An explanatory model of depressive symptoms from anxiety, post-traumatic stress, somatic symptoms, and symptom perception 2022 Villarreal-Zegarra

Full title: An explanatory model of depressive symptoms from anxiety, post-traumatic stress, somatic symptoms, and symptom perception: the potential role of inflammatory markers in hospitalized COVID-19 patients

Abstract

Background
The context of the COVID-19 pandemic has harmed the mental health of the population, increasing the incidence of mental health problems such as depression, especially in those who have had COVID-19. Our study puts forward an explanatory model of depressive symptoms based on subjective psychological factors in those hospitalized for COVID-19 with and without biological markers (i.e., inflammatory markers). Therefore, we aim to evaluate the hypotheses proposed in the model to predict the presence of depressive symptoms.

Method
We conducted a cross-sectional study, using a simple random sampling. Data from 277 hospitalized patients with COVID-19 in Lima-Peru, were collected to assess mental health variables (i.e., depressive, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, and somatic symptoms), self-perception of COVID-19 related symptoms, and neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio (NLR) such as inflammatory marker. We performed a structural equation modeling analysis to evaluate a predictive model of depressive symptoms.

Results
The results showed a prevalence of depressive symptoms (11.2%), anxiety symptoms (7.9%), somatic symptoms (2.2%), and symptoms of post-traumatic stress (6.1%) in the overall sample. No association was found between the prevalence of these mental health problems among individuals with and without severe inflammatory response. The mental health indicators with the highest prevalence were sleep problems (48%), low energy (47.7%), nervousness (48.77%), worry (47.7%), irritability (43.7%) and back pain (52%) in the overall sample. The model proposed to explain depressive symptoms was able to explain more than 83.7% of the variance and presented good goodness-of-fit indices. Also, a different performance between the proposed model was found between those with and without severe inflammatory response. This difference was mainly found in the relationship between anxiety and post-traumatic stress symptoms, and between the perception of COVID-19 related symptoms and somatic symptoms.

Conclusions
Results demonstrated that our model of mental health variables may explain depressive symptoms in hospitalized patients of COVID-19 from a third-level hospital in Peru. In the model, perception of symptoms influences somatic symptoms, which impact both anxiety symptoms and symptoms of post-traumatic stress. Thus, anxiety symptoms could directly influence depressive symptoms or through symptoms of post-traumatic stress. Our findings could be useful to decision-makers for the prevention of depression, used to inform the creation of screening tools (i.e., perception of symptoms, somatic and anxiety symptoms) to identify vulnerable patients to depression.

Open access, https://bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12888-022-04277-4

 

Why were the 97.8% hospitalized if they didn't have symptoms?

How is poor sleep or low energy a mental health problem in hospitalized patients? Back pain is mental health? How is worry considered a mental health problem in hospitalized patients? I would argue that not worrying one bit while being hospitalized would be a mental health problem, not the other way around. Psychiatry keeps simply labeling normal reactions as abnormal just because.

The conclusion is basically fiction, clearly the starting point. What is this nonsense? How is the vast majority of research on this issue complete garbage 2.5 years into it?

 

It's easier than doing good research. Since the garbage-producers are unlikely to produce useful research even if they tried working hard at it, producing meaningless junk is more rewarding for their careers. Sadly, the system is set up so that they do get rewarded for producing garbage.