Resting vagally-mediated heart rate variability in the laboratory is associated with momentary negative affect and emotion regulation in daily life.

Vagally-mediated heart rate variability (vmHRV) is a physiological index reflecting parasympathetic activity that has been linked to emotion regulation (ER) capacity. However, very limited research has examined associations of physiological indices of regulation such as vmHRV with emotional functioning in daily life. The few studies that exist have small samples sizes and typically focus on only a narrow aspect of ER or emotional functioning. In this study, we examined associations between vmHRV assessed in the laboratory and emotional/mental health functioning in daily life using a 7-day ecological momentary assessment design in 303 adult community participants. We hypothesized that higher resting vmHRV would be associated with higher positive affect (PA), lower negative affect (NA), less affective variability, greater well-being, fewer dysphoria symptoms, greater use of engagement ER strategies, and less use of avoidance ER strategies, as assessed in daily life. Results revealed that higher resting vmHRV in the laboratory (as indexed by both high frequency heart rate variability, HF-HRV, and the root mean of successive square deviations between heart beats, RMSSD) was significantly associated with less frequent use of avoidance ER strategies in daily life. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed, including the association of vmHRV with negatively valenced, rather than positively valenced, daily life experiences.

From lab to life: Evaluating the reliability and validity of psychophysiological data from wearable devices in laboratory and ambulatory settings.

Despite the increasing popularity of ambulatory assessment, the reliability and validity of psychophysiological signals from wearable devices is unproven in daily life settings. We evaluated the reliability and validity of physiological signals (electrocardiogram, ECG; photoplethysmography, PPG; electrodermal activity, EDA) collected from two wearable devices (Movisens EcgMove4 and Empatica E4) in the lab (N = 67) and daily life (N = 20) among adults aged 18-64 with Mindware as the laboratory gold standard. Results revealed that both wearable devices' valid data rates in daily life were lower than in the laboratory (Movisens ECG 82.94 vs. 93.10%, Empatica PPG 8.79 vs. 26.14%, and Empatica EDA 41.16 vs. 42.67%, respectively). The poor valid data rates of Empatica PPG signals in the laboratory could be partially attributed to participants' hand movements (r = - .27, p = .03). In laboratory settings, heart rate (HR) derived from both wearable devices exhibited higher concurrent validity than heart rate variability (HRV) metrics (ICCs 0.98-1.00 vs. 0.75-0.97). The number of skin conductance responses (SCRs) derived from Empatica showed higher concurrent validity than skin conductance level (SCL, ICCs 0.38 vs. 0.09). Movisens EcgMove4 provided more reliable and valid HRV measurements than Empatica E4 in both laboratory (split-half reliability: 0.95-0.99 vs. 0.85-0.98; concurrent validity: 0.95-1.00 vs. 0.75-0.98; valid data rate: 93.10 vs. 26.14%) and ambulatory settings (split-half reliability: 0.99-1.00 vs. 0.89-0.98; valid data rate: 82.94 vs. 8.79%). Although the reliability and validity of wearable devices are improving, findings suggest researchers should select devices that yield consistently robust and valid data for their measures of interest.

Adolescent girls' intrapersonal and interpersonal parasympathetic regulation during peer support is moderated by trait and state co-rumination.

Effective emotion regulation (ER) is integral to adolescents' mental well-being and socioemotional development. During adolescence, peer interactions have an increasingly salient influence on the development of effective ER, but not all supportive peer interactions support adaptive ER. Co-rumination reflects the tendency to seek ER support by engaging with peers in negatively focused discussion of ongoing problems. We examined associations between co-rumination (state and trait) with measures of individual's autonomic (i.e., respiratory sinus arrhythmia, RSA) and affective regulation (self-report) among 30 female close-friend dyads (ages 11-17; 74% White) while engaged in a support-seeking discussion in the laboratory. We found that trait co-rumination corresponded with RSA withdrawal during peer support, suggesting a potential mechanism by which co-rumination contributes to dysregulated ER. We also examined dyadic patterns of physiological regulation via prospective change actor partner interdependence models (APIM). Partner effects were moderated by behaviorally coded state co-rumination. Dyads with high state co-rumination displayed coupled RSA movement in opposite directions, while dyads with low state co-rumination exhibited coupled RSA movement in the same direction. These findings are consistent with similar physiologic linkages in close relationships observed in other developmental periods. Results highlight the importance of multimodal assessment for characterizing social ER processes across development.

