Past Issues

Objective: This study investigated the effect of negative mood induction on attentional biases in women with anxiety, depressive, or comorbid anxiety-depressive disorders. Methods: 118 participants were selected from a subject pool established for postpartum research. Participants were divided into four groups: depressive only, anxiety only, comorbid anxiety-depressive disorders, and normal controls, according to the lifetime version of the Modified Schedule of Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia. After procedures inducing either an anxious or a depressive state, attentional bias wasmeasured using a deployment-of-attention task. Participants viewed an emotional face paired with a neutral face of the same individual, and were then required to identify on which one a colored patch had first appeared. The percentage of choices favoring happy, angry, or sad faces represented the selective attentional bias score for each emotion. Results: Attentional bias for sad faces was suppressed in depressed participants when their sad mood was evoked. When anticipatory anxiety was evoked, anxious participants and participants with comorbid anxiety-depressive disorders showed attentional bias for happy faces. Conclusion: In distress, individuals with mixed comorbid depressive disorders use the same coping strategy as individuals with only anxiety do. This differs from individuals with depression only. A model is proposed to account for the results. (Full text in Chinese)