Browsing by Subject "depression"

Depression is a phenomenon determined by multiple factors and it can be conceptualized both from psychological and physiological point of view. Psychological and physiological risk factors form a vulnerability that predispose to depression. The purpose of this study was to research the relationship between the psychological risk factors of depression and physiological stress reactivity. Cloninger's temperament trait harm-avoidance (Temperament and Character Inventory) and tendency for ruminative thinking (Self-rumination Scale) were used as psychological risk factors in this study. The physiological stress reactivity was measured by the individual differences in the heart rate variability. 58 women were invited to laboratory based on the earlier web-based study (n=588). In laboratory the women answer to self-report questionnaires and their EKG was measured under a stressful task. Study found a statistically significant association between psychological risk factors of depression and physiological stress reactivity. Psychological risk factors of depression constituted a whole that predicted physiological stress reactivity in a specific experimental setting in a statistically significant way. The results of this study can be used as a foundation for the development of more effective medical interventions and psychotherapies, and for the development of more specific categorization of depressive subcategories.

Understanding the relationship between plant-based diets and mental health has become an important issue from a public health perspective, not only for researchers but also in everyday life. In particular, this study focused on university students since more and more students have been limiting their animal-based foods intake. At the same time, there has been a global trend of increasing mental disorders and distress among university students. Poor mental health conditions, such as depression and anxiety, could associate with students' academic achievement. This study examined the connections between diet choice, mental health, and academic achievement. This study used cross-sectional data from the Student Health Survey 2016 by the Finnish Student Health Service (FSHS). Among 3029 participants (aged 18 to 35 years) from either academic universities or universities of applied sciences in Finland, the questions from the Index of Diet Quality (IDQ) were used to construct four different diet types: 67 vegans (2.2%), 281 vegetarians (9.3%), 291 semi-vegetarians (9.6%), and 2390 omnivores (78.9%). Mental health status was measured by using two indicators: self-reported diagnosed mental disorders (depression and/or anxiety) and the General Health Questionnaire-12 (GHQ-12), which screened minor psychiatric disorders. Academic achievement was measured by asking about perceived academic success. The logistic regression models were used in the main analyses. The two different mental health status were analysed with adjustment for potential confounding variables such as sociodemographic factors, health-related behaviour, BMI, and disease conditions. The academic achievement was analysed with adjustment for potential confounding variables such as sociodemographic factors, health-related behaviour, BMI, disease conditions, enrolment period, and right field of study. Also, this study further examined the association between food groups and academic achievement. The results showed that compared to the omnivorous diet, the vegetarian diet was associated with higher odds of diagnosed mental disorders (OR [95% CI]: 2.74 [1.80–4.16], p<0.001) and minor psychiatric disorders screened by GHQ-12 (OR [95% CI]: 1.68[1.22–2.30], p<0.001) after adjustment for all potential confounders. Although a positive relationship between fish consumption and academic achievement was found (OR [95% CI]: .88[.80–.96], p<0.01), there was no statistically significant association between diet types and academic achievement. In addition, higher sweets consumption was related to higher odds of being less successful than students had expected (OR [95% CI]: 1.08 [1.01–1.15], p<0.05). The results indicate that vegetarian university students are more likely to have lower mental health status than non-vegetarian students on average. In addition, academic achievement is associated with the consumption of specific food items rather than diet types. Overall, the findings suggest that vegetarian students should carefully monitor their mental health status. Also, students should be supported to improve their food choice and dietary quality for their academic achievement. The study results can be implicated in public health interventions to improve students' well-being among higher education students. In future research, it may be beneficial to apply more various classifications and measures of diet types and academic achievement and examine the temporal relationship between diagnosed mental disorders and the diet chosen.

