How depression and anxiety influence physical symptoms
March 5th, 2011 - 6:24 pm ICT by ANIWashington, Mar 5 (ANI): For decades, researchers have hypothesized that negative emotions lead to inflated reports of common physical symptoms.
However, a new study has suggested that two negative emotions - depression and anxiety - influence symptom reporting in different ways.
It showed that people who feel depressed report experiencing a higher number of past symptoms. People who feel anxious, by contrast, report more symptoms in the present moment.
Understanding how factors such as mood influence symptom reporting is important because physicians make diagnosis and treatment decisions based on the symptoms patients report, how intense they are, and how frequently they occurred, said study author Jerry Suls, a professor of psychology in the University of Iowa.
“Our data suggest that a person who walks into a physician’s office feeling sad will tend to recall experiencing more symptoms than they probably really did,” he said.
“If a person comes into the physician’s office feeling fearful, they’re more likely to scan their body and read any sensations they’re experiencing at that moment as something wrong. We believe this is because depression is associated with rumination and exaggerated recall of negative experiences, while anxiety is associated with vigilance for potentially negative things in the present time,” he added.In the first part of the study, 144 undergraduate students completed questionnaires to assess their level of ‘depressive affect’, and indicated which of 15 common physical symptoms they’d experienced in the past three weeks.
Even after factoring out physical signs of depression, like appetite changes or sleep loss, researchers found that people who felt more depressed believed they had experienced more symptoms.
Another phase of the study examined current symptom reporting. A sample of 125 undergraduates was assigned to groups.
To induce a specific mood, each group wrote in detail for 15 minutes about an experience that made them feel angry, anxious, depressed, happy or neutral. They then completed a checklist to indicate which of 24 symptoms (weakness/fatigue, cardiorespiratory, musculoskeletal, and gastrointestinal) they currently felt.
Participants in the anxious mood category reported higher numbers of physical symptoms.
Researchers repeated the writing exercise with another group of 120 students — only this time they asked participants to report both current and retrospective symptoms.
On average, people in the anxious group reported five current symptoms, while those in the depressed and neutral groups only reported one or two.
Reflecting on the past three weeks, the sad participants reported experiencing seven symptoms on average, while the other groups only recalled about three.
The age of participants was a limitation of the study, though the authors intentionally chose healthy college students to reduce confounds.
The study is published in the latest issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. (ANI)
- Label your fear to get over it - Sep 05, 2012
- Regular exercise cuts down patient anxiety 20 percent - Feb 23, 2010
- Lesbians, gays, bisexuals at higher risk for severe mental health problems - Feb 03, 2011
- Abuse rates higher among deaf children: Study - Jan 19, 2011
- A happy mind makes a healthy body in teenagers - Jul 09, 2010
- Acne is more than a nuisance for some adolescents - Mar 16, 2011
- Exercise vital for mental fitness too - Feb 24, 2012
- Depressed partner cannot perceive the other's feelings - Mar 31, 2011
- Positive outlook helps teens tackle anxiety - Jul 13, 2011
- Why late-life depression is harder to treat - May 05, 2010
- When rose-coloured glasses can go too far - Jul 24, 2011
- Pain of social exclusion can be deep, long-lasting - May 11, 2011
- Being anxious affects our attention to what happens around us - Jun 11, 2010
- Depression shows altered brain activity - Apr 04, 2012
- Post-sex blues overtake a third of women - Mar 31, 2011
Tags: 15 minutes, anxiety, appetite changes, decades, diagnosis, different ways, negative emotions, negative experiences, physical signs of depression, present moment, present time, questionnaires, sensations, signs of depression, study author, treatment decisions, undergraduate students, undergraduates, university of iowa, vigilance