the risk of adverse health outcomes. Even less is known about the mechanisms through which race-related stressors may be associated with accelerated a…
Adverse childhood experiences in African Americans
Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) disproportionately impact African Americans because of profound subjection to historical-systemic oppression in addition to personal and intergenerational trauma exposure. This article utilizes a biopsychosocial-cultural framework to understand the correlates of ACE exposure in African Americans and attends to the cultural factors that contribute to resilience. We review the evidence base for culturally inform…
Racial Discrimination Predicts Mental Health Outcomes Beyond the Role of Personality Traits in a Community Sample of African Americans
Despite a consistent body of work documenting associations between racial discrimination and negative mental health outcomes, the utility and validity of these findings have recently been questioned as some posit that personality traits may account for these associations. To test this hypothesis in a community sample of African Americans ( n =419, x̄ age=43.96), we used bivariate relations and hierarchical regression analyses to determine whether…
When (passive) acceptance hurts
These results suggest that for Black Americans, coping with racism actively (vs. passively) may buffer the association between racial discrimination and psychological symptom severity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved
Primary care-based mindfulness intervention for posttraumatic stress disorder and depression symptoms among Black adults
The findings indicate feasibility and acceptability of MBCT group interventions in urban primary care settings with trauma-exposed patients with significant psychopathology. However, substantial barriers to treatment engagement were endorsed and to improve numbers for successful engagement in the intervention, continued efforts to reduce treatment barriers and increase access to mindfulness-based interventions in underresourced communities are ne…
The role of specific emotion dysregulation facets in the association between child violence exposure and psychopathology
These findings suggest that certain components of emotion dysregulation serve as an indirect pathway of influence for community violence exposure on child behavior, and the pathways differ between externalizing and internalizing behavior outcomes. Emotion dysregulation may serve as an important potential treatment target in reducing long-term risks associated with violence exposure in urban communities of color. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024…
Indirect effect of negative evaluations of therapy on the association between racial stress and posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms in pregnant Black persons
Results highlight the need for accessible and culturally competent mental health care for pregnant Black individuals. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Primary Care Providers' Knowledge, Perceptions, and Practice of Trauma-Informed Care in a Public Health Care Setting
Despite serving patients with especially high rates of trauma exposure and related sequelae, many primary care providers do not receive specialized training in the provision of trauma-informed care (TIC). This study sought to document primary care providers' baseline rates of TIC training and their knowledge, perceptions, and practice of TIC at a large, urban public hospital in the Southeastern United States. Participants (n = 67; 68.7% women; 44…
Indirect effect of race‐related stress on traumatic stress and depression symptoms via subjective social status in a Black community sample
Experiencing racism is linked to lower subjective social status (SSS), defined as one's perception of their position in society. SSS is influenced by power, prestige, and objective socioeconomic status (SES). Previous findings suggest that race‐related stress may be related to adverse mental health outcomes through SSS in Black Americans, a population that has been deeply affected by continuing legacies of oppression. The current study examines t…
Risk for posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms by trauma type
Implementing brief, mindfulness-based psychotherapies that enhance self-compassion in the primary care setting may help mitigate PTSD risk among Black Americans with lower levels of physical violence and noninterpersonal trauma exposure and those with higher levels of sexual violence exposure. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
How well does the Index of Race-Related Stress-brief function in a trauma-exposed Black community sample? An item response theory examination of discrimination and difficulty parameters
These results indicate that items varied considerably in the degree to which they adequately captured race-related stress. Future research should use IRT with newly worded questions to further improve the assessment of race-related stress in Black Americans. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Predicting aggressive behaviors
Aggression is a costly public health problem with severe and multi‐faceted negative consequences and thus, identifying factors that contribute to aggression, particularly in understudied populations, is necessary to develop more effective interventions to reduce the public health cost of aggression. The goal this study was to test whether difficulties regulating emotions moderated the association between posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) sympt…
Emotion Regulation Within Context
Previous research has found that both racism and sexual assault are related to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms and chronic pain. Black women have unique relationships to these stressors situated within contexts of oppression, and little is known about factors that may exacerbate these associations among Black women. Among Black women experiencing both racism and sexual assault (n = 148), emotion clarity moderated the relation betwee…
Race-related stress, dissociation symptoms, and suicidal thoughts and behaviors in a community sample of Black Americans
Findings suggest race-related stress and dissociation symptoms are critical to consider when determining risk for suicidal thoughts and behaviors among Black Americans in underserved communities. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Caregiver Adverse Childhood Experiences, Resilience, and Mental Health in a Predominantly Hispanic Pediatric Clinic Setting
Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) increase risk for negative health outcomes, including depression and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and have intergenerational effects. Hispanic families are at heightened risk for ACEs yet remain understudied. Pediatric primary care clinics are an ideal location to identify at-risk families. The current study examined caregiver ACEs, resilience, depression, and PTSD and whether resilience moderated ass…
Investigating the Impact of Caregiver Adverse Childhood Experiences Screening and Pediatrician-Led Discussions on Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms in a Majority-Hispanic Pediatric Primary Care C…
BACKGROUND: Evidence suggests that screening and provider-led discussions of parental adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) may help identify at-risk families and be linked to positive health outcomes in caregivers and their children. However, the direct effect of ACEs screening and discussions on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has yet to be studied. OBJECTIVES: To determine if screening or provider-led discussions of parental ACEs are assoc…
Attentional Control Moderates the Relationship Between Race-Related Stress and Emotion Dysregulation in a Highly Trauma-Exposed Population of Black Women
Race-related stress contributes to emotion regulation difficulties and influences stress-related coping practices among Black women. Attentional control, a factor related to emotion regulation and coping, may shape this process; however, little research has explored its role. The present study examined whether attentional control may moderate the association between race-related stress and dimensions of emotion regulation. Participants were 84 Bl…
Psychology (19 works) · Clinical Psychology (17 works) · Medicine (14 works) · Clinical Psychology (13 works) · Migration, Health and Trauma (9 works) · Psychiatry (9 works) · MEDLINE (7 works) · Poison control (7 works) · PsycINFO (7 works) · Racial and Ethnic Identity Research (7 works)