The Moderating Effect of Sleep Disturbance on the Association of Stress with Impulsivity and Depressed Mood

Objective This study was performed to investigate the associations of life event stress with impulsivity, anxiety, and depressed mood as a function of the presence of a sleep disturbance.Methods In total, 214 participants (age 38.96±10.53 years; 111 females) completed self-report questionnaires, including the Life Experience Survey (LES), Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), Barratt’s Impulsivity Scale (BIS), Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI), and Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). The presence of a sleep disturbance was defined as a PSQI score >5.Results In total, 127 participants presented with a sleep disturbance (age 39.33±10.92 years; 64 females), whereas the remaining 87 did not (age 38.43±9.97 years; 47 females). Negative LES scores were significantly correlated with BIS (r=0.22, p=0.001), BAI (r=0.46, p< 0.001), and BDI (r=0.51, p<0.001) scores, and PSQI scores were significantly correlated with BAI (r=0.49, p<0.001) and BDI (r=0.60, p< 0.001) scores. Moderation analysis revealed statistically significant interactions between negative LES scores and the presence of a sleep disturbance on BIS (p=0.044) and BDI (p=0.014) but not on BAI (p=0.194) scores.Conclusion The findings of the present study suggest that life event stress has varying degrees of influence on mental health, especially impulsivity and depressed mood, depending on the presence or absence of a sleep disturbance.

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An Aetiological Model of Non-Melancholic Depression: Study Design and Validity of the Measures

Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry ◽

10.3109/00048679809062716 ◽

1998 ◽

Vol 32 (1) ◽

pp. 104-111 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Gordon Parker ◽

Gemma Gladstone ◽

Kay Wilhelm ◽

Ian Hickie ◽

Philip Mitchell ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Trait Anxiety ◽

Self Report ◽

Poor Agreement ◽

Melancholic Depression ◽

Life Event ◽

Life Event Stress ◽

Personality Functioning ◽

Relative Contribution ◽

Valid Information ◽

Event Stress

Objective: The aim of this paper is to describe an approach to sub-typing non-melancholic depression and to determine which raters from a variety of backgrounds provided the most valid information on study variables. Method: A sample of non-melancholic depressed patients is described. Multiple raters (i.e. patients, psychiatrists, referrers and corroborative witnesses) completed measures of the patient's trait anxiety levels, severity of recent life event stressors and personality functioning. Results: The study and representative data are reported. Congruence between several measures employed indicated that psychiatrist rating of disordered personality was superior to corroborative witness report. Assessment of anxiety traits indicated reasonable agreement between referrers and corroborative witnesses but poor agreement between those ratings and interview-elicited ratings. There were also discrepancies in quantifying “severity” of life event stress, with patients and their corroborative witnesses rating such events as more severe than either the interviewing psychiatrist or psychiatrists involved in consensus rating sessions. Importantly, the psychiatrists' capacity to quantify the relative contribution of disordered personality, anxiety and life-event stress to the particular depressive episode was supported. Conclusions: Results indicate some of the difficulties in operationalising determinants that may contribute to and sub-type the non-melancholic depressions, and demonstrate the advantages of using a range of rating strategies and raters. In this study, psychiatrist-generated judgements are clearly favoured, although the advantages of also assessing trait anxiety and life-event stress impact by self-report strategies are conceded. Some techniques for estimating the contribution of disordered personality function, anxiety and life-event stress are offered for both their research and their clinical utility.

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Non-melancholic depression: the contribution of personality, anxiety and life events to subclassification

Psychological Medicine ◽

10.1017/s0033291798007107 ◽

1998 ◽

Vol 28 (5) ◽

pp. 1209-1219 ◽

Cited By ~ 23

Author(s):

G. PARKER ◽

D. HADZI-PAVLOVIC ◽

J. ROUSSOS ◽

K. WILHELM ◽

P. MITCHELL ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Depressive Disorders ◽

Latent Class ◽

Self Report ◽

Melancholic Depression ◽

Life Event ◽

Vulnerability Factor ◽

Clinical Criteria ◽

Life Event Stress ◽

Class Definition ◽

Event Stress

Background. We sought to develop a clinically useful subtyping system for the non-melancholic depressive disorders, and here we assess one weighted to central aetiological factors.Methods. We studied 185 patients meeting DSM-III-R and/or clinical criteria for non-melancholic depression. Data were obtained by self-report, interview of patients and from corroborative witnesses. We developed a set of variables for class definition, assessing: (i) ‘P’, disordered personality as a vulnerability factor; (ii) ‘A’, meeting criteria for a lifetime anxiety disorder or positive on probe questions about trait anxiety characteristics, so assessing anxiety as a vulnerability factor; and (iii) ‘L’, psychiatrist and consensually-rated life event stress prior to depression onset.Results. A latent class analysis generated a four-class solution for the P–A–L variables. Life event stressors had similar item probabilities across all four classes, and did not influence the four-class ‘P–A’ solution when deleted from the analysis, suggesting that life event stress may act more as a general provoking agent, rather than constituting any distinct ‘reactive’ or ‘situational’ depression class. Three classes generated clinically meaningful groupings, reflecting varying contributions of anxiety and disordered personality functioning, and with evidence of differential outcome over the following 12 months.Conclusions: We suggest that a refined aetiologically-weighted model may assist definition of the non-melancholic depressive disorders, and provide the logic for exploring the comparative utility of differing treatments to identified vulnerability-based classes.

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An Individual Differences Investigation of the Relations Among Life Event Stress, Working Memory Capacity, and Mind Wandering: A Replication-Extension Study

10.31234/osf.io/teru3 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Haley Goller ◽

Jonathan Britten Banks ◽

Matt Ethan Meier

Keyword(s):

Working Memory ◽

Cognitive Task ◽

Working Memory Capacity ◽

Memory Capacity ◽

Mind Wandering ◽

Extension Study ◽

Negative Life Event ◽

Life Event ◽

Life Event Stress ◽

Event Stress

Klein and Boals (2001, Experiments 1 and 2) found that working memory capacity correlated negatively with perceived negative life event stress and speculated the relation may be driven by thoughts produced from these experiences. Here, we sought to replicate the association between working memory capacity and perceived negative life experience and to assess potential mediators of this association such as mind wandering propensity, rumination propensity, and the sum of negatively-valenced mind wandering reports. In this preregistered replication and extension study, with data collected from three hundred and fifty-six subjects (ns differ among analyses), we found no evidence suggesting that perceived negative life stress is associated with working memory capacity. Additionally, we found evidence consistent with the claim that negatively-valenced mind wandering is uniquely detrimental to cognitive task performance, but we highlight a potential confound that may account for this association that should be addressed in future work.

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