University of Arkansas Poster Presentation!
Author: Catherine Scales | Major: Psychology | Semester: Spring 2023
During the Spring of 2023, my senior year, I continued my psychology study in Dr. Matt Judah’s CODA lab, with the assistance of my graduate student mentor Russell Mach. My thesis is examining the relation between depression and the reliability of patient-provided medical history. Understanding how depression may impact the provision of self-reported medical histories is extremely important! Considering the high prevalence of depression and how medical histories are the foundation of treatment and assessment for standard healthcare, it is necessary to understand how these may interact. My study focuses specifically on how depression may impact reporting of bodily symptoms (cardiovascular, neurological, gastrointestinal, etc.) and previous formal diagnoses (mental health and physical health). With previous research on individuals experiencing depression symptoms evidencing negative biases in memory, as well as increased attention to negative stimuli, the current study aimed to examine if this was also seen in the provision of a medical history. For instance, would a person exhibiting more severe symptoms of depression be more likely to report different or worse symptoms? There is an abundance of research on depression and its association with memory, but much of it evidenced negative biases and not necessarily inaccurate memory. For example, it has often been found that people with depression are much more likely to sponsor questions with negative ratings (pain, affective symptoms, etc.), but not necessarily likely to sponsor questions “differently.” Meaning, research has not found a strong association between severity of depression symptoms and recalling previous diagnoses and symptoms incorrectly.
Recognizing this, the participants’ levels of depression are measured using a self-report survey called the PHQ-9, which asks for feelings of depression at the current moment and reflecting back 2 weeks. Additionally, each participant completes the medical history form we compiled, which includes questions about past formal diagnoses (e.g., high blood pressure, specific phobias, etc.), bodily symptoms, current pain and distress levels, as well as frequency of drug and alcohol use in the past 6 months. In my study, participants complete the medical history form and the PHQ-9 first. Two weeks later, they complete the same measures again, but are asked to exclude the past 2 weeks in their reporting. The aim of this is to enable reporting of the same period, theoretically examining memory of the same time frame. Considering previous research, we hypothesized that the participants reporting greater depression symptoms are more likely to report different symptoms or diagnoses at the second time point when compared to the first time point. We decided not to prescreen for participants with depression, as we wanted data from participants with less severe symptoms as well.
Only 70~ participants have completed both parts of the study so far, but we have analyzed some of the data. So far, we have found evidence of a relation between “different” reporting and depression symptoms, but not with “worse” reporting. This is especially the case with certain groups of questions related to symptoms indicative of somatic complaints (stomach aches, heart racing, thoughts scattered, headaches, etc.).
That being said, every project comes with its complications! Dr. Matt Judah, Russell Mach, and I dedicated much of the beginning of this Spring to troubleshooting technical difficulties with SONA and Qualtrics that was resulting in loss of data. I learned quite a bit about SONA and Qualtrics throughout the process of troubleshooting our difficulties, which will serve me well in future projects. Dr. Matt Judah and Russell Mach are both amazing co-contributors, guiding me throughout the research process and teaching me how to clean data, run various analyses in SPSS, and to think of future project ideas considering our preliminary findings.
The Honors College grant has greatly enabled me to conduct this research. Due to the time commitment and dedication needed to be a part of such a project, it can be incredibly difficult to maintain financial stability (i.e., work) and complete coursework. This grant helps me maintain financial stability while in school and facilitating this project. For example, I was able to take the time to present my preliminary findings at the University of Arkansas’s National Undergraduate Poster Competition in late April. Next for this project, we are continuing data collection in hopes of running more analyses. The plan is to finish data collection in the upcoming Fall, which is when I will defend my thesis.