Análisis de contenido de constructos personales en la depresión / Content analysis of personal constructs in depression
Salud ment
;
32(5): 371-379, sep.-oct. 2009. tab
Article
in Spanish
|
LILACS-Express
| LILACS
| ID: lil-632652
ABSTRACT
Kelly's Personal Construct Psychology (PCP) proposes that attributing meaning to experience is the most fundamental process of human psychological functioning. He describes psychological activity as a continuous process of creating, testing and revising personal theories (usually implicit) that allow people to understand and anticipate events. Personal constructs are the basic units of these personal theories. Constructs are bipolar contrasts of meaning that form an evolving network through which psychological processes are canalized. This system provides with a limited number of alternative views for explaining, anticipating and participating in life. One of the most significant contributions to psychological research made by PCP concerns the possibility to develop tools for the study of subjective construing. The Role Construct Repertory Grid (RepGrid) has been extensively used to explore the view subjects have of themselves, others and their problems. This technique elicits a sample of verbal descriptions of contrasting alternatives, his or her personal constructs; and provides several measures of self construing (e.g., self-esteem) and systems organization (e.g., complexity). Several authors point out the utility and pertinence of exploring the construct system in the evaluation of depressive disorders. They show the interest of studying the construct systems of depressive patients in order to measure some aspects that symptom and standard cognitive measures of cognitive distortions do not take into account. Depressive mood is highly influenced by the subject's view of him or herself and others, and by the organization of his or her constructs. However, the content of these personal constructs has received far less attention from researchers. The main goal of this article is to complement the PCP model of depression through the content analysis of personal constructs. In contrast with traditional content analysis, we do not evaluate the valency of the content but the principal meaning dimensions through which depressive people describe their interpersonal experience. According to PCP and other cognitive approaches, we hypothesize that the contents of the construct systems in the depressive sample are different from those of the control group. Specifically, we believe that the depressive group will show a higher number of constructs related to emotions and morality. The present study was carried out with 53 patients seeking psychological treatment in various private clinics in Barcelona who met DSM-IV criteria for depressive unipolar disorders. The non-clinical comparison group (n= 53), paired by sex and age with the clinical one, included volunteers recruited by graduate and undergraduate students from the University of Barcelona as part of their practical experience with the RepGrid, after receiving specific training in its administration. To compare the pattern of the construct system of both groups, we categorized the content of the personal constructs elicited with the RepGrid using the Classification System for Personal Constructs (SCCP) developed by Feixas et al. The SCCP is composed of six thematic areas (moral, emotional, relational, personal, intellectual, and values/interests) broken down into 45 different categories. Inter-rater agreement was used to determine the reliability of the SCCP. The results were very satisfactory regarding the percentage of agreement between judges. Cohen's Kappa coefficient confirmed the high level of reliability of the SCCP, which was higher than that obtained in previous studies. Data provides evidence of the differences in content frequency distributions between the clinical and non-clinical groups. People from the depressive sample tend to use more constructs related to emotions and less to intellectual issues. The depressive group showed more constructs within certain specific categories such as <RESUMEN
Desde el marco de la Psicología de los Constructos Personales (PCP) de Kelly, es posible estudiar de forma sistemática la construcción subjetiva que las personas hacen de sí mismas y de sus problemas. Feixas et al., destacan la pertinencia del estudio de los sistemas de construcción en la evaluación del trastorno depresivo puesto que miden aspectos que no son suficientemente valorados por las medidas cognitivas estándar sobre los síntomas y las distorsiones cognitivas. La mayoría de los trabajos sobre la depresión basados en la PCP se han centrado en las características estructurales, en cambio los aspectos del contenido han recibido menor interés. El propósito de este estudio es realizar un análisis de contenido de los constructos personales en la depresión. Actualmente no existe ningún estudio que haya explorado de forma sistemática las dimensiones de contenido más significativas para esta población. En concordancia con la PCP y otros enfoques cognitivos, hipotetizamos que el contenido de los sistemas de construcción de la muestra depresiva es distinto al de la población normal. En concreto, creemos que la población clínica presenta mayor frecuencia de constructos de tipo moral y emocional en comparación con la muestra no clínica. Para poder poner a prueba estas hipótesis se analizaron los constructos de 106 sujetos, con edades comprendidas entre los 19 y los 57 años, divididos en dos grupos, un grupo clínico (n = 53) de personas diagnosticadas con alguna modalidad depresiva unipolar y otro grupo no clínico (n = 53). Categorizamos el contenido de los constructos elicitados con la técnica de rejilla por medio del Sistema de Categorías de Constructos Personales (SCCP) desarrollado por Feixas et al. El SCCP es un sistema de clasificación compuesto por un total de seis áreas temáticas (moral, emocional, relacional, personal, intelectual y valores e intereses) que se desglosan en 45 categorías para codificar el contenido de los constructos personales. Los principales resultados muestran que existen diferencias significativas entre las distribuciones de frecuencias del contenido de ambas poblaciones. Las personas con depresión (PD) utilizan significativamente más constructos de tipo emocional, y menos de tipo intelectual. Además, en comparación a la muestra normal, los depresivos muestran mayor número de constructos en las categorías <
Full text:
Available
Index:
LILACS (Americas)
Type of study:
Prognostic study
Language:
Spanish
Journal:
Salud ment
Journal subject:
Psychiatry
Year:
2009
Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Spain
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