The purpose of this study is to find out in what ways mothers experience that the coronavirus pandemic has affected the interaction with their youngest child. I also wish to contribute to early childhood education by finding out how we can support children with an insecure, but organized, and disorganized attachment style and to find out in what type of way the parents wish to receive support in their parenting. Earlier studies show that the parent´s sensitive intonation to the child affects its security, the ability to regulate emotions, and the relationship with the parent. This is called attachment. Children with inadequate attachment to their mothers have a higher risk of developing depression-like symptoms. The child´s ability to mentalize develops in relation to the parent and is a prerequisite for the child to develop empathy and compassion. Children with a secure attachment style have a better ability for mentalization during childhood. The material for this study was collected through semi-structured interviews with seven mothers whose youngest child was born in the year 2020. The material was analyzed inductively based on qualitative content analysis. The results showed that the mothers believed that the coronavirus pandemic had isolated them from their everyday life. They felt more tired, more irritated, and had been forced into more flexibility than before. The mothers hadn´t felt alone despite the coronavirus pandemic since their partners had teleworked from home. Three of the interviewed mothers had regular contact with a psychologist or a psychotherapist during their pregnancy. Two of them had continued their therapy after the childbirth. One of the interviewed mothers showed indications of depression. All mothers described their relationship with their newborns and how their interaction took place during everyday life during the coronavirus pandemic. Five of the mothers showed indications of a secure attachment style and two of the mothers showed indications of flaws in their attachment relationship to their newborn. The mothers´ foremost expectation of the day-care staff was trustful and open communication, support in their parenting, and the supporting of their children´s social relations. To support the parents and the children´s interaction, it would be desirable that the daycare staff and the staff at the child health guidance clinics were educated according to the mentalization guide.

Currently, there is an undeniable need for more effective treatments of depression. The efficacy of traditional antidepressant drugs becomes apparent after multiple weeks of treatment. New advancements in depression treatments have been made, as glutamatergic NMDA-receptor antagonist ketamine is seen to ameliorate symptoms rapidly, even only hours after drug administration. Understanding ketamine’s mechanism of action as an antidepressant could enable the development of more effective antidepressant drugs. The critical molecular level component in ketamine’s antidepressant effect is considered to be the activation of TrkB tyrosine receptor kinase B, which subsequently leads to the initiation of signaling pathways, which regulate synaptic plasticity. So far, it has not been examined; whether there is a difference in ketamine’s antidepressant effect based on the dosing-time of day. The aim of the present study was to find out if there is a variation between ketamine’s effect on synaptic plasticity and the circadian phase in which the drug is administered. Ketamine’s (200 or 50 mg/kg, i.p.) effects were studied in C57BL/6J–mice during light phase (mouse’s inactive phase) and dark phase (mouse’s active phase) of the day. The phase of the day didn’t affect the activity of TrkB signaling in its related parts (pTrkBTyr816, pGSK3βSer9, p-p70S6KTyr421/Ser424 and p-p44/42MAPKThr202/Tyr204) in prefrontal cortex samples which were analysed in Western blot assay. Ketamine increased dose-dependently the phosphorylation of GSK3βSer9 and p70S6KTyr421/Ser424 as well as decreased p-p44/42MAPKThr202/Tyr204 at 30 minutes after drug administration in both phases of the day. Ketamine (200 mg/kg, i.p.) also lowered the glucose concentration measured from the trunk blood. To examine the effect of hypoglycemia on the activity of TrkB signaling another experiment was conducted. The hypoglycemia induced by insulin detemir (6 IU/kg, i.p.) didn’t affect any measured protein phosphorylation at 60 minutes after drug administration. The results of this study support the notion of ketamine’s rapid and dosedependent induction of neuroplasticity. The possible role of hypoglycemia in ketamine's neuropharmacology should be investigated in future studies.

