Biomedical subjects

P L Fair

Publications and source records attributed to P L Fair.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed1985

Assessing depression and anxiety in chronic dialysis patients.

One hundred and twenty-eight patients on chronic dialysis were studied by the Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale and Self-Rating Anxiety Scale, the Differential Emotion Scale (DES), the Test of Emotional Styles (TES), and the Social Dysfunction Rating Scale (SDRS). As measured by the Zung scales, approximately half of the sample manifested depression and anxiety symptoms at clinically relevant levels. The data suggested an inverse correlation between depression and anxiety levels and patients' total length of time on dialysis, which may explain some of the variation in depression and anxiety results obtained with different samples. Depression and anxiety scores were correlated with related DES and SDRS factors, but patients' scores on the DES, TES, and SDRS generally indicated positive mood and functioning. Scales containing disease-related somatic items may yield exaggerated depression and anxiety scores for dialysis patients. It may be useful to assess patients' psychological functioning with several different instruments.

Anxiety↗

PubMed1978

Facial electromyography in the assessment of improvement in depression.

Depressed patients who showed decreases in resting corrugator muscle tension levels, as measured electromyographically, also showed improvement in clinical symptoms, as assessed by the Hamilton Psychiatric Rating Scale over a 2-week period. Patients showing good clinical improvement after 2 weeks had resting pretreatment corrugator levels higher than those showing little clinical improvement, suggesting that corrugator activity might also serve as a forecaster of subsequent change. These findings support Darwin's 1872 hypothesis concerning the role of the "grief" muscle in depression. Furthermore, psychophysiological recording of patterns of facial muscle activity may have value in the clinical assessment of depression and treatment effects.

Amitriptyline↗

PubMed1976

Facial muscle patterning to affective imagery in depressed and nondepressed subjects.

When subjects imagine happy, sad, and angry situations, different patterns of facial muscle activity are produced which can be measured by electromyography. These subtle, typically covert, facial expression patterns differentiate depressed from nondepressed subjects. Facial electromyography can provide a sensitive, objective index of normal and clinical mood states.

Depression↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Facial expression and imagery in depression: an electromyographic study.

When subjects are instructed to self-generate happy, sad, and angry imagery, discrete patterns of facial muscle activity can be detected using electromyographic (EMG) procedures. Prior research from this laboratory suggests that depressed subjects show attenuated facial EMG patterns during imagery conditions, particularly during happy imagery. In the present experiment, 12 depressed subjects and 12 matched normals were requested to generate happy and sad imagery, first with the instruction to simply "think" about the imagery, and then to self-regulate the affective state by "reexperiencing the feelings" associated with the imagery. Continuous recordings of facial EMG were obtained from the corrugator, zygomatic major, depressor anguli oris, and mentalis muscle regions. It was hypothesized that (a) these muscle sites would reliably differentiate between happy and sad imagery. (b) the instruction to self-generate the affective feeling state would produce greater EMG differences than the "think" instructions, and (c) the "think" instructions would be a more sensitive indicator of the difference between depressed and nondepressed subjects, especially for happy imagery. All three hypotheses were confirmed. The application of facial electromyography to the assessment of normal and clinical mood states, and the role of facial muscle patterning in the subjective experience of emotion, are discussed.

Adult↗