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Fearful Versus Dismissive Beliefs About Emotion: Divergent Pathways To Non-Acceptance Of Emotion, Natasha Haradhvala Bailen
Fearful Versus Dismissive Beliefs About Emotion: Divergent Pathways To Non-Acceptance Of Emotion, Natasha Haradhvala Bailen
Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations
High non-acceptance of emotion, or the rejection of one’s own emotional experience as bad or unacceptable, is consistently associated with depressive pathology, including elevated depressive symptoms and past and current major depressive (MDD) diagnoses. To progress toward a fuller understanding of non-acceptance and depressive pathology, it is important to identify other associated constructs that could theoretically contribute to this association. Indirect evidence suggests that negative beliefs about emotion—that is, stable underlying negative beliefs about the meaning, value, or consequences of one’s emotions—could be one such factor, as could negative emotion intensity and emotional clarity (or the degree to which one …
Social And Non-Social Pleasure In Schizophrenia: Associations With Negative Symptoms And Depression, Jaisal Merchant
Social And Non-Social Pleasure In Schizophrenia: Associations With Negative Symptoms And Depression, Jaisal Merchant
Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Individuals with schizophrenia can experience both negative and depressive symptoms, which may differentially relate to hedonic experience. Additionally, it is unclear whether these symptoms relate to social pleasure in the same way as overall pleasure. This study used Ecological Momentary Assessment in schizophrenia to investigate the unique relationships of negative and depressive symptoms to anticipatory and consummatory pleasure overall, and when split into social and non-social instances. Depressive symptoms negatively related to both anticipatory and consummatory pleasure, while negative symptoms negatively related to anticipatory but not consummatory pleasure. Although negative symptoms negatively related to both anticipatory and consummatory non-social pleasure, …
Decision-Making Difficulty In Major Depression: Understanding Indecisiveness And The Role Of Expected Affect, Haijing Wu Hallenbeck
Decision-Making Difficulty In Major Depression: Understanding Indecisiveness And The Role Of Expected Affect, Haijing Wu Hallenbeck
Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Decision-making difficulty is a prevalent symptom among individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD). Decision-making difficulty has been found to be pervasive across different areas of decision-making in current MDD; however, its exact nature for some areas (e.g., indecisiveness) is not well characterized, and the extent to which it is a scar of MDD is not determined. Furthermore, affective disturbances (e.g., in expected affect) have been theorized to contribute to decision-making difficulty in MDD, but empirical studies are needed to test this theory. In my two-study dissertation on depression, Study 1 focused on the dimensionality and validity of indecisiveness, and Study …
Personalized Models Of Social Anxiety Disorder And Depression, Marilyn L. Piccirillo
Personalized Models Of Social Anxiety Disorder And Depression, Marilyn L. Piccirillo
Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is an important risk factor for major depressive disorder (MDD) and together this comorbidity constitutes a highly impairing syndrome and vicious cycle of symptomatology, associated with tremendous health costs and societal burden. Despite much group-level research examining risk factor for MDD specifically, there is limited group and individual-level research evaluating how individuals with SAD transition into depressive episodes. Clinical and theoretical evidence suggests that each patient may exhibit a unique personalized pattern of risk factors. These idiographic patterns may contradict relationships seen at the group level. In this dissertation, women (N = 35) with SAD and …
Neuroticism And Stressful Life Events: Probing Mechanisms Underlying Vulnerability To Stress-Related Depression, Erin Bondy
Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Elevated neuroticism (N) potentiates the depressogenic effects of stressful life events (SLEs). We first replicate this association using longitudinal data (N=971 older adults) from the St. Louis Personality and Aging Network (SPAN) study. Here, SLEs prospectively predicted future depressive symptoms, especially among those reporting elevated N, even after accounting for prior depressive symptoms and previous SLE exposure (NxSLE interaction: p=0.016, ΔR2=0.003). These findings were further replicated in cross-sectional analyses of the Duke Neurogenetics Study (DNS), a young adult college sample with neuroimaging data (n=1,343: NxSLE interaction: p=0.019, ΔR2=0.003). Because evidence suggests that stress may promote depression …
Emotion Differentiation Moderates The Effects Of Rumination On Depression: A Longitudinal Study, Yunjing Liu
Emotion Differentiation Moderates The Effects Of Rumination On Depression: A Longitudinal Study, Yunjing Liu
Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Elevated trait rumination is associated with and predicts the onset of major depressive disorder (MDD), but not all people with elevated trait rumination develop MDD. We hypothesize that certain emotional processes weaken the rumination-depression link, protecting people against increases in depression. In the current prospective longitudinal study, we examined one such process, emotion differentiation—the ability to identify and label specific emotions. Because higher negative emotion differentiation (NED) has been associated with greater psychological well-being and people typically ruminate in the context of negative affect, we predicted that NED, but not positive emotion differentiation (PED), would moderate the rumination-depression association, such …
