Critical Slowing Down as a Personalized Early Warning Signal for Depression

作者：Marieke Wichers, Peter C. Groot, Psychosystems, ESM Group, EWS Group · 发表于：Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics · 年份：2016 · DOI：10.1159/000441458 · 被引用次数：426 · 研究领域：Mental Health Research Topics、Ecosystem dynamics and resilience、Functional Brain Connectivity Studies

About 17% of humanity goes through an episode of major depression at some point in their lifetime. Despite the enormous societal costs of this incapacitating disorder, it is largely unknown how the likelihood of falling into a depressive episode can be assessed. Here, we show for a large group of healthy individuals and patients that the probability of an upcoming shift between a depressed and a normal state is related to elevated temporal autocorrelation, variance, and correlation between emotions in fluctuations of autorecorded emotions. These are indicators of the general phenomenon of critical slowing down, which is expected to occur when a system approaches a tipping point. Our results support the hypothesis that mood may have alternative stable states separated by tipping points, and suggest an approach for assessing the likelihood of transitions into and out of depression.