Within- and across-day patterns of interplay between depressive symptoms and related psychopathological processes:a dynamic network approach during the COVID-19 pandemic

Background In order to understand the intricate patterns of interplay connected to the formation and maintenance of depressive symptomatology, repeated measures investigations focusing on within-person relationships between psychopathological mechanisms and depressive components are required. Methods This large-scale preregistered intensive longitudinal study conducted 68,240 observations of 1706 individuals in the general adult population across a 40-day period during the COVID-19 pandemic to identify the detrimental processes involved in depressive states. Daily responses were modeled using multi-level dynamic network analysis to investigate the temporal associations across days, in addition to contemporaneous relationships between depressive components within a daily window. Results Among the investigated psychopathological mechanisms, helplessness predicted the strongest across-day influence on depressive symptoms, while emotion regulation difficulties displayed more proximal interactions with symptomatology. Helplessness was further involved in the amplification of other theorized psychopathological mechanisms including rumination, the latter of which to a greater extent was susceptible toward being influenced rather than temporally influencing other components of depressive states. Distinctive symptoms of depression behaved differently, with depressed mood and anhedonia most prone to being impacted, while lethargy and worthlessness were more strongly associated with outgoing activity in the network. Conclusions The main mechanism predicting the amplifications of detrimental symptomatology was helplessness. Lethargy and worthlessness revealed greater within-person carry-over effects across days, providing preliminary indications that these symptoms may be more strongly associated with pushing individuals toward prolonged depressive state experiences. The psychopathological processes of rumination, helplessness, and emotion regulation only exhibited interactions with the depressed mood and worthlessness component of depression, being unrelated to lethargy and anhedonia. The findings have implications for the impediment of depressive symptomatology during and beyond the pandemic period. They further outline the gaps in the literature concerning the identification of psychopathological processes intertwined with lethargy and anhedonia on the within-person level

Longitudinal Processes That Predict Affective Symptoms

Depressive and anxiety symptoms can be associated with high levels of impairment and distress. Thus, it is important to understand the processes that contribute to the exacerbation and alleviation of affective symptoms. Various factors have been implicated, including individuals’ tendencies towards rumination and mindfulness, and the psychological processes of stress and sleep disturbance. While these associations are generally well established, the bulk of existing research is dominated by specific conceptualisations, and thus limited measurement, of these constructs, and there is a paucity of research into theoretically important interactive processes. Hence, the aim of this thesis was to explore various key mechanisms by which core depression and anxiety symptoms can change over time, including the direct and/or interactive effects of dispositional rumination and mindfulness (Study 1), and the effects of psychological stress, whether direct, mediated by rumination and/or sleep disturbance, and/or attenuated by dispositional mindfulness (Study 2). A prospective study was conducted, whereby a convenience sample of Australian community adults completed three online surveys, three months apart (Time 1, n = 730; Time 2, n = 498; and Time 3, n = 353). Participants answered questions about their recent experiences of depression, anxiety, stress, and sleep disturbance, and their tendencies towards non-mood-responsive rumination, mindful-acting-with-awareness, and mindful-non-judging. Findings from Study 1 revealed that greater rumination directly predicted increased depression across three months, and stress across three and six months. In addition, greater mindful-acting-with-awareness directly predicted decreased anxiety across three months. Finally, high mindful-acting-with-awareness attenuated the effects of lower non-judging on increasing anxiety and stress across three months, in addition to the effects of greater rumination on increasing anxiety and depression across six months. Findings from Study 2 revealed that greater stress predicted increased six-month depression and anxiety indirectly via three-month sleep disturbance, and also via rumination leading to three-month sleep disturbance, whereas rumination uniquely mediated between stress and six-month depression. Further, high mindful-acting-with-awareness attenuated the effects of greater stress on increased anxiety across six months. Overall, the findings suggested that: (1) a general tendency to ruminate is more predictive of later stress and depression over anxiety symptoms; (2) that poor sleep plays a key intermediary role in linking subjective stress to later affective symptoms (as a unique factor and also following rumination); and (3) a tendency to attend to present-moment experiences is especially protective in attenuating the effects of self-critical appraisal processes and/or subjective stress on later anxiety. Various theoretical, clinical, and methodological considerations are implicated from the research findings, elucidating numerous avenues for continued research. Of particular clinical importance, the findings align with mechanistic accounts of mindfulness-based treatment interventions by suggesting that regularly attending to present-moment experiences may protect against escalating distress by buffering the effects of harmful self-evaluative processes

More than a feeling: A unified view of stress measurement for population science.

