Everyday emotional dynamics in major depression.

Abstract

The present study aimed to investigate the everyday emotional dynamics of depressed individuals, especially the role of emotional inertia, emotional context insensitivity, and emotional variability and instability. Using ecological momentary assessment, 40 currently depressed individuals and 40 healthy controls reported on their current emotional state and current activities 10 times a day for 4 consecutive days. There were no differences in the dynamics of positive affect (PA) between depressed and healthy subjects. Depressed participants' negative affect (NA), however, was found to be more inert than in healthy controls, while at the same time being more variable and more reactive to positive events. There was also an association between emotional instability and depression, but this was rendered nonsignificant when analyses were controlled for emotional variability. Altogether, emotional dynamics of NA appear to be more prominently disturbed in depression compared to PA. Results support earlier findings on NA emotional variability as well as inertia in depressed patients. In addition, there was some evidence for a mood brightening effect in depression.

The Use of Digitally Assessed Stress Levels to Model Change Processes in CBT - A Feasibility Study on Seven Case Examples

“…These results, even so on a very limited database, are in line with previous studies that examined inertia of positive and negative affect and found higher levels of inertia to be associated with higher levels of psychological impairment, e.g., in depression and lower self-esteem as well as the onset of future symptoms (20,21,57). Inertia of emotional resistance has been identified as a potential candidate for an early warning signal for change in depressive symptoms (19).…”

“…For instance, higher levels of inertia in both positive and negative affect have been found to be associated with depression and lower self-esteem (20). Furthermore, Nelson et al (21) found higher levels of inertia in negative affect in depressed patients than in healthy controls.…”

Early warning signals in psychopathology: what do they tell?

“…We specified a multilevel model 2 to evaluate whether autocorrelations in affective states were related to increases in symptom severity. A similar model has been used by earlier studies [4,23,24,26,27,41,42]. In this model, the momentary affect rating (e.g., feeling down) of individual i belonging to twin-pair j at time t (affect tij ) was predicted by the individual's mean-centered affect rating at time t-1 (affect t − 1ij − μ i ), the individual's increase in psychopathological symptoms from baseline to follow-up (P i ), and an interaction term between symptom increases and the lagged person-mean centered affect rating (P i × (affect t − 1ij − μ i )).…”

“…In line with recommendations of [43] and earlier studies [41,[44][45][46][47], affect ratings at time t-1 were personmean centered in order to ensure that parameters in the model were not affected by between-person differences in mean affect. Further, the first rating for each day was coded as missing in order to avoid autocorrelations that spanned a whole night rather than a few hours (cf.…”

Experienced Burden of and Adherence to Smartphone-Based Ecological Momentary Assessment in Persons with Affective Disorders

“…In recent decades, we have witnessed a surge in research acknowledging the importance of real-life context and diurnal variation of affective states in persons with affective disorders [1][2][3][4]. Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) is a valuable addition to the traditional methods of studying these dynamics [5][6][7][8].…”