Early warning signals in psychopathology: what do they tell?

ABSTRACT:

Background

Despite the increasing understanding of factors that might underlie psychiatric disorders, prospectively detecting shifts from a healthy towards a symptomatic state has remained unattainable. A complex systems perspective on psychopathology implies that such symptom shifts may be foreseen by generic indicators of instability, or early warning signals (EWS). EWS include, for instance, increasing variability, covariance, and autocorrelation in momentary affective states-of which the latter was studied. The present study investigated if EWS predict (i) future worsening of symptoms as well as (ii) the type of symptoms that will develop, meaning that the association between EWS and future symptom shifts would be most pronounced for congruent affective states and psychopatholo

SUBMITTER: Schreuder MJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7557008 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature