Association of different adverse life events with distinct patterns of depressive symptoms

Objective: The authors sought to determine whether, in a general population sample, different categories of adverse life events were associated with different patterns of depressive symptoms. Method: A total of 4,856 individuals (53% female) who experienced depressive symptoms in the previous year were assessed in up to four waves over a maximum of 12 years. At each wave, participants reported the severity of 12 symptoms disaggregated from the nine DSM-III-R criteria for major depression and the self-identified cause of these symptoms, which were classified into nine categories of adverse life events. Results: The patterns of de pressive symptoms associated with the nine categories of adverse life events differed significantly. Deaths of loved ones and romantic breakups were marked by high levels of sadness, anhedonia, appetite loss, and (for romantic breakups) guilt. Chronic stress and, to a lesser degree, failures were associated with fatigue and hypersomnia, but less so with sadness, anhedonia, and appetite loss. Those who reported that no adverse life events caused their dysphoric episodes reported fatigue, appetite gain, and thoughts of self-harm, but less sadness or trouble concentrating. These symptom patterns were found in a between-persons analysis of participants who had a single dysphoric episode, and they were replicated in an independent within-persons analysis of episode-specific symptom deviations among individuals with multiple episodes. Similar results were obtained when the sample was restricted to those meeting DSM-III-R diagnostic criteria for major depression. Conclusions: Depression is a pathoplastic syndrome. Different types of life events are related to different depressive symptom profiles. The results from the withinpersons analysis suggest that these relationships are causal. A central question in psychiatry has been whether variation in causal factors is related to variation in clinical presentation. While aspects of a syndrome may be central or core (pathogenic), other aspects may be pathoplastic, differing as a function of personal or precipitating factors (1). Much of the debate over the nosology of major depression-the "unitary" (2) versus "pluralistic" (3) viewpoints-can be seen as attempts to understand the pathogenic and pathoplastic nature of depression. What aspects of depression are invariant across individuals and across episodes within individuals, and what, if any, aspects depend on factors specific to the individual or episode? Attempts to understand this latter issue generally focus on differences in symptom profiles, precipitating causes, or both (4). The two most common subdivisions of major depression, melancholic (or endogenous) depression and atypical depression, are based on depressive symptom profiles that are thought to reflect stable interpersonal differences in how depression is manifested in different people. Similarly, diathesis-stress models suggest that distinct symptom profiles arise from interactions between specific cognitive styles and adverse life events (ALEs) to which people with the predisposing cognitive style are particularly vulnerable (5, 6). Both approaches predict that differences in depressive symptoms between episodes are due to stable interpersonal differences and that the symptom profiles of multiple episodes in an individual should be similar. However, several recent studies have found only modest stability in symptom profiles across episodes in the same individual (7-9), which raises the possibility that some of the differences in depressive symptoms across episodes are caused by situational factors. Research on college students (10, 11) has shown relationships between broad ALE categories and distinct depressive symptom patterns. Social losses, such as deaths of loved ones and romantic breakups, were associated with more emotional pain, crying, desire for social support, and appetite loss. Wintertime blues were associated with symptoms typical of seasonal affective disorder. Failures and chronic stress were associated with more guilt, hopelessness, and fatigue

Co-operation in Drug Treatment Services: Views of Offenders on Court Orders in Scotland

Accessing client perspectives about cooperation in substance misuse treatment offers important information to enhance services and improve drop-out rates. This article reports upon qualitative data from a localized study of service needs of offenders in Scotland who were undertaking community-based court orders. The views of 27 men and 2 women on their current and recent treatment offers rich insights into factors influencing their cooperation in treatment. In contradiction to the voluntaristic ideology of treatment services, their voices identify the criminal justice system as offering strong support in the completion of treatment programmes

Whole-genome sequencing reveals host factors underlying critical COVID-19

Critical COVID-19 is caused by immune-mediated inflammatory lung injury. Host genetic variation influences the development of illness requiring critical care1 or hospitalization2,3,4 after infection with SARS-CoV-2. The GenOMICC (Genetics of Mortality in Critical Care) study enables the comparison of genomes from individuals who are critically ill with those of population controls to find underlying disease mechanisms. Here we use whole-genome sequencing in 7,491 critically ill individuals compared with 48,400 controls to discover and replicate 23 independent variants that significantly predispose to critical COVID-19. We identify 16 new independent associations, including variants within genes that are involved in interferon signalling (IL10RB and PLSCR1), leucocyte differentiation (BCL11A) and blood-type antigen secretor status (FUT2). Using transcriptome-wide association and colocalization to infer the effect of gene expression on disease severity, we find evidence that implicates multiple genes—including reduced expression of a membrane flippase (ATP11A), and increased expression of a mucin (MUC1)—in critical disease. Mendelian randomization provides evidence in support of causal roles for myeloid cell adhesion molecules (SELE, ICAM5 and CD209) and the coagulation factor F8, all of which are potentially druggable targets. Our results are broadly consistent with a multi-component model of COVID-19 pathophysiology, in which at least two distinct mechanisms can predispose to life-threatening disease: failure to control viral replication; or an enhanced tendency towards pulmonary inflammation and intravascular coagulation. We show that comparison between cases of critical illness and population controls is highly efficient for the detection of therapeutically relevant mechanisms of disease

