The characteristics of affective intensity and cognitive emotion regulation in borderline personality disorder / 中华行为医学与脑科学杂志

Objective To examine the characteristics of affective intensity and cognitive emotion regulation in subjects with borderline personality disorder ( BPD) . Methods The BPD subscale of personal-ity disorder questionnaire( PDQ-4+) was used to assess the BPD symptoms,the short affective intensity scale (SAIS) and cognitive emotion regulation questionnaire (CERQ) were used to measure affect intensity and cognitive emotion regulation strategy,respectively. 765 subjects with BPD and 776 healthy controls were se-lected. The independent-samples t test was used to analyze the differences between BPD group and controls and logistic regression analysis was used to examine the related factors affecting the BPD. Results Com-pared with the control group(negative intensity:(3.08±0.66),negative coping dimension:(37.20±5.94), BPD group got higher scores in negative intensity((3.88±0.74), t=22.29, P0.8)and negative coping dimension((44.77±6.36), t=24.16, P0.8). The logistic regression anal-ysis showed that negative intensity(B=1.38,Exp(B)=3.97,95%CI for EXP(B):3.15~5.00, P<0.01) and negative cognitive regulations strategy(B=0.19,Exp(B)=1.21,95% CI:1.18-1.25, P<0.01) could affect the prevalence of BPD. Conclusion Subjects with BPD traits have more significant negative affective inten-sity and tend to use negative cognitive regulations strategy.

Efficacy of cognitive behavioral therapy for middle school student's unprotected sex: A randomized controlled trial / 中国心理卫生杂志

Objective:To evaluate the efficacy of individualized cognitive behavioral therapy for unprotected sex and sexual attitude of middle school students having unprotected sex.Methods:A target sample of 68 adolescents having unprotected sex was recruited from 4 secondary schools in Changsha,Hunan [the unprotected sex (US) score of Health-Risk Behavior Inventory for Chinese Adolescents (HBICA) ≥ 1].Subjects were randomized assigned to cognitive behavioral therapy group (CBT group) and control group.Each group had 34 subjects.The CBT group was giving one-on-one counseling for 6 weeks (50 to 60 minutes weekly).The control group didn't receive intervention by counselors.The US and Attitudes Toward Sexuality Scale (ATSS) were selected as criterion measurements.Outcome assessments were made at baseline and at 1-and 3-month follow-up.Results:The reduction rate of US scores showed that the response rate of therapy was over 80％.Mixed linear model analysis showed that there were significant group effect,time effect and group × time effect in scores of US and ATSS (Ps ＜ 0.05).Simple effect analysis indicated that the scores of US and ATSS of CBT group were significant lower than those of baseline from 1-month follow-up [(2.2 ± 2.9) vs.(4.7 ± 3.1),(3.2 ± 1.6) vs.(4.7 ± 3.1);(38.2 ± 4.9) vs.(40.9 ±5.1),(37.2 ±5.4) vs.(40.9 ±5.1),Ps ＜0.01],whereas the scores of those in the control group did not show any significant difference (Ps ＞0.05).At l-month and 3 month follow-up,moderate effect sizes were found for the CBT and control groups on all the outcome measures (Cohen's d =0.50-0.70).Conclusion:The individualized cognitive behavioral therapy could effectively reduce the level of unprotected sex and sexual attitude of adolescents having unprotected sex.

Insecure attachment as a predictor of depressive and anxious symptomology.

BACKGROUND: Most studies have shown that insecure attachment and stress are important risk factors in the development of depression and anxiety. However, it is unclear whether distinct patterns of insecure attachment may relate differently to depression and anxiety following stressful events. Thus, the current study examined whether anxious and avoidant attachment, both of which are operationalized as insecure attachment, predict depressive and anxious symptoms following the occurrence of hassles. METHOD: A sample of 662 Chinese university students was recruited from Hunan, China. At the initial assessment, participants completed self-report measures assessing insecure attachment (i.e. anxious and avoidant attachment), hassles, anxious symptoms, and depressive symptoms. Additionally, hassles and symptoms of anxiety and depression were assessed once a month for the subsequent 6 months. RESULTS: The results of hierarchical linear modeling analyses indicated a significant interaction between anxious attachment and hassles in predicting follow-up depressive symptoms. Specifically, participants with high levels of anxious, but not avoidant, attachment reported high levels of depressive symptoms when experiencing high, as opposed to low, levels of hassles. At the same time, while both anxious and avoidant attachment predicted higher levels of anxious symptoms over time, a cross-level, significant interaction did not emerge. CONCLUSIONS: Insecure attachment styles serve as a vulnerability factor in the development of depressive and anxious symptoms in Chinese young adults. Consequently, fostering the development of secure attachment in prevention and intervention programs may, ultimately, prevent the onset and maintenance of depressive and anxious disorders.

Elevated amygdala activity to negative faces in young adults with early onset major depressive disorder.

