Psychobiological factors of resilience and depression in late life

Abstract

In contrast to traditional perspectives of resilience as a stable, trait-like characteristic, resilience is now recognized as a multidimentional, dynamic capacity influenced by life-long interactions between internal and environmental resources. We review psychosocial and neurobiological factors associated with resilience to late-life depression (LLD). Recent research has identified both psychosocial characteristics associated with elevated LLD risk (e.g., insecure attachment, neuroticism) and psychosocial processes that may be useful intervention targets (e.g., self-efficacy, sense of purpose, coping behaviors, social support). Psychobiological factors include a variety of endocrine, genetic, inflammatory, metabolic, neural, and cardiovascular processes that bidirectionally interact to affect risk for LLD onset and course of illness. Several resilience-enhancing intervention modalities show promise for the prevention and treatment of LLD, including cognitive/psychological or mind–body (positive psychology; psychotherapy; heart rate variability biofeedback; meditation), movement-based (aerobic exercise; yoga; tai chi), and biological approaches (pharmacotherapy, electroconvulsive therapy). Additional research is needed to further elucidate psychosocial and biological factors that affect risk and course of LLD. In addition, research to identify psychobiological factors predicting differential treatment response to various interventions will be essential to the development of more individualized and effective approaches to the prevention and treatment of LLD.

The Effects of Biofeedback Training and Smartphone-Delivered Biofeedback Training on Resilience, Occupational Stress, and Depressive Symptoms among Abused Psychiatric Nurses

“…Workplace resilience interventions have been shown to increase job satisfaction, work engagement, and resilience [15]; as well as decrease burnout and perceived stress [15][16][17][18]. Many interventions have been effective for enhancing one's resilience, such as positive psychology, psychotherapy, biofeedback, meditation, and yoga [19]. Biofeedback has been used to help individuals recognise many physiological functions and manipulate their bodily systems with changes in heart rate variability (HRV) via regulating breathing [20].…”

Caracterización conductual y neuroinmune de la resiliencia al estrés social: Efectos reforzantes de la cocaína

“…En los últimos años se han comenzado a identificar las características psicológicas y biológicas de los individuos resilientes al estrés social (Pfau y Russo, 2015). Por ejemplo, existen una serie de conductas y rasgos psicológicos, como la flexibilidad cognitiva, el afrontamiento activo, el optimismo o la sensación de pertenencia a un grupo, que pueden favorecer una respuesta de resiliencia en seres humanos (Wood y Bhatnagar, 2015;Laird, Krause, Funes y Lavretsky, 2019). Sin embargo, la mayoría de estos estudios se han centrado en la resiliencia al desarrollo de depresión, ansiedad o trastorno de estrés postraumático (Russo, Murrough, Han, Charney y Nestler, 2012;Krishnan, 2014;Finnell y Wood, 2016), siendo muy escasos los estudios que evalúan la resiliencia al incremento en el consumo de drogas.…”

Affective status in cerebral small vessel disease

“…Also, our study has not considered the impact of different therapeutics frequently used in patients with neuropsychiatric disorders such as antidepressants and tranquilizers, which could possibly interfere with the results [16]. Since vascular depression and apathy are often resistant to available pharmacotherapy, prevention of vascular lesions which could be the underlying cause of these phenomena and further research on new therapeutic strategies is of utmost importance [17].…”