Neuroticism as a predictor of mood change: the effects of tryptophan depletion.
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BACKGROUND: Acute tryptophan depletion (ATD) results in a transient lowering of mood in patients recovered from depression and in healthy volunteers with a family history of affective disorders. The personality trait of neuroticism is strongly associated with depression. AIMS: To assess whether neuroticism predicts mood change in response to ATD in healthy volunteers. METHOD: Healthy volunteers who scored at the top and bottom fifth percentiles of neuroticism scores (17 and 15 respectively) were selected. In a double-blind, crossover study they received a tryptophan-free or a control drink. Mood and cognition were assessed. RESULTS: Neuroticism did not predict the amount of mood change following ATD but did moderate performance on the verbal fluency test. A family history of affective disorder (n=5) predicted mood change but not cognitive function following ATD. CONCLUSIONS: Neuroticism moderates aspects of cognitive function, but in this study it was not strongly related with mood change via serotonin. (+info)
Personality in frozen shoulder.
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Fifty-six patients with frozen shoulder have had their personality profiles investigated by means of the Middlesex Hospital Questionnaire. Females showed significantly increased somatic anxiety compared with controls. It is suggested that this may be important both to aetiology and treatment. Males and females should be assessed separately in future studies of frozen shoulder. (+info)
Deconstructing current comorbidity: data from the Australian National Survey of Mental Health and Well-Being.
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BACKGROUND: Comorbidity in epidemiological surveys of mental disorders is common and of uncertain importance. AIMS: To explore the correlates of current comorbidity. METHOD: Data from the Australian National Survey of Mental Health and Well-Being were used to evaluate the relationships between comorbidity, disability and service utilisation associated with particular mental disorders. RESULTS: The number of current comorbid disorders predicted disability, distress, neuroticism score and service utilisation. Comorbidity is more frequent than expected, which might be due to the effect of one disorder on the symptom level of another, or to the action of common causes on both. The combination of affective and anxiety disorders was more predictive of disability and service utilisation than any other two or three group combinations. When people nominated their principal disorder as the set of symptoms that troubled them the most, the affective and anxiety disorders together were associated with four-fifths of the disability and service utilisation. CONCLUSIONS: To make clinical interventions more practical, current comorbidity is best reduced to a principal disorder and subsidiary disorders. (+info)
The influence of negative illness cognitions and neuroticism on subjective symptoms and mood in rheumatoid arthritis.
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BACKGROUND: It was hypothesised that negative RA related illness cognitions are strongly related to the neuroticism trait and act as a common factor behind other self reported subjective symptoms (pain and ADL status), mood, and positive RA related illness cognitions; but are unrelated to objective indices of impairment (disease duration, C reactive protein (CRP), and joint stiffness). OBJECTIVE: To examine the relative influence of negative illness cognitions and neuroticism versus degree of impairment on subjective symptoms, positive illness cognitions, and mood in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). METHODS: Structural equation modelling analyses (LISREL) were performed on two independent samples of patients with RA consisting of 212 outpatients and 105 inpatients, respectively. RESULTS: The hypotheses were largely confirmed. Firstly, negative RA cognitions were found to be dependent on neuroticism. Secondly, negative RA cognitions had a strong and dominating influence on all other self reported data. Subjective symptoms were equally well explained by negative RA cognitions as by degree of impairment. No relations were found between negative RA cognitions (or neuroticism) and degree of impairment. CONCLUSIONS: The findings suggest that neuroticism, recognised as a relatively stable personality trait, strongly influences self rated symptoms and wellbeing in RA. This has important clinical implications concerning the use of standardised self rating questionnaires commonly used to assess illness status in RA and the long term effectiveness of psychological interventions and patient training courses in RA rehabilitation. (+info)
Mastalgia and total body water.
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Total body water (TBW) was measured early and late in a menstrual cycle in 56 women, 39 of whom had breast pain. The remainder were asymphtomatic controls. Most women did not conform to the traditional view that there is a premenstrual increase in TBW. In some TBW decreased, while in others there was no change from the early cycle measurement. No TBW pattern correlated with any syndromes of breast pain or with any psychoneurotic profile. (+info)
Ethnic differences in prisoners. 1: criminality and psychiatric morbidity.
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BACKGROUND: In England and Wales, persons of African-Caribbean origin are more likely to be both imprisoned and admitted to secure hospitals. AIMS: To estimate population-based rates of imprisonment in different ethnic groups, and compare criminal behaviour and psychiatric morbidity. METHOD: We examined Home Office data on all persons in prison, and carried out a two-stage cross-sectional survey of 3142 remanded and sentenced, male and female, prisoners in all penal establishments in England and Wales in 1997. RESULTS: We confirmed high rates of imprisonment for Black people and lower rates for South Asians. Different patterns of offending and lower prevalence of psychiatric morbidity were observed in Black prisoners. CONCLUSIONS: Despite increased risks of imprisonment, African-Caribbeans show less psychiatric morbidity than White prisoners. This contrasts with the excess of African-Caribbeans in secure hospitals, an inconsistency possibly in part due to the effects of ethnic groups on admission procedures. (+info)
Jolly fat: relation between obesity and psychoneurosis in general population.
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The relation between fatness and aspects of psychological status was investigated in a representative sample (339 men and 400 women) of a middle-aged suburban population. A significant positive relation was found between substantial obesity and low levels of anxiety (in men and women) and depression (in men). (+info)
Linkage analysis of extremely discordant and concordant sibling pairs identifies quantitative-trait loci that influence variation in the human personality trait neuroticism.
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Several theoretical studies have suggested that large samples of randomly ascertained siblings can be used to ascertain phenotypically extreme individuals and thereby increase power to detect genetic linkage in complex traits. Here, we report a genetic linkage scan using extremely discordant and concordant sibling pairs, selected from 34,580 sibling pairs in the southwest of England who completed a personality questionnaire. We performed a genomewide scan for quantitative-trait loci (QTLs) that influence variation in the personality trait of neuroticism, or emotional stability, and we established genomewide empirical significance thresholds by simulation. The maximum pointwise P values, expressed as the negative logarithm (base 10), were found on 1q (3.95), 4q (3.84), 7p (3.90), 12q (4.74), and 13q (3.81). These five loci met or exceeded the 5% genomewide significance threshold of 3.8 (negative logarithm of the P value). QTLs on chromosomes 1, 12, and 13 are likely to be female specific. One locus, on chromosome 1, is syntenic with that reported from QTL mapping of rodent emotionality, an animal model of neuroticism, suggesting that some animal and human QTLs influencing emotional stability may be homologous. (+info)