Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2023 Jun 16:14:1161097.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1161097. eCollection 2023.

The associations of Positive and Negative Valence Systems, Cognitive Systems and Social Processes on disease severity in anxiety and depressive disorders

Bernd R Förstner  1 , Sarah Jane Böttger  1 , Alexander Moldavski  2 , Malek Bajbouj  3 , Andrea Pfennig  4 , André Manook  5 , Marcus Ising  6 , Andre Pittig  7   8 , Ingmar Heinig  7 , Andreas Heinz  9 , Klaus Mathiak  10   11 , Thomas G Schulze  12   13   14 , Frank Schneider  10   15 , Inge Kamp-Becker  16 , Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg  2 , Frank Padberg  17 , Tobias Banaschewski  18 , Michael Bauer  4 , Rainer Rupprecht  5 , Hans-Ulrich Wittchen  7   17 , Michael A Rapp  1 , Mira Tschorn  1
Affiliations

The associations of Positive and Negative Valence Systems, Cognitive Systems and Social Processes on disease severity in anxiety and depressive disorders

Bernd R Förstner et al. Front Psychiatry. .

Abstract

Background: Anxiety and depressive disorders share common features of mood dysfunctions. This has stimulated interest in transdiagnostic dimensional research as proposed by the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) approach by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) aiming to improve the understanding of underlying disease mechanisms. The purpose of this study was to investigate the processing of RDoC domains in relation to disease severity in order to identify latent disorder-specific as well as transdiagnostic indicators of disease severity in patients with anxiety and depressive disorders.

Methods: Within the German research network for mental disorders, 895 participants (n = 476 female, n = 602 anxiety disorder, n = 257 depressive disorder) were recruited for the Phenotypic, Diagnostic and Clinical Domain Assessment Network Germany (PD-CAN) and included in this cross-sectional study. We performed incremental regression models to investigate the association of four RDoC domains on disease severity in patients with affective disorders: Positive (PVS) and Negative Valance System (NVS), Cognitive Systems (CS) and Social Processes (SP).

Results: The results confirmed a transdiagnostic relationship for all four domains, as we found significant main effects on disease severity within domain-specific models (PVS: β = -0.35; NVS: β = 0.39; CS: β = -0.12; SP: β = -0.32). We also found three significant interaction effects with main diagnosis showing a disease-specific association.

Limitations: The cross-sectional study design prevents causal conclusions. Further limitations include possible outliers and heteroskedasticity in all regression models which we appropriately controlled for.

Conclusion: Our key results show that symptom burden in anxiety and depressive disorders is associated with latent RDoC indicators in transdiagnostic and disease-specific ways.

Keywords: RDoC; Research Domain Criteria; anxiety disoders; depression; disease severity; transdiagnostic.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

FP is a member of the European Scientific Advisory Board of Brainsway Inc., Jerusalem, Israel, and the International Scientific Advisory Board of Sooma, Helsinki, Finland. He has received speaker’s honoraria from Mag&More GmbH, the neuroCare Group, Munich, Germany, and Brainsway Inc. His lab has received support with equipment from neuroConn GmbH, Ilmenau, Germany, Mag&More GmbH and Brainsway Inc. TB served in an advisory or consultancy role for eye level, Infectopharm, Lundbeck, Medice, Neurim Pharmaceuticals, Oberberg GmbH, Roche, and Takeda. He received conference support or speaker’s fee by Janssen, Medice and Takeda. He received royalities from Hogrefe, Kohlhammer, CIP Medien, Oxford University Press; the present work is unrelated to these relationships. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Relationship of RDoC domains with disease severity in AD and MDD. Grouped scatter graph of domain associations (PVS, NVS, CS, and SP) with fitted DS scores. Each dot corresponds to an individual score on both variables, the color represents the patient groups (orange: AD; blue: MDD). RDoC, Research Domain Criteria; AD, Anxiety disorders; MDD, Major depressive disorders; DS, disease severity; PVS, Positive Valence Systems; NVS, Negative Valence Systems; CS, Cognitive Systems; SP, Social Processes.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. Clark LA, Watson D. Tripartite model of anxiety and depression: psychometric evidence and taxonomic implications. J Abnorm Psychol. (1991) 100:316–36. doi: 10.1037/0021-843X.100.3.316, PMID: - DOI - PubMed
    1. Brown TA, Chorpita BF, Barlow DH. Structural relationships among dimensions of the DSM-IV anxiety and mood disorders and dimensions of negative affect, positive affect, and autonomic arousal. J Abnorm Psychol. (1998) 107:179–92. doi: 10.1037//0021-843X.107.2.179, PMID: - DOI - PubMed
    1. Wei M, Roodenrys S. A scoping review on the extent and nature of anxiety-related research within the research domain criteria (RDoC) framework: limited coverage using non-disorder-specific search terms. New Ideas Psychol. (2021) 63:100901. doi: 10.1016/j.newideapsych.2021.100901 - DOI
    1. Rock PL, Roiser JP, Riedel WJ, Blackwell AD. Cognitive impairment in depression: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Psychol Med. (2014) 44:2029–40. doi: 10.1017/S0033291713002535 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Praus P, Bilek E, Holz NE, Braun U. Die Domäne “soziale Prozesse” im System der Research Domain Criteria: aktueller Stand und Perspektive. Nervenarzt. (2021) 92:925–32. doi: 10.1007/s00115-021-01161-6, PMID: - DOI - PMC - PubMed