1,721,027 research outputs found
Using network analysis to identify central symptoms of adolescent depression
No full textObjective: Experiencing depression symptoms, even at mild to moderate levels, is associated with maladaptive outcomes for adolescents. We used network analysis to evaluate which symptoms (and associations between symptoms) are most central to adolescent depression.
Method: Participants were part of a large, diverse community sample (N = 1,409) of adolescents between the ages of 13-19 years old. Network analysis was used to identify the most central symptoms (nodes) and associations between symptoms (edges) assessed by the Children’s Depression Inventory (CDI). We also evaluated these centrality indicators for network robustness using stability and accuracy tests, associated symptom centrality with mean levels of symptoms, and examined potential differences between the structure and connectivity of depression networks in boys and girls.
Results: The most central symptoms in the network were self-hatred, loneliness, sadness, and pessimism. The strongest associations between symptoms were sadness-crying, anhedonia-school dislike, sadness-loneliness, school work difficulty-school performance decrement, self-hatred-negative body image, sleep disturbance-fatigue, and self-deprecation-self-blame. The network was robust to stability and accuracy tests. Notably, symptom centrality and mean levels of symptoms were not associated. Boys and girls’ networks did not differ in levels of connectivity, though the link between body image and self-hatred was stronger in girls than boys.
Conclusions: Self-hatred, loneliness, sadness, and pessimism were the most central symptoms in adolescent depression networks, suggesting these symptoms (and associations between symptoms) should be prioritized in theoretical models of adolescent depression and could also serve as important treatment targets for adolescent depression interventions
Specificity and overlap of attention and memory biases in depression
Get PDFAttentional and memory biases are viewed as crucial cognitive processes underlying symptoms of depression. However, it is still unclear whether these two biases are uniquely related to depression or whether they show substantial overlap. We investigated the degree of specificity and overlap of attentional and memory biases for depressotypic stimuli in relation to depression and anxiety by means of meta-analytic commonality analysis. By including four published studies, we considered a pool of 463 healthy and subclinically depressed individuals, different experimental paradigms, and different psychological measures. Memory bias is reliably and strongly related to depression and, specifically, to symptoms of negative mood, worthlessness, feelings of failure, and pessimism. Memory bias for negative information was minimally related to anxiety. Moreover, neither attentional bias nor the overlap between attentional and memory biases were significantly related to depression. Limitations include cross-sectional nature of the study. Our study showed that, across different paradigms and psychological measures, memory bias (and not attentional bias) represents a primary mechanism in depression
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Elaborative processing biases associated with vulnerability and maintenance of depression : evidence across levels of analysis
Get PDFtextMajor depressive disorder (MDD) will soon represent the most costly and debilitating disorder in the world. Yet, a clear model of the mechanisms underlying MDD remains elusive. This lack of clarity obscures efforts to prevent and treat MDD more effectively. This dissertation seeks to advance an integrated model of the mechanisms underlying MDD across cognitive, neural, and genetic levels of analysis. Building on the empirical foundation of cognitive theories of MDD, the dissertation includes three studies that help address questions about the cognitive mechanisms underlying depression vulnerability and maintenance. Specifically, the three studies focus on identifying 1) how elaborative processing biases, including attentional biases and rumination, give rise to specific symptoms of MDD and 2) elucidating biological mechanisms that may give rise to these biases. Together, these studies help advance an integrated model of MDD that, ultimately, may help facilitate the prevention and treatment of this costly and debilitating disorder.Psycholog
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The colors of depression : is it more than just being blue? : an exploration of emotional reactivity in depression
No full textTwo studies are presented which expand on previous research on the Emotion Context Insensitivity (ECI) hypothesis evident in Major Depressive Disorder. Specifically, these studies address limitations of this research by examining the emotional reactivity of depressed individuals when they are exposed to emotionally evocative stimuli requiring active participation in personally relevant tasks. Depressed and nondepressed college students were exposed to two stressful, aversive tasks in Study 1, and were given either highly positive or negative feedback on a performance-based test in Study 2. Results of the two studies were somewhat inconsistent. Study 1 demonstrated that depressed individuals experienced a potentiation of negative emotion (i.e. anger), while in Study 2, ECI was supported. Reasons for the discrepancy are discussed; however, taken together, they point to the importance of emotion dysregulation as a maintenance factor for the disorder.Psycholog
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Evaluation of a free-viewing task to measure distinct negative and positive biases in depression
