Participation and compliance in a 6-month daily diary study among individuals at risk for mental health problems.

Intensive longitudinal (IL)measurement,which involves prolonged self-monitoring, may have important clinical applications but is also burdening. This raises the question who takes part in and successfully completes IL measurements. This preregistered study investigated which demographic, personality, economic, social, psychological, or physical participant characteristics are associated with participation and compliance in an IL study conducted in young adults at enhanced risk for psychopathology. Dutch young adults enrolled in the clinical cohort of the TRacking Adolescents’ Individual Lives Survey (TRAILS) were invited to a 6-month daily diary study. Participant characteristics came from five earlier TRAILS assessment waves collected from Age 11 onwards. To evaluate participation, we compared diary study participants (N =134) to nonparticipants (N =309) and a sex-matched subsample (N = 1926) of individuals from the general population cohort of TRAILS. To evaluate compliance, we analyzed which characteristics were related to the proportion of completed diary entries. We found that participants (23.6 ± 0.7 years old; 57% male) were largely similar to nonparticipants. In addition, compared to the general population, participants reported more negative scores on nearly all characteristics. Internalizing problems predicted higher compliance. Externalizing problems, antisocial behavior, and daily smoking predicted lower compliance. Thus, in at-risk young adults, who scored lower on nearly every positive characteristic and higher on every negative characteristic relative to the general population, participation in a diary study is unbiased. Small biases in compliance occur, of which researchers should be aware. IL measurement is thus suitable in at-risk populations, which is a requirement for its usefulness in clinical practice.</p

Individual-specific and subgroup level associations between stress and psychopathology in daily life:A temporal network investigation

INTRODUCTION: Stress is a risk factor for developing psychopathology. Emerging evidence suggests that daily experiences of stress may also predict symptoms during the day. It is unclear to what extent the influence of stress on psychopathology during the day is the same across individuals (including across diagnostic boundaries), and which effects are individual-specific OBJECTIVES: This study aims to reveal how stress and symptoms are interrelated in a cross-diagnostic context by modeling individual level temporal networks, and examining subgroups with similar dynamics. METHODS: Hundred twenty two young adults (43.4% women) with a wide range of psychopathology in terms of severity and type of problems completed a six-month daily diary study. We used a temporal network approach (i.e., group iterative multiple model estimation) to model how stress and ten specific symptoms (e.g., feeling down, paranoia, restlessness) were related across time at the individual-specific, subgroup, and group level. RESULTS: After controlling for the lagged influence of stress on itself, stress level predicted the level of restlessness, worrying, nervousness, and feeling down during the same day for >70% of individuals. We observed three larger subgroups with each over 20 individuals, whose temporal networks showed different dynamic patterns involving specific symptoms. Effects of stress on other specific symptoms differed across individuals, and these were not subgroup-specific. CONCLUSIONS: This study showed important overlap between individuals in terms of impact of stress on psychopathology in daily life. Subtle differences between individuals were also observed. Possibly, such differences are relevant for examining individual-specific vulnerability for future psychopathology. This requires further investigation. DISCLOSURE: No significant relationships

Blije gezichten en andere beloningen:aandacht voor positieve informatie als beschermend mechanisme tegen depressie

Dit artikel is een bewerkte versie van de Nederlandse samenvatting van het proefschrift “Happy faces and other rewards. Different perspectives on a bias away from positive and toward negative information as an underlying mechanism of depression” van Charlotte Vrijen [1]; Promotores: Albertine J. Oldehinkel, Catharina A. Hartman en Peter de Jonge. Doorgaans laten mensen sterke reacties zien op positieve informatie, maar sommige mensen reageren hier minder sterk op; zij hebben een zogenaamde lage positieve bias. In dit proefschrift werd het verband tussen lage positieve bias en depressie onderzocht. We onderzochten of een lage positieve bias tijdens de adolescentie een voorspeller was van latere depressie en wat de implicaties van een lage positieve bias waren in het dagelijks leven. Met een interventiestudie onderzochten we of op de persoon toegesneden leefstijladvies en een vrije-val-ervaring voor meer plezier en een positievere bias konden zorgen bij jongvolwassenen die last hadden van verlies van plezier. Een belangrijke uitkomst van ons onderzoek is dat een lage positieve bias gedurende de adolescentie een latere depressie voorspelde en daarmee mogelijk een indicator is van vatbaarheid voor depressie. In het dagelijks leven hielden jongeren met een hoge positieve bias het goede gevoel dat ze van positieve ervaringen kregen langer vast dan jongeren met een lage bias. Dit zou kunnen verklaren waarom jongeren met een lage positieve bias meer kans hebben om depressief te worden. In de interventiestudie werden aanwijzingen gevonden dat op de persoon toegesneden leefstijladvies resulteerde in een toename in plezier, maar niet in een positievere bias