3 thoughts on “Demoralization in Movement Disorders”
Hi Julianna,
I have a couple of questions: (1) How would you be operationally defining demoralization in this study? In other words, a person that is demoralized vs. one that is depressed would exhibit … (fill in the blank for distinguishing features and the questionnaire responses that allow you to see those features). (2) Were you able to collect data from any subjects prior to the onset of online learning?
Demoralization would be operationally defined in this study as those who exhibit subjective incompetence, which is a self-perceived inability to perform activities of daily living and appropriately express feelings during periods of stress, and at least one symptom of distress (i.e. anxiety and/or depression), according to the administered scales. The scales testing for these components of demoralization would be the GAD-7 to measure anxiety, the PHQ-9 to measure depression, and the SIS to measure subjective incompetence. Additionally, another scale called the KDSII was used to directly measure demoralization. Therefore, patients with a KDSII survey positive for demoralization, a positive SIS survey, and either a positive GAD-7 or PHQ-9 survey were deemed demoralized for the purpose of this study.
Prior to the onset of online learning, I was afforded the opportunity to collect data from 50 patients. While this is a relatively small sample size and I had originally planned to collect more data, I was still able to do some evaluation of the results using STATA before the transition to online learning took place. More data would need to be collected in the future to further strengthen the statistical evidence enough for a more concrete argument to be made, however I was able to uncover a few trends in the data that I did collect. Preliminary statistical evaluation found that when controlling for antidepressant use and number of people living in the same household, women are far less likely to report demoralization. Additionally, patients taking antidepressant medication were highly statically significant and positively correlated with higher KDSII and SIS scores increasing the probability of a demoralization diagnosis. One last interesting finding is that regular levodopa use by movement disorder patients at the time of survey is moderately significant and positively correlated only with GAD-7 scores and not PHQ-9 scores. Please let me know if there are any more questions that I can answer and thank you for your inquiry!
Hi Julianna,
I have a couple of questions:
(1) How would you be operationally defining demoralization in this study? In other words, a person that is demoralized vs. one that is depressed would exhibit … (fill in the blank for distinguishing features and the questionnaire responses that allow you to see those features).
(2) Were you able to collect data from any subjects prior to the onset of online learning?
Best,
Prof. Martinez
Hi Professor Martinez,
Demoralization would be operationally defined in this study as those who exhibit subjective incompetence, which is a self-perceived inability to perform activities of daily living and appropriately express feelings during periods of stress, and at least one symptom of distress (i.e. anxiety and/or depression), according to the administered scales. The scales testing for these components of demoralization would be the GAD-7 to measure anxiety, the PHQ-9 to measure depression, and the SIS to measure subjective incompetence. Additionally, another scale called the KDSII was used to directly measure demoralization. Therefore, patients with a KDSII survey positive for demoralization, a positive SIS survey, and either a positive GAD-7 or PHQ-9 survey were deemed demoralized for the purpose of this study.
Prior to the onset of online learning, I was afforded the opportunity to collect data from 50 patients. While this is a relatively small sample size and I had originally planned to collect more data, I was still able to do some evaluation of the results using STATA before the transition to online learning took place. More data would need to be collected in the future to further strengthen the statistical evidence enough for a more concrete argument to be made, however I was able to uncover a few trends in the data that I did collect. Preliminary statistical evaluation found that when controlling for antidepressant use and number of people living in the same household, women are far less likely to report demoralization. Additionally, patients taking antidepressant medication were highly statically significant and positively correlated with higher KDSII and SIS scores increasing the probability of a demoralization diagnosis. One last interesting finding is that regular levodopa use by movement disorder patients at the time of survey is moderately significant and positively correlated only with GAD-7 scores and not PHQ-9 scores. Please let me know if there are any more questions that I can answer and thank you for your inquiry!
Best,
Julianna
Hi Julianna,
Thank you for providing that information and addressing my questions.
Best,
Prof. Martinez