Parsing The Blues: What Depression Reveals About The Life Well-Lived, Ian Tully
Parsing The Blues: What Depression Reveals About The Life Well-Lived, Ian Tully
Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation explores the way depression illuminates –and is illuminated by – certain aspects of moral philosophy. I begin by defending, in chapter one, a cognitive theory of one important subtype of depression. The subsequent chapters then investigate what depression can teach us about the nature of well- (and ill-) being, and about the nature of moral virtue. In chapter two I ask ‘what makes depression bad for us?’ and go on to argue that reflection upon this question shows that desire-based theories of welfare are false. Then, in the next chapter, I provide a (partial) answer to that question, …
Preschool Executive Function Predicts Childhood Resting State Functional Connectivity And Adhd And Depression, Elizabeth Hawkey
Preschool Executive Function Predicts Childhood Resting State Functional Connectivity And Adhd And Depression, Elizabeth Hawkey
Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Background: Measures of executive function (EF), such as the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function, distinguish children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) from control children, but less work has examined relationships to depression or brain network organization. This study examined whether early childhood EF predicted a new onset or worsening of ADHD and/or depression, and examined how early childhood EF related to functional connectivity of brain networks at school age. Methods: Participants were 247 children, enrolled at ages 3-6, from a prospective study of emotion development. The BRIEF Global Executive Composite (BRIEF-GEC) was used as the measure of EF in early …
Rostral Middle Frontal Gyrus Thickness Is Associated With Perceived Stress And Depressive Symptomatology, Lindsay J. Michalski
Rostral Middle Frontal Gyrus Thickness Is Associated With Perceived Stress And Depressive Symptomatology, Lindsay J. Michalski
Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Elevated stress perception and depression commonly co-occur and have shared genetic and environmental influences, suggesting they may rest upon a common underlying neurobiology. The rostral middle frontal gyrus (RMFG), part of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, is critical for executive function, including emotion regulation and working memory. Variability in RMFG cortical thickness has been associated with both depression and stress-related phenotypes, although the directionality of these associations has been inconsistent thus far. The current study examined healthy participants (n=879) who completed the ongoing family-based Human Connectome Project were included in analyses. RMFG cortical thickness was computed from structural magnetic resonance imaging …
Suicide Attempts From Adolescence Into Young Adulthood: A System Dynamics Perspective For Intervention And Prevention, Saras Yu Chung
Suicide Attempts From Adolescence Into Young Adulthood: A System Dynamics Perspective For Intervention And Prevention, Saras Yu Chung
Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Though the reduction of suicide-related deaths has been a national priority for over a decade (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2001) and over $22 million per year (National Institutes of Health, 2015) have been invested to prevent suicide, rates of suicide have not declined (CDC, 2012). In fact, for some groups of adolescents, these rates seem to be on the ride (Wasserman, Cheng, & Jiang, 2005). The ineffectiveness in reducing deaths by suicide despite increased funding and coordinated efforts suggests the need for a new perspective on examining why and how adolescents begin to desire and attempt suicide …
Eye Contact And Social Anxiety Disorder, Julia Kane Langer
Eye Contact And Social Anxiety Disorder, Julia Kane Langer
Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations
The psychoevolutionary theory of social anxiety disorder (SAD) predicts that individuals with SAD will avoid eye contact to communicate submissiveness. However, direct testing of gaze avoidance in individuals with higher social anxiety through behavioral observation or measurement has produced mixed findings. The goals of this dissertation are to test one of the components of the psychoevolutionary theory, namely, that gaze avoidance is employed by people with SAD, as well as to test whether positive affect may play a role in regulating gaze avoidance. Specifically, based on prior research supporting the role of positive affect in regulating exploratory behavior, I hypothesized …
Patient Perceptions Of Comorbid Depression In Heart Disease, Rebecca Lynn Reese Akcakaya
Patient Perceptions Of Comorbid Depression In Heart Disease, Rebecca Lynn Reese Akcakaya
All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)
Depression is a risk factor for the development of heart disease, as well as for poor prognosis among patients with existing disease. However, clinical trials of treatment of depression in patients with heart disease have not resulted in improved cardiac outcomes, and have demonstrated modest effects on depression. The nature of depression in heart patients must be better understood in order to improve treatment and health outcomes. In samples of patients with medical illness as well as in patients with depression, illness perceptions have been useful in predicting both treatment outcomes and self-management behaviors such as coping and adherence. This …