Evidence Base Update for Questionnaires of Emotion Regulation and Reactivity for Children and Adolescents.

Objective: Emotion regulation (ER) is a multi-faceted and dynamic process relevant to both normative emotional development and transdiagnostic emotional dysfunction for a range of psychological disorders. There has been tremendous growth in ER research over the past decade, including the development of numerous new measures to assess ER. This Evidence Base Update included a systematic review to identify self- and informant-report questionnaire measures of ER for children and adolescents, including measures of ER strategies and effectiveness (or emotion dysregulation).Methods: PubMed, PsycInfo, and Health and Psychosocial Instruments databases were searched using the terms emotion OR affect AND regulation OR control OR reactivity OR response, as well as terms related to questionnaires and psychometrics, restricted to articles on youth (< 18 years old). Each measure's psychometrics was evaluated based on modified criteria by De Los Reyes and Langer (2018).Results: Nine-hundred ninety-seven papers were identified yielding 87 measures that met inclusion for review. Although the majority (60%) of identified ER measures could not be recommended based on these criteria, 8% were Excellent, 14% were Good, and 17% were Adequate. The recommended measures included: 11 general ER measures (5 focused on strategies, 5 focused on dysregulation/ effectiveness), 13 measures of ER as it relates to specific emotions or contexts such as irritability or peer stress (4 focused on strategies, 9 focused on dysregulation/effectiveness), and 11 measures of other constructs that include an ER subscale (all focused on dysregulation). Conclusions: The characteristics, strengths, and weaknesses of the recommended ER measures are described in order to guide measure selection for clinical or research uses. A synthesis of themes identified during this review includes commonly observed areas of weakness and gaps in the literature to provide a foundation for future research and measure development.

Higher Rates of Sleep Disturbance Among Offspring of Parents With Recurrent Depression Compared to Offspring of Nondepressed Parents.

OBJECTIVE: Youth who have a parent with recurrent depression are at high risk for mental health problems. There is a need to identify transdiagnostic and clinically actionable mechanisms that explain higher rates of psychopathology among high-risk youth. The present study sought to examine whether offspring of depressed parents exhibit greater parent- and self-reported sleep disturbance, shorter sleep duration, and later sleep midpoint compared to youth without any parental psychopathology. METHOD: Participants included 82 youth, including 41 youth (ages 9-13; mean age = 11.07 years; 46% female) deemed to be at high-risk based on having a parent with a recurrent depression history, and 41 (mean age = 11.16 years; 49% female) at low-risk based on having parents without any history of psychopathology. Youth and their parents completed measures of youth sleep disturbance, and youth completed measures of sleep duration and midpoint using a daily sleep diary for 9 days. RESULTS: Offspring of parents with depression exhibited more sleep disturbance (e.g., problematic nighttime behaviors and daytime sleepiness) than low-risk youth as reported by both parents and youth. For parent-reported sleep disturbance, there were also sex differences. High-risk girls had more sleep disturbance than high-risk boys or low-risk girls. There were no group differences for daily sleep duration and midpoint. CONCLUSION: Sleep disturbance may be an important area for assessment among offspring of parents with depression. Our findings highlight one potential transdiagnostic risk factor that may emerge among high-risk youth, and sex-specific differences in sleep disturbance, which have implications for prevention and intervention.

Social media use predicts later sleep timing and greater sleep variability: An ecological momentary assessment study of youth at high and low familial risk for depression.