Get PDFAttentional bias has traditionally been inferred through the measurement of reaction-time-based tasks. Eye-tracking offers a way to measure attention bias directly, and free-viewing tasks with intricate stimuli presentations may capture the complexities and dynamics of attention bias in ways previous modalities have not. The present study developed a free-viewing task using a data-driven stimuli selection process. Two free-viewing tasks were created using sad and neutral stimuli, and happy and neutral stimuli to tease apart the distinct effects of negative and positive bias. In this study, eye tracking data was collected and analyzed from n = 130 participants using mixed-effect and generalized linear models. Results revealed the interaction term (depression severity and stimuli valence) influenced dwell time on emotional stimuli, such that with an increase of 1 SD in depression severity (7.87 points on the Beck Depression Inventory-II), participants spent less 60 ms less time viewing sad stimuli and 25 ms less viewing happy stimuli. A significant interaction of depression severity and valence also influenced participant’s latency to first fixation. Increased depression severity (1 SD) was associated with increased odds of being slower to fixate on stimuli when it was sad (OR = 1.10) and when it was happy (OR = 1.03). There was no effect of depression severity or stimuli valence on latency to first fixation, nor an effect of depression severity on the proportion of trials where the first fixation was emotional or proportion of trials where dwell time for emotional areas of interest (AOIs) exceeded neutral. Internal consistency for emotional dwell time was high for both tasks (omega = .95 and .94 for the sad and happy versions, respectively), and split-half reliability for the outcomes was overall strong. Findings suggest depressed individuals may interact with stimuli differently at various levels of depression severity. Implications for future research are discussed.Psycholog
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Negative Self-Referent Cognition Predicts Future Depression Symptom Change: An Intensive Sampling Approach
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Cortisol reactivity following pharmacological “clamp” exposes women’s vulnerability to major depressive disorder
Get PDFStress-evoked hyperactivity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis—typically measured via cortisol activity—is a major risk factor in the pathogenesis of major depressive disorder (MDD). However, the standard laboratory assessment of stress reactivity—the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST)—reveals no sex differences, despite the finding that women experience MDD at about twice the rate of men. One possibility is that HPA axis responses to the TSST are at or the near physiologic ceiling. If true, then down-regulation of the HPA axis prior to TSST administration might reveal the expected sex difference in HPA axis response. To this end, we hypothesized that suppression of HPA axis response using dexamethasone would reveal the sex difference in TSST-evoked cortisol reactivity, thus supporting the role of hypercortisolemia in the pathophysiology of MDD. Prior to TSST administration, 92 healthy, never-depressed participants (50% female) were randomized to receive either two placebo pills, or 2mg dexamethasone and 80mg propranolol. Cardiovascular (heart rate) and HPA axis (cortisol) responses were assessed before, during, and after TSST administration. Replicating previous work, analyses revealed no sex differences in cortisol reactivity in the placebo condition. However, as hypothesized, relative to men, women showed greater TSST-evoked HPA axis reactivity in the drug condition. This sex difference was not explained by sex differences in depression, anxiety, anxiety sensitivity, or history of adverse childhood experiences. By describing conditions under which sex differences in acute-stress hyperreactivity will emerge, the current study lends support to the role of stress-evoked hyperreactivity in the pathophysiology of MDD.Psycholog
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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Prospective memory and medication adherence in schizophrenia : influencing factors and awareness of abilities
Get PDFtextAdherence to antipsychotic medication in schizophrenia has been shown to predict symptom exacerbations; however, adherence remains poor in this population. The concept of taking medication on a maintenance regime is an example of prospective memory (PM). The current investigation is comprised of three studies in which 59 outpatients diagnosed with schizophrenia completed a comprehensive assessment including measures of PM, executive functioning, comprehension of medication instructions, insight into the need for medication, and environmental variables supporting adherence. An objective measure of medication adherence was also collected during a one-month baseline period. In study 1, medication adherence was conceptualized as a PM task and variables for predicting adherence based on PM literature were examined. Of the hypothesized variables, the interactive effect of PM ability and comprehension of medication instructions was the only predictor of adherence to antipsychotic medication. Comprehension of medication instructions alone was the only predictor of adherence to total psychotropic medication regime. Study 2 investigated the role of executive functions in the awareness of PM deficits and use of compensatory strategies. Results indicated that patients with poorer executive skills were less reliable in their report of PM ability compared to performance on PM measures. However, both fair and poor executive functioning groups reported similar use of compensatory strategies. Lastly, the third study manipulated the specificity of retrieval context for a 5-day habitual PM task intended to mimic medication-taking. The aim of this investigation was to examine the effect of retrieval context specificity and executive functioning on task performance. Results demonstrated that patients categorized as fair executive functioning completed significantly more days of the habitual task than patients categorized as poor executive functioning. There was no difference in performance between patients receiving greater retrieval context specificity versus patients receiving a general context. However, there was a trend for individuals with fair executive functioning to benefit from greater retrieval context specificity, implying that a minimum level of executive skill may be necessary for individuals to recognize the risk of a restricted retrieval interval and/or mobilize additional resources for encoding. Clinical implications are discussed.Psycholog
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