Mood instability Flashcards
What is the definition of mood instability?
Rapid oscillations of intense affect, with a difficulty in regulating these oscillations or their behavioural consequences.
It is transdiagnostic.
What were the three measures when comparing healthy individuals to those with mental disorders, and what was found?
Affect lability, affect intensity, affect control .
Higher level of lability and lower affect controls in those with mental disorders.
No differences in affective intensity.
Which age groups are most liable to mood swings?
Peak age group age 16-24.
Adolescents: Greater daily variability and more extremes that reduce in young adults.
What is mood instability linked to?
- Suicidal thinking
- Self harm and addiction
- Trauma in BPD,BP
- Later development of mental disorders.
- Worse functional outcome in BD- lower likelihood & longer time until recovery.
What is the research domain criteria?
This is a criteria for funding by the NIMH.
You need to study a dimensional psychological construct that exists as part of normal human behaviour, but might be abnormal in relation to psychopathology- intensity, frequency etc.
Constructs are grouped into higher level domains of human behaviour and functioning.
How do we measure mood instability?
Self reported trait questionnaires: Rate how the following describe you in normal life. You take a mean of the score.
This does not tap into what patients are really experiencing.
STEP:BD
Clinician rated assessments. Root mean square successive difference- look at mean changes to give an idea of variability over time.
True Colours: Send an email, patient rates on phone.
APP: MoodZoom. Rate 5 emotions everyday.
Time series analysis on ratings on the smartphone app.
Are digital tools feasible and reliable?
Ask people to rate mood every day.
Ecological momentary assessment (EMA): Repeated sampling of subject behavior and experiences in real time- minimise recall bias, maximise ecological validity. (More accurate if you’re asked currently rather than at the end of the day)
More convenient than questionnaires.
How did higher negative memory biases and attentional dysfunction correlate with mood instability?
What is the problem with these studies?
More negative bias predicted greater instability.
Those that had higher instability performed worse in the attention task.
Mood scale is a crude measure- does not give an accurate consistent measure.
What are the neurocognitive models of mood instability?
Amygdala is the reciprocal activation and connectivity with the different areas of the PFC.
Increased connectivity between amygdala & ventromedial PFC
Reduced connectivity between amygdala & ACC.
What do experiments show about mental imagery on emotion?
Imagery has a direct impact on cognition, motivation, emotion and behaviour.
Imagery can shape perception, attention, action via shared brain pathways. Can modulate affect.
What was the difference between mental imagery in BP and normal controls?
BP: Higher levels of intrusive prospective imagery & more vivid imagery of future events.
In the BD group, higher levels of future imagery correlated with levels of anxiety and depression.
Higher mood instability associated with greater disposition to experience intrusive imagery after traumatic movie.
Can positive imagery generation change affect in mood instability vs controls?
The higher the mood instability, the higher the vividness of the images, and the more mood changed.
This is the same across many mental disorders- reiterating transdiagnostic characteristics. This is correlation not causation however.
Does manipulating imagery reduce mood instability?
Time series analysis.
After treatment, mathematical model didn’t require 4 parameters, needed 3. This shows that the temporal dynamic (measure of instability) became simpler by reducing vividness and emotionality of images.
What are the future stops?
Understand neurocognitive circuits underpinning future imagery/mood instability- will it predict instability with daily measurements over time?
