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AN ASSESSMENT OF THE EFFECT OF WEATHER ON THE MOOD AND ENERGY OF PEOPLE WITH WINTER DEPRESSIVE SYMPTOMS: AN EXPERIENCE SAMPLING METHOD
Title
AN ASSESSMENT OF THE EFFECT OF WEATHER ON THE MOOD AND ENERGY OF PEOPLE WITH WINTER DEPRESSIVE SYMPTOMS: AN EXPERIENCE SAMPLING METHOD
Creator
Mosqueda, Andrea I.
Date
2016, 2016-05
Description
Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is a depressive disorder characterized by recurrent episodes most often beginning in the fall and remitting...
Show moreSeasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is a depressive disorder characterized by recurrent episodes most often beginning in the fall and remitting in spring and summer. Individuals with SAD experience both vegetative symptoms (e.g., fatigue, increased appetite and weight gain, and an increased need for sleep) and psychological symptoms (e.g., sadness, difficulty concentrating, and feelings of worthlessness or hopelessness. In addition to the seasonal variations in vegetative and psychological functioning in SAD, daily weather also can potentially affect these phenomena. Symptoms such as mood, cognition, and energy can vary between and within days as a function of weather variables in a population experiencing seasonal symptoms. Using experience sampling method (ESM), which allows for less reliance on participant memory, we examined the impact of weather on day-to-day variability of mood and fatigue, and specifically in individuals with seasonal symptoms. To our knowledge, this is the first study to use ESM to examine the impact of weather on this symptomatology. Results failed to find evidence of a relationship between variability in daily weather and either daily mood or fatigue in this sample of seasonal individuals. This was the case for both same day weather and weather aggregated over the previous six days. Future studies would benefit from a longer data collection period in order to determine if there are long-term effects of weather variables on mood or fatigue. ESM would be useful in studying the effect of various time-varying variables on a variety of time-related aspects of SAD symptomatology.
M.S. in Psychology, May 2016
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ASSESSING IMPAIRMENT IN FUNCTIONING USING A CONFIGURAL MEASURE
Title
ASSESSING IMPAIRMENT IN FUNCTIONING USING A CONFIGURAL MEASURE
Creator
Fuller, Jordan S.
Date
2016, 2016-05
Description
Assessing impairment in daily functioning is an important part of a mental health evaluation and of monitoring progress in treatment. The...
Show moreAssessing impairment in daily functioning is an important part of a mental health evaluation and of monitoring progress in treatment. The Seasonality Assessment Form (SAF; Young, et al., 2014) included a measure to assess the degree of impairment in daily functioning associated with these symptoms. The 5 yes/no impairment items were written to reflect the ways that patients intuitively describe their levels of impairment. However, the items are not mutually exclusive and are not summative so that impairment severity is represented by the configural pattern of responses. This paper examined the nature of response patterns and how to use them to generate an impairment severity score.
M.S. in Psychology, May 2016
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Comparing Complex Network and Latent Factor Models of Seasonal Affective Disorder
Title
Comparing Complex Network and Latent Factor Models of Seasonal Affective Disorder
Creator
Smetter, Joseph
Date
2019
Description
Research on Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) has produced several etiologicalmodels of SAD symptomatology, including a common cause model...
Show moreResearch on Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) has produced several etiologicalmodels of SAD symptomatology, including a common cause model that conceptualizessymptoms as the result of a single underlying disease process, and the Dual VulnerabilityModel (Young et al., 1991) which posits that psychological symptoms of depressionfollow the onset of vegetative symptoms (e.g. hypersomnia, increased appetite) inindividuals with a vulnerability to seasonal changes. Studies of the structure of SADsymptomatology have been limited in their ability to evaluate these models. This studyused exploratory factor analysis and network analysis to examine baseline winter SADsymptoms (using a modified BDI-II) in 177 adults participating in a randomizedcontrolled trial of light treatment and CBT for SAD (Rohan et al., 2015). The factoranalysis supported a four-factor model that included negative cognition/affect, loss ofvitality, dysregulation, and increases in weight/appetite. The complex network model ofSAD conceptualized the network as a system of interacting symptoms. Results of thenetwork model paralleled those of the factor analysis in producing four communities ofinter-correlated symptoms. In addition to the full symptom network, a directed acyclicgraph was constructed to model causal relations between symptoms. Results suggest thatvegetative symptoms (loss of vitality and appetite/weight) lead ultimately to cognitivesymptoms, with intermediate effects of dysregulation symptoms. This partially supportsthe Dual Vulnerability model. Findings from the factor analysis and the network analysisare compared, and their implications for and treatment of SAD is discussed.
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