Stress can influence health throughout the lifespan, yet there is little agreement about what types and aspects of stress matter most for human health and disease. This is in part because "stress" is not a monolithic concept but rather, an emergent process that involves interactions between individual and environmental factors, historical and current events, allostatic states, and psychological and physiological reactivity. Many of these processes alone have been labeled as "stress." Stress science would be further advanced if researchers adopted a common conceptual model that incorporates epidemiological, affective, and psychophysiological perspectives, with more precise language for describing stress measures. We articulate an integrative working model, highlighting how stressor exposures across the life course influence habitual responding and stress reactivity, and how health behaviors interact with stress. We offer a Stress Typology articulating timescales for stress measurement - acute, event-based, daily, and chronic - and more precise language for dimensions of stress measurement

Mapping dynamic interactions among cognitive biases in depression

Depression is theorized to be caused in part by biased cognitive processing of emotional information. Yet, prior research has adopted a reductionist approach that does not characterize how biases in cognitive processes such as attention and memory work together to confer risk for this complex multifactorial disorder. Grounded in affective and cognitive science, we highlight four mechanisms to understand how attention biases, working memory difficulties, and long-term memory biases interact and contribute to depression. We review evidence for each mechanism and highlight time- and context-dependent dynamics. We outline methodological considerations and recommendations for research in this area. We conclude with directions to advance the understanding of depression risk, cognitive training interventions, and transdiagnostic properties of cognitive biases and their interactions

Mindfulness and Behavior Change

Initiating and maintaining behavior change is key to the prevention and treatment of most preventable chronic medical and psychiatric illnesses. The cultivation of mindfulness, involving acceptance and nonjudgment of present-moment experience, often results in transformative health behavior change. Neural systems involved in motivation and learning have an important role to play. A theoretical model of mindfulness that integrates these mechanisms with the cognitive, emotional, and self-related processes commonly described, while applying an integrated model to health behavior change, is needed. This integrative review (1) defines mindfulness and describes the mindfulness-based intervention movement, (2) synthesizes the neuroscience of mindfulness and integrates motivation and learning mechanisms within a mindful self-regulation model for understanding the complex effects of mindfulness on behavior change, and (3) synthesizes current clinical research evaluating the effects of mindfulness-based interventions targeting health behaviors relevant to psychiatric care. The review provides insight into the limitations of current research and proposes potential mechanisms to be tested in future research and targeted in clinical practice to enhance the impact of mindfulness on behavior change

Exploring the process of change and acceptability of mindfulness

Mindfulness is becoming an increasingly popular intervention for affective disorders, such as depression. Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) is evidenced as being an effective intervention for reducing depressive relapse for people with three or more episodes of depression.Little is known about how mindfulness actually works and how it reduces depressive relapse. Research has started exploring the mechanisms of change within mindfulness. The literature review will explore the evidence base for mechanisms of mindfulness and how this is currently understood.The literature supporting MBCT as an effective intervention focuses on working age adults (18 – 64 years) whilst very few studies explore mindfulness as an intervention for older adults (over 65 years). Depression is prevalent in the older adult population and any potentially beneficial interventions should be considered for this cohort. The empirical paper focused on a mixed method design which explored the acceptability of mindfulness for older adults with depression. The qualitative sample, were interviewed before and after attending two introductory mindfulness group sessions. The transcripts were analysed using inductive thematic analysis which identified six main themes: Life Cycle Changes, Relationships, Depression, Treatment, Attitudes Towards Mindfulness and Mindfulness Sessions. The themes were used to develop some survey items to explore attitudes towards mindfulness within the older adult population. The findings suggest that mindfulness could be acceptable for older adults with recurrent depression