INTRODUCTION: Social media (SM) use has been increasingly recognized as a potential contributor to poor sleep. Few studies have examined SM use and sleep using ecological momentary assessment (EMA), compared different types of media use (SM, television, gaming), or examined whether youth at high and low familial risk for depression are differentially affected by SM use. METHODS: The current study included 76 youth (46% female; Mean age = 11.28 years) who were recruited based on parental history of recurrent depression (N = 35 high risk; N = 41 low risk) in the United States. Youth completed a 9-day EMA protocol, which included current activity at time of prompt and daily sleep onset and offset times. Regression and multilevel models were conducted to examine the effects of media use on sleep. RESULTS: Results indicated that youth who used more SM (mean and number of days) went to sleep later, but did not have shorter sleep duration. Youth with more SM use also had higher levels of variability of both sleep timing and sleep duration across the 9-day period. There were no effects of gaming or TV on sleep, and youth at high risk for depression did not have differences in SM use or its effects on sleep compared to low-risk youth. CONCLUSIONS: These findings indicate a unique impact of SM use on sleep timing and variability for youth (regardless of risk status), which may suggest a unique and modifiable pathway through which SM use contributes to poor health.

The neurobiology of human crying.

The production of emotional tears appears to be uniquely present in Homo sapiens. Despite the ubiquity of this human behavior, research is only just beginning to uncover the neurobiologic underpinnings of human emotional crying. In this article, we review the current state of the literature investigating the neurobiologic aspects of this uniquely human behavior, including the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and psychophysiologic findings. To set the context for this review, we first provide a brief overview of the evolutionary background and functions of tearful crying. Despite an accumulating understanding of the neurobiology of human emotional crying, the primary sources of information are currently from animal studies and observations in neurologic patients suffering from pathologic crying. Currently, most of the research on the neurobiology of crying in humans has focused on autonomic physiologic processes underlying tearful crying, which may yield essential clues regarding the neural substrates of the production of crying behavior and its effects on the crier. Further challenges in elucidating the neurobiology of crying involve the complexity of crying behavior, which includes vocalizations, tear production, the involvement of facial musculature, subjective emotional experience, emotion regulatory behaviors, and social behaviors. Future research is needed to comprehensively characterize the neurobiology of this intriguing and complex human behavior.

Error-related brain activity in pediatric anxiety disorders remains elevated following individual therapy: a randomized clinical trial.

BACKGROUND: Anxiety disorders are associated with an overactive action monitoring system as indexed by a larger error-related negativity (ERN). This study tests whether ERN magnitude changes following treatment, predicts response to treatment, and varies by treatment type. METHODS: The sample included 130 youth (9-14 years): youth with an anxiety disorder (ANX; n = 100) and healthy control (HC; n = 30) youth with no lifetime DSM-IV disorders. ANX youth were randomized to either a manualized cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT) or a comparison child-centered therapy (CCT). The ERN was assessed before and after 16 sessions of treatment and within a comparable interval for HC. Subjective ratings about making errors on the task were obtained following each testing session. The ClinicalTrials.gov identifier is NCT00774150. RESULTS: The ERN was larger in ANX than HC youth but ERN magnitude did not significantly change following treatment in the ANX youth, regardless of treatment type, and baseline ERN did not predict treatment response. Post-task ratings revealed that ANX youth worried more about task performance feedback than HC. Like the ERN, mean ratings did not significantly change following treatment. However, these ratings were not correlated with ERN amplitude. CONCLUSIONS: Findings of greater ERN in pediatric anxiety disorders are replicated in a larger sample. More importantly, findings from this randomized control trial show that a larger ERN and feeling worried about performance feedback remain unchanged following treatment and are unrelated to treatment response. Such findings suggest that action monitoring systems remain overactive in anxious youth treated with psychotherapy, suggesting the need for future investigation of whether novel complimentary cognitive and emotional training programs can modify these systems would be warranted.

