The perinatal period is a high-risk time for mood deterioration among women vulnerable to depression. This study examined feasibility, acceptability, and improvement associated with mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) in perinatal women with major depressive disorder (MDD) or bipolar spectrum disorder (BSD). Following a diagnostic evaluation, 39 perinatal women with a lifetime history of MDD (n = 27) or BSD (n = 12) enrolled in an 8-week program of MBCT classes (2 h each) that incorporated meditation, yoga, and mood regulation strategies. Participants were pregnant (n = 12), planning pregnancy (n = 11), or up to 1-year postpartum (n = 16). Participants were self-referred and most had subthreshold mood symptoms. Assessments of depression, (hypo)mania, and anxiety were obtained by interview and self-report at baseline, post-treatment and at 1-and 6-month post-treatment. Women with a history of MDD were more likely to complete the classes than women with BSD. Of 32 women who completed the classes, 7 (21.9 %) had a major depressive episode during the 6-month posttreatment follow-up. On average, participants with MDD reported improvements in depression from pre-to post-treatment. Mood improvement was not observed in the BSD group. In the full sample, improvements in depression symptoms across time points were associated with increasing mindful tendency scores. This study was limited by its uncontrolled design, heterogeneous sample, and questionnairebased assessment of mindfulness skills. MBCT may be an important component of care for perinatal women with histories of major depression. Its applicability to perinatal women with BSD is unclear.
Treatment of SAD appears to be moving toward individual CBT, partly because of high attrition rates and underutilization of group dynamics in group CBT. However, group therapy has unique therapeutic ingredients, and it may be too early to give up on group treatment altogether. Discussion of these findings included future directions with this treatment modality, especially whether these two types of group treatment could be combined and whether such combination might serve to decrease attrition, enhance efficacy, and facilitate dissemination.
The article reports the results of three studies that compare the effects of experiential avoidance and rumination on depression among college students. Study 1 (N = 748) evaluated the cross-sectional association among rumination, experiential avoidance, and depression. Study 2 (N = 887) was a replication of Study 1. In Study 3, a subsample of 72 females was drawn from the larger sample of Study 1. In this prospective, longitudinal study, it was estimated whether rumination and experiential avoidance at Time 1 (the beginning of the semester) predicted depression symptoms 8 to 12 weeks later. When these constructs were measured crosssectionally in Studies 1 and 2, an interaction effect was found between avoidance and rumination; avoidance was only associated with depression symptoms when rumination was high. No interaction was found in the longitudinal study. Neither rumination nor experiential avoidance predicted depression symptoms at Time 2 when depression symptoms at Time 1 were entered as a covariate. These results are discussed with reference to future directions in comparing different dimensions of coping as they relate to depression.
Age-related changes in the neural organization of spatial information are required to account for much of the senescent loss in human scotopic spatial vision, specifically declines in the high spatial frequency cut-off of the contrast sensitivity function and enlargements of the area over which there is complete spatial summation (Ricco's area). These results are consistent with hypothesized enlargements of ganglion cell receptive field centers during adulthood. This hypothesis was tested with 50 subjects (19-88 years) by measuring contrast thresholds for two low spatial frequency gratings (0.3 and 1.2 cycles per degree) at a series of scotopic mean illuminance levels. Contrast sensitivity increased with retinal illuminance and then reached a plateau, corresponding to the onset of Weber-like behavior. No age-related change in the light level associated with the onset of Weber-like behavior was found at either spatial frequency. This result is inconsistent with proposed age-related enlargements of ganglion cell receptive field centers under scotopic conditions.
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