Bibliography on hydrological applications of weather radar in the United Kingdom. Eighth edition (publications notified up to December 2011)

This bibliography of UK publications in the field of hydrological applications of weather radar is an update of the one produced in 2009. It has been compiled by the Inter-Agency Committee on the Hydrological Use of Weather Radar, with the help of the NERC Centre for Ecology & Hydrology at Wallingford. The Committee was originally established to provide a forum to foster links between organisations and individuals with expertise in the use of weather radar for hydrological purposes, in particular the users and the research community, and promote additional research and international contacts. The Committee's terms of reference and membership information can be found in Appendices to this document. This 8th edition includes papers from the International Symposium on “Weather Radar and Hydrology” (www.wrah2011.org), published as an IAHS Red Book conference proceedings (IAHS Publ. 351, iahs.info/redbooks/351.htm)

Inter-Agency Committee on the Hydrological Use of Weather Radar. Eighth report 2010 to 2012

As with the previous session report, we open reflecting on a period of significant UK flooding. The Summer and Autumn 2012 floods are still very fresh in the memory of those who have been trying to manage and respond to these events and for some the impacts are still affecting daily lives. Initial estimates indicate that the 2012 summer floods affected 2,700 properties with 70,000 properties receiving flood warnings. No doubt these damages estimates will increase as further information is gathered. However, what has changed from the previous 2007 to 2010 session has been the further development of meteorological and hydrological forecasting approaches and the emergence of hydrometeorology capabilities across England, Wales and Scotland to help improve prediction of these types of events. Radar continues to play an important role in flood risk and water management and the application of emerging science is the focus of this report. At the beginning of this current session, the Committee were keen to promote ways to influence the greater use of weather radar by operating agencies and to highlight areas of improvement and research in support of the user community. Specifically, the Committee wanted to explore various service and system developments, understand various ongoing research areas and their application for hydrology and water management, and promote the role of radar in flood risk management. Section 3 of the Committee report highlights research needs and presents the considerable range of ongoing science developments across various research groups. The approaches to raingauge-radar merging and data assimilation of radar data for Numerical Weather Prediction are presented as are the requirements from an established hydrological and emerging water management community. The requirement to provide forecasting capabilities for the whole of the country and for longer lead times was driven as an outcome of the Pitt Review. In Section 4, the efforts of some agencies in developing these capabilities are presented with emphasis on the development of countrywide grid-based hydrological models. In addition, Section 4 reflects on the largest upgrade to the UK radar network in its 30 year history and the introduction of significant radar capabilities that will benefit the user community once completed. Section 5 presents what has been the main focal point for the Committee’s attention during the session period. Following the Committee’s successful bid to host the International Symposium on Weather Radar and Hydrology, most of the Committee have been in some way involved in the successful delivery of this major event. Held over four days at the University of Exeter, this was the 8th in the symposium series and attracted over 250 international delegates. It is worth highlighting that following the organisation of Weather Radar and Hydrology 2011, the International Association of Hydrological Sciences has now published the conference proceedings as part of their Red Book series. The volume brings together over 100 peer-reviewed papers from the symposium providing a valuable record of the current activity in this field. Finally, the appendices to this session report provide an overview of the UK academic and operational agency activity in this sector

Regime Switching Modeling of Substance Use: Time-Varying and Second-Order Markov Models and Individual Probability Plots

A linear latent growth curve mixture model with regime switching is extended in 2 ways. Previously, the matrix of first-order Markov switching probabilities was specified to be time-invariant, regardless of the pair of occasions being considered. The first extension, time-varying transitions, specifies different Markov transition matrices between each pair of occasions. The second extension is second-order time-invariant Markov transition probabilities, such that the probability of switching depends on the states at the 2 previous occasions. The models are implemented using the R package OpenMx, which facilitates data handling, parallel computation, and further model development. It also enables the extraction and display of relative likelihoods for every individual in the sample. The models are illustrated with previously published data on alcohol use observed on 4 occasions as part of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, and demonstrate improved fit to the data

Pronoun resolution in skilled and less-skilled comprehenders: Effects of memory load and inferential complexity

This paper reports two experiments that investigate skilled and less-skilled compre-henders' ability to understand pronouns. In the first experiment, the less-skilled group made more errors in answering questions about pronoun antecedents than did the skilled group, even when there was a gender cue to the correct referent, and when the clause containing the referents was available for them to refer back to. In the second experiment, the pronoun antecedents always differed in gender, and the children's attention was drawn to the pronominal link by requiring them to provide a pronoun appropriate to the sentence, before they answered a question about it. The difficulty of the pronoun resolution was manipulated by varying the inferential complexity of the pronoun-anaphor link. In both tasks, the difference between the groups was larger when a complex inference was required than when only a simple inference was needed. We conclude that the less-skilled comprehenders' difficulty in resolving pronouns may arise in part because they do not attend properly to cues such as gender of referent, and in particular because they have difficulty drawing necessary inferences, especially when the inferential processing is at all complex. The implications of these results for remediation are discusse