Divorces have been relatively common in Finland since the 1980s. In 2005–2016 the crude divorce rate varied between 2.4 and 2.6 per 1000 whereas in Europe the rate was on average 1.8–2.1 during the same years. Due to the high divorce rates, it is important to study the consequences of parental separation on child psychological well-being. Most studies from recent decades have found significant but usually modest associations between parental separation and child behavioral and emotional problems, malaise, anxiety and forms of depression. Also some evidence for causal links between parental separation and child’s mental health has been found, but the effects are likely to vary a lot. Firstly, due to selection effect, the poorer mental health outcomes among children from separated families are also affected by other family circumstances than the separation. Secondly, based on the so-called compensation theory, recent research has discussed the potential compensating role of parents’ socioeconomic resources. However, only a limited amount of register-based studies have investigated how the impacts of parental separation for child mental health vary by parents’ socioeconomic resources. This Master’s thesis studies the association between parental separation and depressive symptoms, measured by antidepressant use, in adolescence and young adulthood. It also provides an extensive analysis of how families are selected into separation by early family circumstances, and how strongly these circumstances contribute to the risk of depressive symptoms. Finally, the study examines whether the parental education, an indicator of social and economic resources, modifies the association between parental separation and depressive symptoms. The study uses register-linked panel data that is based on a 20 % random sample of Finnish households with at least one child aged 0–14 at the end of 2000. The final study population included birth cohorts 1990–97 (N=70,478) that were followed for antidepressant use between ages 15–21 in years 2005–2012. The data comprises information on social, demographic and economic characteristics of the families together with data on psychotropic drug purchases among both parents and offspring. The associations between parental separation and antidepressant use were analyzed with Cox regression model. In line with most of the previous research, parental separation was moderately associated with depressive symptoms in adolescence and young adulthood. In the unadjusted model children with an experience of parental separation had 1.6 times (HR) higher risk of antidepressant use at age of 15–21. Considering selection, the fully adjusted model showed a significant association, almost as strong as the unadjusted model (HR 1.45). For the risk of antidepressant use, the early family circumstances were on average less favorable in the families that separated. However, the family socioeconomic circumstances, previous psychotropic drug use, parental age and marital status and child’s sex explained a minor part of the increased risk of antidepressant use among children from separated families. In the moderation analysis, the association between parental separation and child depression was moderately stronger in families where parents had completed only basic education. The result is in line with the compensation theory, but cannot be generalized to a larger population, because the differences between educational groups in the main association were not statistically significant. The study suggests that the increased risk for depressive symptoms after parental separation is partly caused by the measured and unmeasured selection. The increased risk is also likely to be partly caused by the parental separation itself. In the study population the parental separation appears to have been less detrimental to children whose separating parents have more socioeconomic resources that compensate and obviate the negative consequences for child mental health.

Background: Depression is one of the most prevalent disabling mental disorders worldwide. Its relation to the personality of the patient has been a topic of interest both in history and modern research. Understanding the relationship between personality traits and depression will help to develop suitable models of treatment for depression. The Five-Factor Personality Model (FFM, a.k.a. Big Five) is one of the most established scientific personality models, with its traits, namely neuroticism, extraversion, openness, conscientiousness and agreeableness. Connection between neuroticism and depression as well as between extraversion and depression is well known in modern scholarship, but no unambiguous results of connections between other traits and depression exist. High neuroticism seems to function as a risk factor that has a strong connection with Major Depression Episodes, but the moderating effects of the other personality traits are to be studied more deeply. In addition, there have been diverse results whether sex/gender has or has not a trait-independent role in predicting the severity of depression. Aims: Thus, the present study strives for answering the following questions: 1. What is the correlation between individual five-factor personality traits and depression? 2. How does neuroticism trait function as a risk factor for depression? 3. How does sex/gender covariate with the depression? Methods: The data of the present study has been obtained from The Cardiovascular Risk in Young Finns study (Lasten Sepelvaltimotautien Riskitekijät, LASERI). The project has begun in 1980 and its 27-year follow-up was performed in 2007, when five-factor personality traits and depression score were measured as well. Personality traits and the depression score from 1,714 of the original 3,596 subjects were measured with NEO-FFI-M and BDI II. The participants were divided into four groups on the basis of the median values of neuroticism and extraversion traits. Results and conclusions: High neuroticism has a strong connection with depression, but high extraversion has a moderate opposite influence. No connection between the other traits and depression was found. Women tend to have higher scores of depression than men, but the sex influence is mediated by higher neuroticism among women. Further research is needed on possible trait-independent gender influence. Cross-sectional studies based on population data bring forth valuable information about links between gender, personality and depression, but they do not permit possible changes in personality or causal relations to be studied. Therefore, more profound research in longitudinal paradigm is needed.

