Status
Conditions
About
The purpose of this study is to measure daily mood changes and to find out whether these mood changes are related to the ability to maintain attention on a task. Problems with mood are more common among women however, the association between symptoms of alcohol abuse and mood syndromes is inconsistent.
First we hypothesize that women with lifetime diagnoses of alcohol abuse will not demonstrate higher symptoms of anxiety, depression, neuroticism and mood variability than control groups. Second, that the severity of these symptoms will not correlate with performance on measures of sustained attention.
Full description
Epidemiological and clinical studies show an association between symptoms of anxiety and depression (mood) and alcohol abuse. However, the association between alcohol abuse and mood syndromes is inconsistent. One problem is that mood syndromes tend to be poorly defined. Also, researchers typically have relied on retrospective recall by patients to evaluate mood symptoms.
Some of this evidence is that:
To overcome this difficulty, we have recently developed a procedure to measure mood variability while it is occurring. We ask participants to rate their moods twice a day on a 10 cm straight line anchored by the terms "not at all" and "very much so" (a visual analogue scale) (VAS). There are 3 separate lines for "anxiety/tension", "sadness/low mood" and "high mood". We then compute a quantitative measure of variability the "mean squared successive difference statistic" (MSSD). Our earlier work found that this method identified greater mood variability in individuals with anxiety disorders as compared to individuals without anxiety disorders.
Our null hypotheses are:
1a. That the severity of these symptoms will not correlate with performance on measures of sustained attention.
The MINI diagnostic interview will be used to derive DSM-IV diagnoses. This is a brief semi-structured diagnostic interview that we have used previously. We have not used an extensive interview schedule such as the SCID because we are not recruiting specific diagnostic groups.
Participants will be asked to complete 4 scales as validators of the diary visual analogue scales. These are:
Participants will be females, aged 18-50 years with diagnoses of alcohol abuse. Exclusion criteria will be chronic medical, psychiatric or brain conditions that might affect mood variability or test performance. Comorbid drug abuse will not be reason for exclusion.
Only females are included in this study because
Participants will be tested in their 3rd and 4th weeks of the program, i.e. they will have been free of alcohol and illicit drug consumption for 3 weeks. Use of other medication will be noted but will not be an exclusion.
Sex
Ages
Volunteers
Inclusion criteria
Exclusion criteria
Loading...
Data sourced from clinicaltrials.gov
Clinical trials
Research sites
Resources
Legal