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Different patterns of attentional bias in antenatal and postpartum depression

BACKGROUND: Biased information processing in attention, memory, and interpretation is proposed to be central cognitive alterations in patients with major depressive disorder, but studies in women with peripartum depression are scarce. Because of the many similarities with depression in nonperipartum...

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Autores principales: Edvinsson, Åsa, Skalkidou, Alkistis, Hellgren, Charlotte, Gingnell, Malin, Ekselius, Lisa, Willebrand, Mimmie, Sundström Poromaa, Inger
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5698862/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29201545
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/brb3.844
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author Edvinsson, Åsa
Skalkidou, Alkistis
Hellgren, Charlotte
Gingnell, Malin
Ekselius, Lisa
Willebrand, Mimmie
Sundström Poromaa, Inger
author_facet Edvinsson, Åsa
Skalkidou, Alkistis
Hellgren, Charlotte
Gingnell, Malin
Ekselius, Lisa
Willebrand, Mimmie
Sundström Poromaa, Inger
author_sort Edvinsson, Åsa
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Biased information processing in attention, memory, and interpretation is proposed to be central cognitive alterations in patients with major depressive disorder, but studies in women with peripartum depression are scarce. Because of the many similarities with depression in nonperipartum states as regards symptom profile and risk factors, we hypothesized that women with antenatal and postpartum depression would display attentional bias to negatively and positively valenced words. METHODS: One hundred and seventy‐seven pregnant and 157 postpartum women were included. Among these, 40 suffered from antenatal depressive disorder and 33 from postpartum depressive disorder. An emotional Stroop task with neutral, positive, negative, and negatively valenced obstetric words was used. RESULTS: No significant difference in emotional interference scores was noted between women with antenatal depression and nondepressed pregnant women. In contrast, women with postpartum depression displayed shorter reaction times to both positive (p = .028) and negative (p = .022) stimuli, compared with neutral words. Pregnant women on antidepressant treatment displayed longer reaction times to negatively valenced obstetric words in comparison with untreated depressed women (p = .012), and a trend toward greater interference in comparison with controls (p = .061). CONCLUSIONS: In contrast with the hypothesis, we found no evidence of attentional bias to emotionally valenced stimuli in women with untreated peripartum depression. However, the shorter reaction times to emotional stimuli in women with postpartum depression may indicate emotional numbing, which in turn, is a functional impairment that may have repercussions for child development and well‐being. Our findings emphasize the need to identify and treat women with postpartum depression at the earliest possible time point to ensure swift recovery and support for the family.
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spelling pubmed-56988622017-11-30 Different patterns of attentional bias in antenatal and postpartum depression Edvinsson, Åsa Skalkidou, Alkistis Hellgren, Charlotte Gingnell, Malin Ekselius, Lisa Willebrand, Mimmie Sundström Poromaa, Inger Brain Behav Original Research BACKGROUND: Biased information processing in attention, memory, and interpretation is proposed to be central cognitive alterations in patients with major depressive disorder, but studies in women with peripartum depression are scarce. Because of the many similarities with depression in nonperipartum states as regards symptom profile and risk factors, we hypothesized that women with antenatal and postpartum depression would display attentional bias to negatively and positively valenced words. METHODS: One hundred and seventy‐seven pregnant and 157 postpartum women were included. Among these, 40 suffered from antenatal depressive disorder and 33 from postpartum depressive disorder. An emotional Stroop task with neutral, positive, negative, and negatively valenced obstetric words was used. RESULTS: No significant difference in emotional interference scores was noted between women with antenatal depression and nondepressed pregnant women. In contrast, women with postpartum depression displayed shorter reaction times to both positive (p = .028) and negative (p = .022) stimuli, compared with neutral words. Pregnant women on antidepressant treatment displayed longer reaction times to negatively valenced obstetric words in comparison with untreated depressed women (p = .012), and a trend toward greater interference in comparison with controls (p = .061). CONCLUSIONS: In contrast with the hypothesis, we found no evidence of attentional bias to emotionally valenced stimuli in women with untreated peripartum depression. However, the shorter reaction times to emotional stimuli in women with postpartum depression may indicate emotional numbing, which in turn, is a functional impairment that may have repercussions for child development and well‐being. Our findings emphasize the need to identify and treat women with postpartum depression at the earliest possible time point to ensure swift recovery and support for the family. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2017-10-18 /pmc/articles/PMC5698862/ /pubmed/29201545 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/brb3.844 Text en © 2017 The Authors. Brain and Behavior published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Original Research
Edvinsson, Åsa
Skalkidou, Alkistis
Hellgren, Charlotte
Gingnell, Malin
Ekselius, Lisa
Willebrand, Mimmie
Sundström Poromaa, Inger
Different patterns of attentional bias in antenatal and postpartum depression
title Different patterns of attentional bias in antenatal and postpartum depression
title_full Different patterns of attentional bias in antenatal and postpartum depression
title_fullStr Different patterns of attentional bias in antenatal and postpartum depression
title_full_unstemmed Different patterns of attentional bias in antenatal and postpartum depression
title_short Different patterns of attentional bias in antenatal and postpartum depression
title_sort different patterns of attentional bias in antenatal and postpartum depression
topic Original Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5698862/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29201545
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/brb3.844
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