People with Parkinson's disease are at an increased risk of developing depression. Nature interventions may help to reduce depression. This paper explored the feasibility, acceptability and participant attitudes towards a self-guided nature intervention for people with Parkinson's disease experiencing depressive symptoms.
The 4-week nature intervention was developed based on the CBT technique ‘behavioural activation’. The intervention aimed to increase positive activities, and in particular time in nature, into a person with Parkinson's routine. Service users were involved in intervention development. Attendance, study completion, and satisfaction were determined to determine intervention acceptability and feasibility. Participants took part in exit interviews to understand experiences and attitudes towards the intervention. Interviews were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis.
Eleven people with Parkinson's disease who were experiencing depressive symptoms received the intervention. Two participants dropped out after 3 interventions sessions. The mean session satisfaction score was 8.86/10. Nine exit interviews were conducted. Three themes were discovered: 1) I was satisfied with the intervention; 2) The intervention helped my mental health; and 3) The perfect intervention would look like, which reflected suggestions for improvements to the intervention.
The nature intervention was feasible and acceptable and well received by people with Parkinson's disease.
Early adversity (EA) predicts later internalizing, and trait diatheses also play a role in how this risk manifests. However, research is mixed on whether these factors function independently or interactively. Furthermore, recent work questions whether three trait diatheses thought to be distinct—neuroticism, dysfunctional attitudes, and brooding rumination—may be modeled as a single latent negative emotionality factor. The present study tests if brooding rumination and dysfunctional attitudes are better modeled with neuroticism as part of negative emotionality, as opposed to separate constructs, and whether negative emotionality and EA interact to predict latent internalizing or operate independently.
768 emerging adults (71.1% minoritized race/ethnicity) completed self-report surveys for this study. Latent moderated structural equation models were conducted to test associations between EA, trait diatheses, and internalizing.
Brooding rumination and dysfunctional attitudes were best modeled as latent factors separate from—but highly correlated with—latent neuroticism. Latent trait diatheses and EA did not significantly interact to predict internalizing symptoms; however, there were significant main effects of latent brooding rumination and neuroticism. Although EA and dysfunctional attitudes had significant associations with internalizing when examined alone, their effects were negligible once neuroticism and brooding rumination were included in models.
Our findings suggest neuroticism most strongly confers risk for internalizing, which may help to inform preventive intervention efforts.
Patients with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), particularly with comorbid trauma-disorders, show an attentional bias towards angry facial expressions. This is often interpreted to reflect increased anxiety and sensitivity to social threats. Given BPDs severe problems in reacting to and interpreting social communication, we investigated whether this threat bias extends to social orienting. Using a gaze-cueing task, we assessed whether centrally presented dynamic fearful and happy gaze stimuli promote the detection of peripherally presented targets. Groups with BPD (N = 50) and other personality disorders (OPD, N = 51) were compared to healthy controls (HC, N = 46), and evaluated on the independent influence of traumatic experience, trait anxiety and trait anger. Across groups we find reliable gaze-cueing. In line with earlier evidence, trait anxiety predicts faster detection of targets signaled by a fearful gaze in HCs. This threat bias is however not present in BPDs and OPDs, thus the threat bias in BPD does not extend to social orienting. Instead, self-experienced trauma predicts amplified gaze-cueing in BPDs, but reduced gaze-cueing in OPDs. This not only emphasizes the importance of evaluating trauma exposure in personality disorders, but also suggests that the childhood adversity typically associated with the development of BPD promotes increased social orienting.
Postpartum Depression (PPD) is one of the most common conditions in the childbearing period, with prominent impairments for the mother and the newborn. Esketamine has shown potent antidepressant effects and appears to be a promising agent in preventing PPD. We aimed to evaluate the potential effect of esketamine in preventing PPD within the first week and within four and six weeks post-delivery as the primary outcome; assess changes in the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) one week and 42 days post-delivery; and evaluate tolerability and changes in inflammatory markers as secondary outcomes. A subanalysis was conducted considering different intervention protocols. A systematic review and meta-analysis (ID: CRD42024513598) were performed considering Randomized Clinical Trials (RCTs) in MEDLINE (PubMed), Embase, and Web of Science from inception until May 5, 2024. The ROB-2 tool assessed the risk of bias. Eleven RCTs were included, totaling 2316 participants. The occurrence of PPD was significantly lower in the intervention group within one week post-delivery (RR 0.44, 95% CI 0.30–0.64, p < 0.01; z = −4.25, tau2 = 0.1531, I2 = 54%, p = 0.03) and within four/six weeks post-delivery (RR 0.56, 95% CI 0.39–0.76, p < 0.01; z = −3.55, tau2 = 0.1444, I2 = 60%, p < 0.01). The presence of dizziness, drowsiness, and nausea was not significantly different between groups. Changes in EPDS score within one week post-delivery were not statistically significant and neither were changes 42 days post-delivery. No significant differences in inflammatory marker levels were found. Our updated meta-analysis suggests that esketamine is an effective agent in preventing PPD within six weeks post-delivery.