The camera recognises the face, the bank card connects to the payment terminal, and the database aggregates the consumer profile. Digital and cybernetic machines change society, but they also change the production premises. For a code to connect with another code, the unclear must become clear and the indefinite definable. The trend, however, is not recent: for instance, a bureaucrat has demanded to fill out forms for a long time. Likewise, language has always required syntax. Such productions demand a component, and it increasingly determines the terms of the overall production. I examine the social, affective, and ecological effects of such production premises (definability, reliability, predictability), and I assert that their unifying factor is a crisis of creativity. My essay examines the possibility of creativity in a society produced under componential logic. I address this issue by applying Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi's dichotomy of connective and conjunctive concatenations. Connection refers to the definable, repeatable, and predictable (i.e., componential) production. Conjunction, in turn, refers to the production of unrepeatable, ambiguous and open-ended qualities. I assert that the crisis of creativity unwraps when the poetic openness gets closed, contradictions resolved, and the undefinables defined. In other words, when connection overtakes conjunction. In the increasingly connective society, general production turns repeatable and predictable, and poetic flights and qualitative mutations become rare. Interestingly enough, qualitative mutations are a prerequisite for capitalism, as capitalism must constantly expand on new territories. It needs to establish new markets, as Rosa Luxembourg has theorised, and to capture decoded desire, an argument known from Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Therefore, a paradox determines the social system: on the one hand, capitalism demands qualitative mutations for its expansion, but on the other hand, the componentised production slows the creative production down. I argue that by examining this contradiction, we can understand some of the most central pathologies of modern capitalism, such as burning out, depression and concentration disorders. Namely, modern capitalist culture has produced the spectacle to substitute qualitative mutations with a large amount of quickly consumable ephemeral production.

Tavoitteet: Palliatiivisen hoidon tarve tulee kasvamaan tulevaisuudessa väestön ikääntyessä. Psyykkinen oireilu, kuten mieliala-, ahdistuneisuus- ja eksistentiaalinen oireilu, on palliatiivisen hoidon piirissä yleistä, ja sen hoitaminen on toistaiseksi osoittautunut haastavammaksi kuin peruspopulaatiossa. Psykedeeliavusteinen psykoterapia (psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, PAT) on hoitomuoto, jonka soveltamista psykiatriaan on alettu 2000-luvulla tutkia uudestaan lähes täydellisen parikymmentä vuotta kestäneen tauon jälkeen. Tässä tutkielmassa arvioidaan kirjallisuudessa kertynyttä näyttöä psykedeeliavusteisen terapian sovellettavuudesta, tehokkuudesta ja turvallisuudesta palliatiivisen hoidon kontekstissa. Menetelmät: Tutkimuskirjallisuus haettiin PubMed-, Web of Science - ja Google Scholar -tietokannoista hakusanalla ”psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy palliative care”. Tutkimuksia etsittiin myös aiheeseen liittyvien artikkeleiden lähdeluetteloista. Tulokset ja johtopäätökset: Tulosten mukaan psykedeeliavusteinen terapia on turvallinen ja hyvin palliatiivisen hoidon kontekstiin soveltuva hoitomuoto. Tutkimuksissa saavutettiin efektikooltaan suuria vaikutuksia potilaiden ahdistus-, masennus- ja eksistentiaalisissa oireiden hoidossa. Tutkimusta on kuitenkin tehty vielä kohtuullisen vähän ja tulosten tulkintaa rajoittaa tietyt metodologiset haasteet, kuten sokkouttamisen vaikeus ja odotusvaikutukset. Psykedeeliavusteinen terapia on kuitenkin lupaava hoitomuoto, jonka tutkimus tulee todennäköisesti lisääntymään lähivuosina entisestään.