Abnormalities in amygdala activity have been implicated in adolescents and older adults with major depressive disorder (MDD), but few studies have focused on young adults with early-onset MDD. In this study, we measured amygdala activity in 27 young adults with early-onset MDD and 25 healthy controls (HC) using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with an emotional processing task. Both groups showed significant bilateral activation within the amygdala to threat-related facial expressions. In the matching face task, the activations of the left amygdala, thalamus, prefrontal and temporal cortex were significantly greater while the activation of the right prefrontal was significantly lower for the MDD group compared with the HC group. For the MDD group, there was a significant positive correlation between the activity of the amygdala and scores on the Chinese version of the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale. Overall, our findings suggest that young adults with early-onset MDD may be characterized by abnormalities in nodes along the fronto-limbic pathways when facing threat-related facial expression.

The difference among the depression-like behaviours induced by three widely-used stress models in rats / 中华行为医学与脑科学杂志

Objective In order to study the difference of depression-like behaviours among three widelyused stress models in rats.Methods The new-born Spragne-Dawley rats were randomly divided into maternal deprivation(MD) group(n=27),chronic mild stress(CMS) group (n=29),dual stress(DS) group ( n=31 ) and control (C) group ( n =30) on postnatal day 1.MD rats only received maternal deprivation.CMS rats only received chronic mild stress when 10 weeks old.DS rats received both maternal deprivation and chronic mild stress.Control rats received no experimental handling.Behavior tests including forced swimming test and sucrose consumption which were carried out to evaluate rats' depression-like behaviors in the thirteenth weeks.The extend time of floating and sucrose preference ratio should be recorded in the forced swimming test and sucrose consumption test respectively to reflect the behavior of helplessness and anhedonia of rats.Results In the forced swimming test,the extend floating time of MD group( 119.30 ± 65.56) s,CMS group ( 145.00 ± 80.24) s and DS group ( 170.03 ±61.75 )s were longer than the control group(81.14 ± 52.40)s (F =11.53,P ＜ 0.01 ).In the sucrose consumption test,the MD group(0.32 ± 0.22) had a low sucrose consumption.The comparison of the MD group and CMS group (0.43 ± 0.28 ) to the control group (0.54 ± 0.28 ) had significant differences (F =4.33,P ＜ 0.01 ).In these four groups,no sexual difference was found in the forced swimming test and sucrose consumption test ( all P ＞ 0.05 ).Conclusion The results suggest that MD,CMS and DS may induce some kind of depression-like behaviors in rodents such as anhedonia or the behavior of helplessness and the depression-like behaviors induced by different stresses are similar in male and female individuals.

Do the early attentional components of ERPs reflect attentional bias in depression? It depends on the stimulus presentation time.

OBJECTIVE: The study aimed to utilize behavioral and electrophysiological data to investigate whether depressed patients show an attentional bias in a task that allows for explicit insight into the time course of selective attention processes. METHODS: Event-related potentials (ERPs) were collected from 24 patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) and 25 never-depressed individuals (ND) during a dot-probe task, using pairs of affectively valenced pictures as cues. Cue presentation time was either 100 ms or 500 ms. RESULTS: When the cue presentation time was 500 ms, bias scores for positive-neutral picture pairs (POS-NEU) were negative for the MDD group and positive for the ND group which means ND individuals were able to successfully select positive information. These behavioral effects were supported by ERP results. In the ND group, at the right parietal-occipital region, P1 amplitude during valid POS-NEU pairs was significantly larger than that during invalid POS-NEU pairs; this pattern did not appear in the MDD group. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that MDD patients are characterized by a deficit in protection bias, meaning that these participants cannot avoid attending to negative information in their environment, but only when negative stimuli are presented for a sufficient period of time. SIGNIFICANCE: Attentional bias is modulated by duration of emotional pictures presentation in depression.

Characteristics of Affective Priming Effect in Alexithymics / 中国心理卫生杂志

Objective: Alexithymics have difficulty in identifying and describing feelings to other people. The purpose of this study is to investigate the characteristics of affective priming effects of alexithymics and examine their deficit of emotional automatic processing. Method: 23 alexithymics and 23 non-alexithymics were screened out in university students, they were required to judge whether the target pictures were positive or negative as soon as possible while prime pictures were supraliminally or subliminally presented. The correct rates and the mean response latencies were subjected to ANOVA with repeated measures. Result:In both supraliminal and subliminal affective priming tasks, the mean response latencies were significantly longer for affectively incongruent trials, as compared to those for affectively congruent and control trials. The correct rates for affectively incongruent trials were the lowest.Subjects were relatively slower to respond to positive target pictures than to negative target pictures(96.9%/95.3%,97.6%/95.8%).In subliminal affective priming task, there were no differences of correct rates and latencies between alexithymics and nonalexithymics. In supraliminal priming task, the latency of alexithymics was longer than that of nonalexithymics (536.3ms/496.4ms). Conclusion: Alexithymics have deficit in automatic processing for emotional information they are aware of, but not for those can not be aware.