Patterns of Emotion dysfunction in depression disorder
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Patterns of Emotion Dysfunction in Depression Disorder
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Introduction
Description of The Disorder
Depression disorder (major depressive disorder or clinical depression) is a prevalent and a common mental condition that affects many people all over the world. Depression tends to have common emotive patterns that are considered credible symptoms of the disorder. This mental condition has the following symptoms: feeling sad, eating disorders, change of sleeping patterns, low self-esteem or guilty feeling, difficulty in making decisions, thoughts of death and or suicide, disinterest in activities once enjoyed. These symptoms can signal an onset of depression, and they need a professional to positively diagnose the condition. It is a mental illness that negatively affects how an individual feel, thinks and acts. It is commonly characterized by feeling sad and losing interest in activities that an individual once enjoyed. It also encompasses a variety of physical and emotive problems that affect a person’s ability to function, act or think rationally at work or home hence significantly affecting their social life and productivity. Symptoms must last at least two weeks for diagnosis. It is a treatable condition if proper interventions are taken in time.
Prevalence rates of the Disorder
Firstly, on prevalence, women are more likely to experience depression than men CITATION Alb15 \l 1033 (Albert, 2015). Women are likely to experience depression during pregnancy and after birth what is commonly known as baby blues CITATION Har17 \l 1033 (Harvard Medical School, 2017). Depression is also likely to happen in teenage up to mid-20s. According to CITATION Ame17 \l 1033 (American Psychiatry Association, 2017), one person in six people will likely experience depression. In the US alone, it affects 16.1 million adult Americans each year which is 6.7% of the population CITATION Anx \l 1033 (Anxiety and Depression Association of America, n.d.). The median onset age for depression disorder is 32.5 years and, in the US, it is the leading cause of disability for ages 15 - 44.3 yearsCITATION Ste11 \p 19 \l 1033 (Buehler, 2011, p. 19). The US statistics as a developed country are replicated in many other developed countries but Scandinavian who have a lower probability of developing the condition. The condition is higher in developing and undeveloped countries which have a relatively higher prevalence of the condition.
Review of a theoretical model describing the role of emotions in the onset and maintenance of the disorder
While borrowing from various studies, Cisler et al. (2010) table a theoretical model which seeks to describe the role of emotions in the onset as well as during the maintenance of anxiety disorders. The model Cisler and colleagues propose to be borrowing from pieces of previous models including dispositional factors and specific learning pathways. While maintaining consistency with the previous models, Cisler and colleagues seem to indicate that emotion regulation serves in development of anxiety disorders but only during the post-conditioning phases and not in the initial acquisition. Their proposed model appears to be consistent with previous neurobehavioral research which does support the notion that emotion regulation is not necessarily involved in the learning of fear but is involved in its extinction.
The researchers later propose two processes and the first one concerns “the effect of emotion regulation strategies on ‘online fear.’” Online fear as per the explanation provided is “the immediate degree of fear experienced during a single encounter with the conditioned stimuli.” The researchers seem to believe that emotion regulation strategies especially involving suppression increases a person’s behavioral, mental, and physiological output of response after the second encounter with a conditioned stimulus. As per the proposed model, the consequences of the re-encounter are two and include either a heightened online fear where negative expectancies will be revamped, and a person will then again conclude that the fear prompts mimic or signal danger. Or a person can be increasingly motivated to adopt a strategy of avoidance and thus prevent inhibitory learning. Inhibitory learning often leads to the opposite consequence in that a person learns or adopts the opposite stance, i.e. the fear cue does not signal for danger. The researchers continue to explain that the consequences described above are means by which an event will help to contribute towards the maintenance and not the weakening of fear. The above statements mean that an individual will not immediately start treating the signal or stimuli any different. However, they will know and understand their response and in the future avoid any instances where the stimuli are present. Knowing how people often respond to their fears, the above explanation seems to be borrowing from simple truths and observations of man’s reaction to his fears.
The second process as described by these researchers involves the future consequence of the emotion regulation strategies. The researchers opine that this second process “is consistent with research reviewed above demonstrating that individuals with anxiety disorders appear to be characterized by relatively stable maladaptive patterns of emotion regulation.” The truth is, taking a person through one re-encounter with a conditioned stimulus will not necessarily be enough if the goal is to help them deal with any anxiety disorder. However, the researchers seem to caution the use of emotion regulation strategies irregularly which they say can lead to two consequences. One is that a person’s online fear would increase and thus motivate excessive avoidance and two is that the excessive avoidance would lead to functional impairment.
Review of empirical research studies supporting this model
Different studies seem to be supporting the model described above. First of all, the work of Myers and Davis (2007) seems to be echoing similar rhetoric in their assertion that emotion regulation is not involved in the initial acquisition of anxiety or fear. Another study which borrows heavily and supports the model Cisler et al. (2010) presents is Weems and Pina’s. While their study is centered specifically on youths, it does borrow and heavily reference Cisler’s study. The notion that individual differences, espe...