Connection Depression and Affect regulation?
Depression is often characterized as a disorder of affect regulation. Definitions of affect regulation center around processes involved in initiating, maintaining and modulating the occurrence, intensity and duration of affective experiences.
Depressed youth were found to have significantly longer durations, higher frequency and greater intensity when experiencing angry and dysphoric affects and shorter durations and less frequency of happy affect.
Affective processes
reflects the capacity to regulate emotional experiences
The ways in which affects are dysregulated in depression have most often been described in terms of the two fundamental systems
- appetitive versus aversive, that determine the valence of affective states.
- associated with heightened activity and sensitivity of aversive emotional systems and lowered activity and sensitivity of appetitive emotional systems.
The dimensions of frequency, intensity, and duration can be linked to differential neurobiological mechanisms known to be disrupted in depression:
. The affective dimension that has been associated most consistently with depression is duration, especially the failure to sustain positive affects and interrupt negative affects.
- Hypo-activation of left PFC (guide behaviour towards future goals)
- hypoactivity of the left PFC in depression might be associated with a relative inability to sustain positive affective states in the absence of explicit stimuli. Consequently, hypoactivity of the left PFC in depression might be associated with a relative inability to sustain positive affective states in the absence of explicit stimuli.
- Amygdala plays a particular role here
- Depressed persons also report greater intensity of negative mood states and lower intensity of positive mood states
Results in relation to duration, frequency and intensity
Duration
Depressed participants demonstrated longer durations of anger. Depressed females evidenced longer duration than their healthy counterparts but depressed males were not different from healthy males. Healthy participants experienced longer durations of happiness than depressed.
Frequency
Depressed demonstrated greater frequency of anger than healthy. The difference for healthy and depressed adolescents was significantly greater for girls. Depressed also experienced more frequent dysphoria and less frequent happiness.
Intensity
Depressed experienced more intense anger and more intense sadness.
Against the hypothesis that depressed might evidence less intense positive affect
there was no support found for this.
The most consistent difference between depressed adolescents and their peers was
the experience and expression of angry affects.