Avhandlingen granskar diskussionstrådar på nätet som behandlar ämnet depression och var det innebär att vara deprimerad. Nätdiskussionerna analyseras genom Faircloughs kritisk diskursanalys och med fokus på hur depression representeras och konstrueras i diskussionernas vardagsspråk. Avhandlingen behandlar temat kring depression och hur en medikalisering av individens psyke ändrat samhällets och individens uppfattning kring mentalhälsa. Huvudteman som avhandlingen tar upp, tillsammans med tankar av bland annat Michel Foucault och Alain Ehrenberg, är den ökade individualiseringen i samhället samt hur det är kopplat till människans uppfattning kring sin egen kropp och hälsa. Vidare kommer temat kring en ökad individualisering behandlas genom att granska behovet av kontroll över sitt liv som tydligt framkommer i nätdiskussionernas inlägg. Det vill säga kan man urskilja en tendens för självreglering som tar sig uttryck i bland annat en justering av beteende samt livs vanor. Medikaliseringsteorin fungerar som en teoretisk utgångspunkt för avhandlingen genom att ifrågasätta den ökade förekomsten depressions diagnoser. Ytterligare lyfter detta fram frågan kring hur normalt och avvikande beteende definieras. Medicinen har skapat en stark position inom processen att definiera och förklara människans psyke. Detta har även inneburit att dra en gräns mellan normalt och patologiskt beteende. Därmed, för att bättre belysa detta fenomen tar avhandlingen även upp ämnet ur ett social konstruktionistiskt perspektiv för att förklara hur individens uppfattning kring vad som är ”normalt” alltid är bunden till dess kontext. Perspektivet tar även fasta vid hur starkt människans tolkningar av kroppen är starkt kopplade till vetenskaper samt kunskap som dessa skapar. Således kommer avhandlingen behandla temat kring hur diskussionerna på nätet starkt för fram ett behov hos skribenterna av att sträva efter ett slags normalläge. Ytterligare kommer analysen att behandla temat kring depression som diagnos och hur behovet av denna kategorisering syns i nätdiskussionernas inlägg.

Goals: The goal of this study was to find out how social support from different sources (family, friends and significant other) is connected with depressive symptoms among adolescents and young adults. It was also investigated whether the significance of different sources of support changes as the adolescents mature. Depression is one of the most common mental health disorder in the world. Its incidence rises sharply after puberty and, if left untreated, it can have serious consequences for the wellbeing, health and development of adolescents. A number of previous studies have shown that social support is inversely connected with depressive symptoms in all ages and social contexts. Most studies of social support have used assessment instruments measuring perceived social support, which is an individual's cognitive appraisals of the availability of support in times of need. Social support can enhance mental health by buffering the negative effects of stressful life events or by having direct positive effects on well-being. According to Bronfenbrenner's ecological system's theory, the development of adolescents was examined in the context of their changing social networks. Adolescents usually receive support from multiple sources. Most of them maintain good relationships with their parents across the young age. However, when adolescents become more independent from their parents, relationships with friends and significant others usually become closer and more important. Methods: The data was from the national Young Finns Study psychology part conducted in 1992 and 1997. In 1992, there were 2330 participants who were 15-30 years old. Thus, in 1997 the participants were 20-35 years old. There were 1678 participants who answered questionnaires both in 1992 and in 1997. The data was analyzed using one-way variance analysis and linear regression. Results and conclusions: The participants perceived quite a lot of social support. The youngest group (15-18 years old) received less support from friends and significant others than their older counterparts. However, the level of family support was equal in all age groups. Support from both family and friends was inversely connected with depressive symptoms: the more the participant received social support, the fewer depressive symptoms she/he had. However, support from the significant other was not connected with depressive symptoms. The connection between social support from different sources and depressive symptoms was similar across different age groups. In five years follow-up, social support was only slightly connected with depressive symptoms. The connection was stronger in women than in men, but the differences were small. In order to tackle depression, it is important for adolescents to receive enough support from their families and also have positive peer relations in addition to the family social environment