Poster abstracts
Poster number 67 submitted by Athena L. Biggs
Self-Evaluative Ambivalence Predicts Daily Disruption in Depression
Athena L. Biggs (Neuroscience Graduate Program), Nicole Puccetti (Department of Psychiatry ), Patrick Da Silva (Department of Psychiatry)
Abstract:
Background: People with depression experience daily disruptions to their lives, resulting in substantial individual and societal costs. Previous studies show self-evaluation is distorted in depression and associated with these disruptions. Recently, we discovered a novel aspect of self-evaluation that appears aberrant in subjects with depression. Despite people with depression frequently reporting increased spontaneous all-or-nothing thinking, when asked to explicitly evaluate their beliefs about themselves, subjects with increased depression severity were significantly less likely to endorse beliefs strongly than less- and non-depressed subjects, which we call self-evaluation ambivalence (SEA). The aim of this study is to examine whether this increased SEA is associated with daily functioning in subjects across a range of depression severity.
Methods: We recruited two different samples (Sample1(S1), n=97, Sample2(S2), n=47), ranging from non-depressed to severely-depressed subjects. From our previous study, we extracted the mean SEA for each subject. We then used linear regression models to predict daily functioning—daily affect, social engagement (i.e., satisfaction alone and with others), and occupational functioning, as well as life satisfaction—across multiple timepoints.
Results: SEA was negatively associated (main effect) with: positive affect (S1&S2, persisting @12mo in S1), satisfaction around others (S2), satisfaction alone (S1&S2, persisting @12mo in S1), and life satisfaction (S2), regardless of depression severity. SEA and depression severity showed an interaction for negative affect (S1, high depression severity + low SEA = higher negative affect @12mo) and for occupational functioning (S2, high depression severity + low SEA=lower life satisfaction).
Conclusions: Increased ambivalence in subjects with depression predicts daily dysfunction. Improving our knowledge of the mechanisms behind depressive disruptions may help us develop novel treatments.
Keywords: Depression, Cognitive, Self-Evaluation