Positive autobiographical memory deficits in youth with depression histories and their never-depressed siblings.

OBJECTIVES: Impaired positive autobiographical memory (AM) is closely linked to emotional disorders. AM impairments are often found in depressed adults and may be related to the difficulties such persons have in regulating their dysphoric mood. By contrast, less is known about AM disturbances among adolescents, or about the functional relationship of AM disturbances to early-onset depression. DESIGN: A high-risk family design served to compare four groups of youth who differed in depression histories and familial depression risk. METHODS: Thirty-one currently depressed probands, 185 remitted probands, 204 never-depressed siblings of probands, and 180 healthy control youth were induced into a negative mood prior to recalling positive AMs via a novel memory elicitation procedure. Several positive AM characteristics were assessed. RESULTS: Relative to control youth, unaffected siblings and probands exhibited consistently impaired positive AMs. Moreover, we also found some evidence that probands were more impaired than siblings, who were in turn more impaired than controls, consistent with a gradient effect. CONCLUSIONS: Positive AM disturbances may not only precede the onset of depression in vulnerable youth, but also continue to persist after remission of a depressive episode. Clinical and basic research implications of the findings are discussed. PRACTITIONER POINTS: Positive AM impairments may be trait-like, persist in the euthymic phase of depression, and may serve as a risk marker for early-onset depression among vulnerable adolescents. Disturbances in positive AM may negatively impact the mood-regulatory functions of positive memory recall and contribute to persistent sadness and anhedonia, which are core features of depression. Our sample of currently depressed youth was relatively small, tempering our conclusions. Although we collected data on some important covariates (e.g., socioeconomic status), we lacked information on other relevant variables such as youths' executive functioning or IQ.

Why might poor sleep quality lead to depression? A role for emotion regulation.

Disordered sleep is strongly linked to future depression, but the reasons for this link are not well understood. This study tested one possibility - that poorer sleep impairs emotion regulation (ER), which over time leads to increased depressive symptoms. Our sample contained individuals with a wide range of depression symptoms (current depression, N = 54, remitted depression, N = 36, and healthy control, N = 53), who were followed clinically over six months and reassessed for changes in depressive symptom levels. As predicted, maladaptive ER mediated both cross-sectional and prospective relationships between poor sleep quality and depression symptoms. In contrast, an alternative mediator, physical activity levels, did not mediate the link between sleep quality and depression symptoms. Maladaptive ER may help explain why sleep difficulties contribute to depression symptoms; implications for interventions are discussed.

Sleep quality in healthy and mood-disordered persons predicts daily life emotional reactivity.

Disordered sleep has been linked to impaired emotional functioning in healthy and depressed individuals. Little is known, however, about how chronic sleep problems influence emotional reactivity in everyday life. Participants with major or minor unipolar depressive disorder (n = 60) and healthy controls (n = 35) reported on sleep and emotional responses to daily life events using a computerised Experience Sampling Method. We examined whether impaired sleep quality influenced emotional reactivity to daily events, and if this relationship was altered by unipolar mood disorders. Among healthy individuals, sleep difficulties were associated with enhanced negative affect (NA) to unpleasant events and a dulled response to neutral events. However, among mood-disordered persons, sleep difficulties were associated with higher NA across all types of everyday life events. Impaired sleep quality differentially affects daily life emotional reactions as a function of depression.

Familiality of mood repair responses among youth with and without histories of depression.

Affect regulation skills develop in the context of the family environment, wherein youths are influenced by their parents', and possibly their siblings', regulatory responses and styles. Regulatory responses to sadness (mood repair) that exacerbate or prolong dysphoria (maladaptive mood repair) may represent one way in which depression is transmitted within families. We examined self-reported adaptive and maladaptive mood repair responses across cognitive, social and behavioural domains in Hungarian 11- to 19-year-old youth and their parents. Offspring included 214 probands with a history of childhood-onset depressive disorder, 200 never depressed siblings and 161 control peers. Probands reported the most problematic mood repair responses, with siblings reporting more modest differences from controls. Mood repair responses of parents and their offspring, as well as within sib-pairs, were related, although results differed as a function of the regulatory response domain. Results demonstrate familiality of maladaptive and adaptive mood repair responses in multiple samples. These familial associations suggest that relationships with parents and siblings within families may impact the development of affect regulation in youth.

