Treatment for Anhedonia: A Neuroscience Driven Approach

Andrey · October 5, 2016, 10:26am

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Treatment for Anhedonia: A Neuroscience Driven Approach.

MG Craske, AE Meuret, T Ritz, M Treanor and HJ Dour, Depression and anxiety, 2016 10

Anhedonia, or loss of interest or pleasure in usual activities, is characteristic of depression, some types of anxiety, as well as substance abuse and schizophrenia. Anhedonia is a predictor of poor long-term outcomes, including suicide, and poor treatment response. Because extant psychological and pharmacological treatments are relatively ineffective for anhedonia, there is an unmet therapeutic need for this high-risk symptom. Current psychological and drug treatments for anxiety and depression focus largely on reducing excesses in negative affect rather than improving deficits in positive affect. Recent advances in affective neuroscience posit that anhedonia is associated with deficits in the appetitive reward system, specifically the anticipation, consumption, and learning of reward. In this paper, we review the evidence for positive affect as a symptom cluster, and its neural underpinnings, and introduce a novel psychological treatment for anxiety and depression that targets appetitive responding. First, we review anhedonia in relation to positive and negative valence systems and current treatment approaches. Second, we discuss the evidence linking anhedonia to biological, experiential, and behavioral deficits in the reward subsystems. Third, we describe the therapeutic approach for Positive Affect Treatment (PAT), an intervention designed to specifically target deficits in reward sensitivity.

Where can I get the full article for free? Anyone?

NutsAboutU · October 5, 2016, 1:09pm

Research into Loving Kindness Meditation (LKM) and schizophrenia, see link below, yielded a benefit in reducing anhedonia. The average anhedonia score went from 21 pre-LKM to 14 post-LKM. Note that this is not the paper that @Andrey is referring to.

anon93437440 · October 5, 2016, 1:11pm

I’m impulsive and meditation is not my bread and butter

far_cry0 · October 5, 2016, 4:45pm

paging @SzAdmin…!!!

SzAdmin · October 5, 2016, 5:36pm

To get the free science journal articles - here are how you get them - please share with others here when you see the need:

Go to Sci-Hub.cc or Sci-hub.bz

More info on sci-hub below:

When you see the PubMed article summary look for the PubMed ID (PMID at the bottom of the summary)

https://www.evernote.com/l/AGp0Nhky21FGlpoQq5mWD9PjQp-OrODK_UcB/image.png

Type this PubMed ID into the Sci-hub search engine and enter the Captcha when it comes up - then scroll down to find the research paper - or click on the side of the page where the paper link typically is.

Here is what you’ll see:

https://www.evernote.com/l/AGr9DWD-xTZC7bcGU2jaturQq1rpHehfEsMB/image.png