Psychiatry research
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Psychiatry research · Aug 2014
Shorter gaze duration for happy faces in current but not remitted depression: evidence from eye movements.
Cognitive theories of depression propose that depressed individuals preferentially attend to negative information and that such cognitive biases constitute important vulnerability and maintenance factors for the disorder. Most studies examined this bias by registration of response latencies. The present study employed a direct and continuous measurement of attentional processing for emotional stimuli by recording eye movements. ⋯ Both patient groups (CD, RD) demonstrated longer maintained fixation (dwelling time) on all emotional faces compared to healthy controls. The present findings are in line with the presumption that depression is associated with a loss of elaborative processing of positive stimuli that characterizes healthy controls. Importantly, successful remission of depression (RD group) may result in positive attentional processing as no group differences were found between healthy controls and remitted patients on glance duration for happy faces.
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Psychiatry research · Aug 2014
Overarousal interacts with a sense of fearlessness about death to predict suicide risk in a sample of clinical outpatients.
Converging evidence suggests that acute states of overarousal are common prior to suicidal behavior. Yet, there has been very little theory-driven research of these phenomena. We consider two competing theoretical perspectives. ⋯ These effects were observed beyond the effects of depression, anxiety, age, gender, and marital status. There was no significant main effect of overarousal. Results support a perspective in line with the interpersonal theory, suggesting that overarousal states may be particularly dangerous for individuals who have developed the capability for suicide.