There and back again: a dynamical perspective on psychological resilience

During our lives, we are inevitably confronted with adversity and stress. These negative experiences can lead to mental disorders. Psychological resilience protects against adversity's damaging effects and helps maintain mental health. A deeper understanding of how psychological resilience works will allow us to improve its functioning in the future. By protecting ourselves against stress and adversity, we can reduce the burden of mental disorders and increase the well-being of society and individuals. In this thesis, we focused on studying resilience dynamically, i.e., how protective factors and stressors mutually influence each other, especially in the flow of daily life. Insights into these dynamic interactions help to understand better how resilience works and assess the level of resilience. Our results show that people who recover quickly from minor daily stressors (traffic jams, spilled coffee) later have better mental health than people who are more stuck in negative emotions. In addition, we have found that our perception of how we deal with everyday problems can predict later changes in mental health. Such insights can be used to develop and inspire new diagnostic tools and resilience-enhancing intervention and prevention strategies

Overnight affective dynamics and sleep characteristics as predictors of depression and its development

INTRODUCTION: Greater affective inertia during the day (higher carry-over effects of prior affect to the current moment) is associated with depression and its development. However, the role of overnight affective inertia (from evening to morning) in depression, and the role of sleep therein, has been scarcely studied. OBJECTIVES: We examined i) the difference in overnight inertia for positive (PA) and negative affect (NA) between individuals with past depression, current depression, and no depression; ii) how sleep duration and quality influence overnight affective inertia in these groups, and iii) whether overnight affective inertia predicts depression development. METHODS: We used data of 579 women from the East-Flanders Prospective Twin Survey. First, individuals with past (n=82), current (n=26), and no depression (n=471) at baseline were examined, and then individuals who did (n=58) and did not (n=319) develop depression at 12-months follow-up. Affect was assessed 10 times a day for 5 days. Sleep was assessed with sleep diaries. Affective inertia was operationalized as the influence of affect(t-1) on affect(t). Linear mixed-effect models were used to test the hypotheses. RESULTS: Overnight affective inertia was not associated with depression, neither was it differently associated with sleep characteristics in the depression groups. However, sleep characteristics were more negatively associated with morning NA in both depression groups compared to the non-depressed group. Overnight affective inertia did not predict the development of depression at follow-up. CONCLUSIONS: Depression and sleep characteristics might be more related to mean affect levels rather than to more complex emotion dynamics measures. Replication of these findings with longer time-series is needed

Reflections on psychological resilience:a comparison of three conceptually different operationalizations in predicting mental health

BACKGROUND: Psychological resilience refers to the ability to maintain mental health or recover quickly after stress. Despite the popularity of resilience research, there is no consensus understanding or operationalization of resilience. OBJECTIVE: We plan to compare three indicators of resilience that each involve a different operationalization of the construct: a) General resilience or one’s self-reported general ability to overcome adversities; b) Daily resilience as momentarily experienced ability to overcome adversities; and c) Recovery speed evident in the pattern of negative affect recovery after small adversities in daily life. These three indicators are constructed per person to investigate their cross-sectional associations, stability over time, and predictive validity regarding mental health. METHODS: Data will be derived from the prospective MIRORR study that comprises 96 individuals at different levels of psychosis risk and contains both single-time assessed questionnaires and 90-days intensive longitudinal data collection at baseline (T0) and three yearly follow-up waves (T1–T3). General resilience is assessed using the Brief Resilience Scale (BRS) at baseline. Daily resilience is measured by averaging daily resilience scores across 90 days. For recovery speed, vector-autoregressive models with consecutive impulse response simulations will be applied to diary data on negative affect and daily stressors to calculate pattern of affect recovery. These indicators will be correlated concurrently (at T0) to assess their overlap and prospectively (between T0 and T1) to estimate their stability. Their predictive potential will be assessed by regression analysis with mental health (SCL-90) as an outcome, resilience indicators as predictors, and stressful life events as a moderator. CONCLUSION: The comparison of different conceptualizations of psychological resilience can increase our understanding of its multifaceted nature and, in future, help improve diagnostic, prevention and intervention strategies aimed at increasing psychological resilience

Buffering secondary distress of psychotic experiences

The supplamentary materials for Don’t worry, be happy: Protective factors to buffer against distress associated with psychotic experience

The Crystal Structure of Nα-p-tosyl-lysyl Chloromethylketone-Bound Oligopeptidase B from Serratia Proteamaculans Revealed a New Type of Inhibitor Binding

A covalent serine protease inhibitor—Na-p-Tosyl-Lysyl Chloromethylketone (TCK) is a modified lysine residue tosylated at the N-terminus and chloromethylated at the C-terminus, one molecule of which is capable of forming two covalent bonds with both Ser and His catalytic residues, was co-crystallized with modified oligopeptidase B (OpB) from Serratia proteomaculans (PSPmod). The kinetics study, which preceded crystallization, shows that the stoichiometry of TCK-dependent inhibition of PSPmod was 1:2 (protein:inhibitor). The crystal structure of the PSPmod-TCK complex, solved at a resolution of 2.3 Å, confirmed a new type of inhibitor binding. Two TCK molecules were bound to one enzyme molecule: one with the catalytic Ser, the other with the catalytic His. Due to this mode of binding, the intermediate state of PSPmod and the disturbed conformation of the catalytic triad were preserved in the PSPmod-TCK complex. Nevertheless, the analysis of the amino acid surroundings of the inhibitor molecule bound to the catalytic Ser and its comparison with that of antipain-bound OpB from Trypanosoma brucei provided an insight in the structure of the PSPmod substrate-binding pocket. Supposedly, the new type of binding is typical for the interaction of chloromethylketone derivatives with two-domain OpBs. In the open conformational state that these enzymes are assumed in solution, the disordered configuration of the catalytic triad prevents simultaneous interaction of one inhibitor molecule with two catalytic residues