Cognitive Mechanisms Supporting the Formation and Maintenance of Social Judgments in Physical Aggression

Physical aggression is a harmful yet ubiquitous form of human behavior. A large body of research has established that physical aggression is rooted in aberrations at the formation and maintenance stages of social cognition. At the formation stage, more physically aggressive individuals are more likely to interpret ambiguous social stimuli as threatening; at the maintenance stage, more physically aggressive individuals are more likely to “hold on” to interpretations of others as threatening. However, very little research has examined the cognitive mechanisms that contribute to these aberrations during online social decision-making. The three experimental studies that comprise this dissertation apply theory and methods from the cognitive and decision sciences to specify the influences of putative cognitive mechanisms, namely initial bias (the starting point of an individual’s decision-making), efficiency of evidence accumulation (the quality of evidence extracted from a stimulus), and extent of evidence accumulation (the quantity of evidence gathered for a decision). The three studies provide a comprehensive perspective on social cognition by examining both lower-order facial emotion judgments and higher-order trait judgments in samples of incarcerated male offenders. Study 1 applies a form of computational modeling called diffusion modeling to parse the cognitive mechanisms contributing to the formation of lower-order facial emotion judgments. The findings of Study 1 suggest that more physically aggressive individuals display more efficient accumulation of anger-related evidence, which may help explain physically aggressive individuals’ heightened tendency to perceive ambiguous faces as threatening. Study 2 focuses on the extent of evidence accumulation and examines its role in the formation of higher-order trait judgments using a novel adaptation of an established experimental task. The findings of Study 2 suggest that more physically aggressive individuals display less extensive evidence accumulation while making trait judgments, particularly hostile trait judgments. Finally, Study 3 focuses on the maintenance of lower-order facial emotion judgments by examining post-decisional processing, again using a novel adaptation of an established experimental task. The findings of Study 3 suggest that more efficient accumulation of anger-related evidence in physically aggressive individuals is also evident following emotion decisions, which may help account for the persistence of threat-based social judgments over time in physical aggression. Taken together, this set of studies provides novel insights into the cognitive mechanisms driving aberrant social cognition in physical aggression. Implications for theory and clinical practice are discussed, as well as directions for future research

Cognitive Vulnerability to Mood Disturbance in an Exercise Withdrawal Paradigm

Depressive symptoms are more common among sedentary individuals with longitudinal studies supporting inactivity as a potential risk factor for mood disturbances. Observational and experimental designs find that lack of exercise or exercise deprivation is associated with increased depressive and anxiety symptoms, fatigue, and pain. However, literature has not examined risk factors influencing mood deterioration in response to exercise deprivation. The current study tested the hypothesis that physically active individuals with high levels of cognitive vulnerability (i.e., a tendency towards negative thought content and processes when under stress) are at high risk for mood disturbance when undergoing exercise cessation. Community adults who met guidelines for recommended physical activity (N=36) were examined in a 4-week prospective, longitudinal study. Mood was assessed with the Beck Depression Inventory-Second Edition, the Beck Anxiety Inventory, and the Brief Profile of Mood States at baseline, after two weeks of maintained exercise, and after one and two weeks of exercise cessation. Cognitive vulnerability variables (i.e., dysfunctional attitudes, brooding rumination, cognitive reactivity) were assessed following the maintained exercise phase. Similar to prior studies, results indicated a main effect of time, such that depressive and anxiety symptoms increased over the exercise cessation protocol. Results additionally lend support for a vulnerability-stress model, with brooding rumination identified as a risk factor for the development of symptoms during exercise deprivation. This study suggests that individuals who engage in brooding rumination to cope with negative affect are at elevated risk for mood symptoms when ceasing their exercise routine