Reward learning in pediatric depression and anxiety: preliminary findings in a high-risk sample.

BACKGROUND: Reward learning has been postulated as a critical component of hedonic functioning that predicts depression risk. Reward learning deficits have been established in adults with current depressive disorders, but no prior studies have examined the relationship of reward learning and depression in children. The present study investigated reward learning as a function of familial depression risk and current diagnostic status in a pediatric sample. METHOD: The sample included 204 children of parents with a history of depression (n = 86 high-risk offspring) or parents with no history of major mental disorder (n = 118 low-risk offspring). Semistructured clinical interviews were used to establish current mental diagnoses in the children. A modified signal detection task was used for assessing reward learning. We tested whether reward learning was impaired in high-risk offspring relative to low-risk offspring. We also tested whether reward learning was impaired in children with current disorders known to blunt hedonic function (depression, social phobia, PTSD, GAD, n = 13) compared to children with no disorders and to a psychiatric comparison group with ADHD. RESULTS: High- and low-risk youth did not differ in reward learning. However, youth with current anhedonic disorders (depression, social phobia, PTSD, GAD) exhibited blunted reward learning relative to nondisordered youth and those with ADHD. CONCLUSIONS: Our results are a first demonstration that reward learning deficits are present among youth with disorders known to blunt anhedonic function and that these deficits have some degree of diagnostic specificity. We advocate for future studies to replicate and extend these preliminary findings.

Respiratory sinus arrhythmia reactivity in current and remitted major depressive disorder.

OBJECTIVE: Low resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) levels and blunted RSA reactivity are thought to index impaired emotion regulation capacity. Major depressive disorder (MDD) has been associated with aberrant RSA reactivity and recovery to a speech stressor task relative to healthy controls. Whether impaired RSA functioning reflects aspects of the depressed mood state or a stable vulnerability marker for depression is unknown. METHODS: We compared resting RSA and RSA reactivity between adults with MDD (n = 49), remitted depression (RMD, n = 24), and healthy controls (n = 45). Electrocardiogram data were collected during a resting baseline, a paced-breathing baseline, and two reactivity tasks (speech stressor, cold exposure). RESULTS: A group by time quadratic effect emerged (F(2,109) = 4.36, p = .015) for RSA across phases of the speech stressor (baseline, instruction, preparation, speech, recovery). Follow-up analyses revealed that those with MDD uniquely exhibited blunted RSA reactivity, whereas RMD and controls both exhibited the anticipated task-related vagal withdrawal and posttask recovery. The group by time interaction remained after covariation for age, sex, waist circumference, physical activity, and respiration, but not sleep quality. CONCLUSIONS: These results provide new evidence that aberrant RSA reactivity marks features that track the depressed state, such as poor sleep, rather than a stable trait evident among asymptomatic persons.

Long-term stability of respiratory sinus arrhythmia among adults with and without a history of depression.

Respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) is an index of parasympathetic nervous system activity reflecting respiratory influences on heart rate. This influence is typically measured as high frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV) or root mean square of successive differences (RMSSD) of adjacent inter-beat intervals. Examining the long-term stability of its measurement is important as levels of resting RSA have been conceptualized as a marker of individual differences; in particular, of an individual's autonomic regulation and affect-related processes, including emotion regulation. At present, it is not known if resting RSA levels reflect stable differences over a long-term period (i.e., >1 year). Even less is known about how RSA stability differs as a function of depression history and whether it relates to depression risk trajectories. In the present study, we examined the 1.5-year test-retest reliability of resting RSA using the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) in 82 adults: n = 41 with a history of depression (ever-depressed); n = 41 controls with no depression history (never-depressed). HF-HRV was fairly stable in both groups (ever-depressed ICC = 0.55, never-depressed ICC = 0.54). RMSSD was also fairly stable in ever-depressed adults (ICC = 0.57) and never-depressed controls (ICC = 0.40). ICC values for both indices did not differ between groups per overlapping 95% confidence intervals. Therefore, RSA stability as assessed by both frequency (HF-HRV) and time domain (RMSSD) measures was not attenuated by a depression history. Implications and the need for future research are discussed.

Daily Associations Between Sleep and Affect in Youth at Risk for Psychopathology: The Moderating Role of Externalizing Symptoms.

Problems with sleep, emotion regulation, and externalizing psychopathology are interrelated, but little is known about their day-to-day associations in youth. We examined self-reported daily sleep quality as a bidirectional predictor of next-day positive and negative affect (PA/NA), with externalizing symptoms as a moderator. Data were drawn from an ecological momentary assessment (EMA) study involving 82 youths (ages 9-13; 50% female; 44% White, 37% Black/African American) at high (n = 41) or low (n = 41) familial risk for psychopathology. Parents rated youths' externalizing symptoms at baseline. Youths then completed a 9-day EMA protocol, reporting sleep quality 1x/day and affect 4-8x/day. Daily means, peaks, and variability in PA and NA were computed. Multilevel models examined bidirectional associations between sleep and affect (between- and within-person), testing externalizing symptoms as a moderator and controlling for age and sex. In models of sleep predicting affect: Within-person, poorer-than-usual sleep quality predicted greater variability and higher peaks in next-day NA, but only for youth with higher levels of externalizing symptoms. Between-person, poor sleep quality and higher levels of externalizing symptoms predicted lower mean and peak PA. In models of affect predicting sleep: Within-person, lower-than-usual mean PA predicted poorer subsequent sleep quality, but only for youth with higher levels of externalizing symptoms. Between-person, youths with higher mean and peak PA had better sleep quality. These findings suggest that affective functioning is bidirectionally linked to daily self-reported sleep quality among high- and low-risk youth. Specific disturbances in daily sleep-affect cycles may be distinctly associated with externalizing psychopathology.

The Human Affectome.

Over the last decades, theoretical perspectives in the interdisciplinary field of the affective sciences have proliferated rather than converged due to differing assumptions about what human affective phenomena are and how they work. These metaphysical and mechanistic assumptions, shaped by academic context and values, have dictated affective constructs and operationalizations. However, an assumption about the purpose of affective phenomena can guide us to a common set of metaphysical and mechanistic assumptions. In this capstone paper, we home in on a nested teleological principle for human affective phenomena in order to synthesize metaphysical and mechanistic assumptions. Under this framework, human affective phenomena can collectively be considered algorithms that either adjust based on the human comfort zone (affective concerns) or monitor those adaptive processes (affective features). This teleologically-grounded framework offers a principled agenda and launchpad for both organizing existing perspectives and generating new ones. Ultimately, we hope the Human Affectome brings us a step closer to not only an integrated understanding of human affective phenomena, but an integrated field for affective research.

Skills program for awareness, connectedness, and empowerment: A conceptual framework of a skills group for individuals with a psychosis-risk syndrome.