Don't worry, be happy:Protective factors to buffer against distress associated with psychotic experiences

Background: Around 6–7% of the general population report psychotic experiences (PEs). Positive PEs (e.g. hearing voices) may increase the risk of development of psychotic disorder. An important predictor of the transition to a psychotic disorder is secondary distress associated with PEs. We examined the moderating effect of potential protective factors on this secondary distress. Methods: Data come from 2870 individuals of the HowNutsAreTheDutch study. PEs were assessed with the Community Assessment of Psychic Experience (CAPE) questionnaire and were divided into three subdomains (“Bizarre experiences”, “Delusional ideations”, and “Perceptual anomalies”). Protective factors explored were having a partner, having a pet, benevolent types of humor, optimism and the high levels of personality traits emotional stability (reversed neuroticism), extraversion, openness to experience, conscientiousness, and agreeableness. We examined whether these protective factors moderated (lowered) the association between frequency of PEs and PE-associated distress. Results: Due to low prevalence of perceptual anomalies in the sample, this domain was excluded from analysis. No moderating effects were observed of protective factors on the association between bizarre experiences and distress. Having a partner and high levels of optimism, self-enhancing humor, openness, extraversion and emotional stability moderated the association between delusional ideations and secondary distress, leading to lower levels of distress. Conclusions: Several protective factors were found to moderate the association between frequency and secondary distress of delusional ideations, with high levels of the protective factors being associated with lower levels of distress. A focus on protective factors could be relevant for interventions and prevention strategies regarding psychotic phenomena

New Evidence of the Importance of Weak Interactions in the Formation of PML-bodies

In this work, we performed a comparative study of the formation of PML bodies by full-length PML isoforms and their C-terminal domains in the presence and absence of endogenous PML. Based on the analysis of the distribution of intrinsic disorder predisposition in the amino acid sequences of PML isoforms, regions starting from the amino acid residue 395 (i.e., sequences encoded by exons 4–6) were assigned as the C-terminal domains of these proteins. We demonstrate that each of the full-sized nuclear isoforms of PML is capable of forming nuclear liquid-droplet compartments in the absence of other PML isoforms. These droplets possess dynamic characteristics of the exchange with the nucleoplasm close to those observed in the wild-type cells. Only the C-terminal domains of the PML-II and PML-V isoforms are able to be included in the composition of the endogenous PML bodies, while being partially distributed in the nucleoplasm. The bodies formed by the C-terminal domain of the PML-II isoform are dynamic liquid droplet compartments, regardless of the presence or absence of endogenous PML. The C-terminal domain of PML-V forms dynamic liquid droplet compartments in the knockout cells (PML−/−), but when the C-terminus of the PML-V isoform is inserted into the existing endogenous PML bodies, the molecules of this protein cease to exchange with the nucleoplasm. It was demonstrated that the K490R substitution, which disrupts the PML sumoylation, promotes diffuse distribution of the C-terminal domains of PML-II and PML-V isoforms in endogenous PML knockout HeLa cells, but not in the wild-type cells. These data indicate the ability of the C-terminal domains of the PML-II and PML-V isoforms to form dynamic liquid droplet-like compartments, regardless of the ordered N-terminal RBCC motifs of the PML. This indicates a significant role of the non-specific interactions between the mostly disordered C-terminal domains of PML isoforms for the initiation of liquid–liquid phase separation (LLPS) leading to the formation of PML bodies

Measuring resilience prospectively as the speed of affect recovery in daily life:a complex systems perspective on mental health

Introduction There is growing evidence that mental disorders behave like complex dynamic systems. Complex dynamic systems theory states that a slower recovery from small perturbations indicates a loss of resilience of a system. This study is the first to test whether the speed of recovery of affect states from small daily life perturbations predicts changes in psychopathological symptoms over 1 year in a group of adolescents at increased risk for mental disorders. Methods We used data from 157 adolescents from the TWINSSCAN study. Course of psychopathology was operationalized as the 1-year change in the Symptom Checklist-90 sum score. Two groups were defined: one with stable and one with increasing symptom levels. Time-series data on momentary daily affect and daily unpleasant events were collected 10 times a day for 6 days at baseline. We modeled the time-lagged effect of daily unpleasant events on negative and positive affect after each unpleasant event experienced, to examine at which time point the impact of the events is no longer detectable. Results There was a significant difference between groups in the effect of unpleasant events on negative affect 90 min after the events were reported. Stratified by group, in the Increase group, the effect of unpleasant events on both negative (B = 0.05, p < 0.01) and positive affect (B = - 0. 08, p < 0.01) was still detectable 90 min after the events, whereas in the Stable group this was not the case. Conclusion Findings cautiously suggest that adolescents who develop more symptoms in the following year may display a slower affect recovery from daily perturbations at baseline. This supports the notion that mental health may behave according to the laws of a complex dynamic system. Future research needs to examine whether these dynamic indicators of system resilience may prove valuable for personalized risk assessment in this field