TY - JOUR
T1 - Remote virtual reality assessment elucidates self-blame-related action tendencies in depression
AU - Duan, Suqian
AU - Valmaggia, Lucia
AU - Fennema, Diede
AU - Moll, Jorge
AU - Zahn, Roland
N1 - Funding Information:
This study was funded by a Scients Institute Catalyst Award to SD, who is also partly funded by a Henry Lester Trust Award. DF was funded by the Medical Research Council Doctoral Training Partnership (ref: 2064430). RZ, LV and the VR Lab were partly funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Centre at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and King's College London. The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Authors
PY - 2023/5
Y1 - 2023/5
N2 - BACKGROUND: Action tendencies are implicit cognitive and motivational states before an action is taken, such as feeling like hiding when experiencing shame or guilt, independent of the actions people decide to take. Such "action tendencies" are key to understanding the maladaptive impact of self-blame in depression. For example, feeling like "hiding" in a text-based task was previously associated with recurrence risk in remitted depression. Despite their functional importance, action tendencies have not been systematically investigated in current depression, which was the aim of this pre-registered study.METHODS: We developed and validated the first virtual reality (VR) assessment of blame-related action tendencies and compared current depression (n = 98) with control participants (n = 40). The immersive VR-task, pre-programmed on devices sent to participants' homes, used hypothetical social interactions, in which either participants (self-agency) or their friend (other-agency) were described to have acted inappropriately.RESULTS: Compared with controls, people with depression showed a maladaptive profile: particularly in the other-agency condition, rather than feeling like verbally attacking their friend, they were prone to feeling like hiding, and punishing themselves. Interestingly, feeling like punishing oneself was associated with a history of self-harm but not suicide attempts.CONCLUSIONS: Current depression and self-harm history were linked with distinctive motivational signatures, paving the way for remote VR-based stratification and treatment.
AB - BACKGROUND: Action tendencies are implicit cognitive and motivational states before an action is taken, such as feeling like hiding when experiencing shame or guilt, independent of the actions people decide to take. Such "action tendencies" are key to understanding the maladaptive impact of self-blame in depression. For example, feeling like "hiding" in a text-based task was previously associated with recurrence risk in remitted depression. Despite their functional importance, action tendencies have not been systematically investigated in current depression, which was the aim of this pre-registered study.METHODS: We developed and validated the first virtual reality (VR) assessment of blame-related action tendencies and compared current depression (n = 98) with control participants (n = 40). The immersive VR-task, pre-programmed on devices sent to participants' homes, used hypothetical social interactions, in which either participants (self-agency) or their friend (other-agency) were described to have acted inappropriately.RESULTS: Compared with controls, people with depression showed a maladaptive profile: particularly in the other-agency condition, rather than feeling like verbally attacking their friend, they were prone to feeling like hiding, and punishing themselves. Interestingly, feeling like punishing oneself was associated with a history of self-harm but not suicide attempts.CONCLUSIONS: Current depression and self-harm history were linked with distinctive motivational signatures, paving the way for remote VR-based stratification and treatment.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85150028266&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2023.02.031
DO - 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2023.02.031
M3 - Article
C2 - 36905843
SN - 0022-3956
VL - 161
SP - 77
EP - 83
JO - Journal of psychiatric research
JF - Journal of psychiatric research
ER -