Intervention strategies for those diagnosed with psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia can be effective in reducing symptoms and improving quality of life. While strides have been made in developing prevention and intervention strategies earlier on in the disease progression, among those at clinical high-risk (CHR) for psychosis, challenges with heterogeneity can limit symptom and diagnosis specific treatment. Here, we discuss a newly developed therapy skills group called the Skills Program for Awareness, Connectedness, and Empowerment (SPACE) that integrates different types of behavioral skills - standard and radically open dialectical behavioral therapy as well as cognitive behavioral therapy - for CHR youth between the ages of 13-18 years. With the diathesis-stress framework serving as a foundation, the intervention is divided into three stages. These stages target specific signs and symptoms contributing to the progression of CHR symptoms. Stage 1 targets stress (with the goal of developing awareness and reducing distress), stage 2 targets self-disturbances (with a goal of increasing self-connectedness), and stage 3 targets social connectedness (with a goal of improving social domains of functioning). The focus of this article is to introduce the theoretical framework underlying the pilot skills group and discuss ongoing progress. Clinical Trial Registration: NCT05398120; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT05398120.

Economic Choice and Heart Rate Fractal Scaling Indicate That Cognitive Effort Is Reduced by Depression and Boosted by Sad Mood.

BACKGROUND: People with depression typically exhibit diminished cognitive control. Control is subjectively costly, prompting speculation that control deficits reflect reduced cognitive effort. Evidence that people with depression exert less cognitive effort is mixed, however, and motivation may depend on state affect. METHODS: We used a cognitive effort discounting task to measure propensity to expend cognitive effort and fractal structure in the temporal dynamics of interbeat intervals to assess on-task effort exertion for 49 healthy control subjects, 36 people with current depression, and 67 people with remitted depression. RESULTS: People with depression discounted more steeply, indicating that they were less willing to exert cognitive effort than people with remitted depression and never-depressed control subjects. Also, steeper discounting predicted worse functioning in daily life. Surprisingly, a sad mood induction selectively boosted motivation among participants with depression, erasing differences between them and control subjects. During task performance, depressed participants with the lowest cognitive motivation showed blunted autonomic reactivity as a function of load. CONCLUSIONS: Discounting patterns supported the hypothesis that people with current depression would be less willing to exert cognitive effort, and steeper discounting predicted lower global functioning in daily life. Heart rate fractal scaling proved to be a highly sensitive index of cognitive load, and data implied that people with lower motivation for cognitive effort had a diminished physiological capacity to respond to rising cognitive demands. State affect appeared to influence motivation among people with current depression given that they were more willing to exert cognitive effort following a sad mood induction.

Randomized trial of brief interpersonal psychotherapy and cognitive behavioral therapy for depression delivered both in-person and by telehealth.

BACKGROUND: Expert consensus guidelines recommend Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT), interventions that were historically delivered face-to-face, as first-line treatments for Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). Despite the ubiquity of telehealth following the COVID-19 pandemic, little is known about differential outcomes with CBT versus IPT delivered in-person (IP) or via telehealth (TH) or whether working alliance is affected. METHODS: Adults meeting DSM-5 criteria for MDD were randomly assigned to either 8 sessions of IPT or CBT (group). Mid-trial, COVID-19 forced a change of therapy delivery from IP to TH (study phase). We compared changes in Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HRSD-17) and Working Alliance Inventory (WAI) scores for individuals by group and phase: CBT-IP (n = 24), CBT-TH (n = 11), IPT-IP (n = 25) and IPT-TH (n = 17). RESULTS: HRSD-17 scores declined significantly from pre to post treatment (pre: M = 17.7, SD = 4.4 vs. post: M = 11.7, SD = 5.9; p < .001; d = 1.45) without significant group or phase effects. WAI scores did not differ by group or phase. Number of completed therapy sessions was greater for TH (M = 7.8, SD = 1.2) relative to IP (M = 7.2, SD = 1.6) (Mann-Whitney U = 387.50, z = -2.24, p = .025). LIMITATIONS: Participants were not randomly assigned to IP versus TH. Sample size is small. CONCLUSIONS: This study provides preliminary evidence supporting the efficacy of both brief IPT and CBT, delivered by either TH or IP, for depression. It showed that working alliance is preserved in TH, and delivery via TH may improve therapy adherence. Prospective, randomized controlled trials are needed to definitively test efficacy of brief IPT and CBT delivered via TH versus IP.