PSYC 235 Lecture 6: Mood Disorders – Lecture
7 Feb 2017
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Document Summary
Patients identify cognitive complaints as an important and persistent feature. Objectively, impairments are moderate-severe and can persist into remission. Cognition correlates with several domains of functioning. Mood symptoms are inferior to cognition in predicting function. Family studies: 1st degree relatives 2-5x more likely to develop unipolar depression and. Twin studies: concordance rates for unipolar depression of 40-59% for monozygotic twins, 20-30% for dizygotic twins; for bipolar disorder: 65% monozygotic and 14% dizygotic. Adoption studies: rates of bipolar disorder in biological relatives = 32% vs 12% of adoptive relatives. Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis: plays a role in the diathesis-stress model of depression: excess reactivity of neural and endocrine stress response systems, acute or prolonged stress, and possibly the cognitive attributions, interact with vulnerability. Depression is associated with higher cortisol reactivity to stress. Depression is associated with smaller volume of the hippocampus: stress kills brain cells! Depressed individuals 3x more likely to have experienced a severely stressful life event prior to onset.
