Journal of affective disorders
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Randomized Controlled Trial
The impact of anxious symptoms in the remission of depressive symptoms in a clinical trial for depression: follow-up of six months.
Studies show high comorbidity between anxiety disorder and depression. Little is known regarding how anxiety symptoms affect prognosis in depression treatment, suggesting the importance of studying the impact of anxiety symptoms in the treatment of depression. We evaluated the impact of anxiety symptoms in the remission of depressive symptoms after brief psychotherapies for depression. ⋯ The severity of anxiety symptoms did not compromise the treatment focused primarily on depressive symptoms.
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A recent meta-analysis of many magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies has identified brain regions with gray matter (GM) abnormalities in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD). A few studies addressing GM abnormalities in patients with treatment-resistant depression (TRD) have yielded inconsistent results. Moreover, although TRD patients tend to exhibit ruminative thoughts, it remains unclear whether rumination is related to GM abnormalities in such patients or not. ⋯ Our data provide additional evidence supporting the hypothesis that TRD patients show GM abnormalities compared with healthy subjects. Furthermore, this report is the first to describe a study identifying brain regions for which the GM volume is correlated with rumination in TRD patients. These results improve our understanding of the anatomical characteristics of TRD.
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Depression in the context of bipolar disorder (BD) is often misdiagnosed as major depressive disorder (MDD), leading to mistreatments and poor clinical outcomes for many bipolar patients. Previous neuroimaging studies found mixed results on brain structure, and biochemical metabolism of the two disorders. To eliminate the compounding effects of medication, and aging, this study sought to investigate the brain biochemical changes of treatment-naïve, non-late-life patients with MDD and BD in white matter in prefrontal (WMP) lobe, anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and hippocampus by using proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy ((1)H-MRS). ⋯ Reduced NAA/Cr ratio at the left WMP lobe indicated the dysfunction of neuronal viability in deep white matter, in both MDD and BD patients who shared similarities of brain biochemical abnormalities, which might imply an overlap in neuropathology of depression.
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Insomnia increases the likelihood of developing a mood or anxiety disorder. Moreover, symptoms of anxiety and depression, such as worry and rumination, contribute to insomnia. Given these relationships, there is a need to delineate how these disorders respond to treatment when they are comorbid. ⋯ These findings highlight the importance of insomnia across anxiety and depressive disorders. They further demonstrate that treatment for anxiety and/or depression appears to improve comorbid insomnia symptoms, though may be ineffective in changing sleep duration.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Coping strategies as mediators of the effect of the START (strategies for RelaTives) intervention on psychological morbidity for family carers of people with dementia in a randomised controlled trial.
Family carers of people with dementia frequently become depressed or anxious. In observational studies, more emotion-focused and less dysfunctional coping predict fewer psychological symptoms, but no randomised controlled trial (RCT) has directly investigated emotion-focused coping as mediator of effectiveness of a successful psychological intervention. We hypothesised that emotion-focused coping would mediate the START psychological intervention׳s effects in an RCT. We tested whether mediated effects were moderated by severity of baseline symptoms. ⋯ START benefited family carers both in preventing and treating psychological morbidity, through different mechanisms of action. The most psychologically distressed carers increased their emotion-focused coping and did not decrease their dysfunctional coping, while others benefited but not through this mechanism.