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.
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Psychiatry research · Jun 2014
Heterogeneous depression responses to chronic pain onset among middle-aged adults: a prospective study.
Studies on depression response to chronic pain are limited by lack of clarification of different forms of response patterns and cross-sectional measures. The current study examined heterogeneous long-term patterns of depression response to chronic pain onset prospectively using the mixture modeling technique. Depression symptoms prior to and following pain onset over a course of six years were charted in a nationally representative middle-aged sample. ⋯ Self-rated health at both baseline and following pain onset predicted the resilience trajectory. Baseline self-rated health distinguished the post-pain depression and chronic depression trajectories. Individuals in the prior depression improved trajectory were older and had more chronic illnesses at baseline but fewer illnesses following pain onset, compared to those in the resilience or post-pain depression trajectory.
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Psychiatry research · Jun 2014
The impact of social support on psychological distress for U.S. Afghanistan/Iraq era veterans with PTSD and other psychiatric diagnoses.
This study aimed to examine the degree to which posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) affects the relationship between social support and psychological distress for U. S. Afghanistan/Iraq era veterans with and without co-occurring psychiatric disorders. ⋯ Furthermore, those with PTSD plus co-morbid diagnoses did not demonstrate significantly larger attenuation in that association compared to the PTSD-only group, indicating that psychiatric comorbidity may be less important in considering the role of social support in PTSD. By understanding this relationship, new avenues for engaging and enhancing treatment outcomes related to social support for veterans of this cohort may be identified. Additional longitudinal research could help evaluate the effect of PTSD symptom clusters, social support type, and trauma exposure type on these relationships.
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Psychiatry research · May 2014
Combined PTSD and depressive symptoms interact with post-deployment social support to predict suicidal ideation in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom veterans.
Rates of suicide are alarmingly high in military and veteran samples. Suicide rates are particularly elevated among those with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression, which share overlapping symptoms and frequently co-occur. Identifying and confirming factors that reduce, suicide risk among veterans with PTSD and depression is imperative. ⋯ As predicted, PTSD-depression, symptoms had almost no effect on suicidal ideation (SI) when post-deployment social support was high; however, when, post-deployment social support was low, PTSD-depression symptoms were positively associated with, SI. Thus, social support may be an important factor for clinicians to assess in the context of PTSD and, depressive symptoms. Future research is needed to prospectively examine the inter-relationship, between PTSD/depression and social support on suicidal risk, as well as whether interventions to, improve social support result in decreased suicidality.