Frequency and stability of symptoms of depression, anxiety, and distress in advanced HIV disease

Frequency and stability of symptoms of depression, anxiety, and distress in advanced HIV disease

388 Abstracts of 14th Annual Meeting provide preliminary support for the validity of the NST Narrative recall measures as memory indices, and suppor...

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388

Abstracts of 14th Annual Meeting

provide preliminary support for the validity of the NST Narrative recall measures as memory indices, and support the multifactorial nature of the NST. Schmitt, F. A., Logue, P. E., & Reeder, K. P. Frequency and Stability of Symptoms of Depression, Anxiety, and Distress in Advanced HIV Disease. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the frequency of current and longitudinal self-reported symptoms of distress, depression, and anxiety in advanced AIDS-Related Complex and AIDS patients enrolled in two multicenter trials of antiretroviral therapy. These data allowed us to evaluate the prevalence of affective disorders which have been reported to be 5 times more prevalent in HIV+ when compared to HIV- persons even with relatively equal lifetime risks. As part of a larger neuropsychological assessment battery, the SCLg0R was used for self-report of affective symptoms. Patients from two clinical trials (over 500 patients were enrolled in each study) of antiretroviral therapy for advanced HIV disease were assessed and self-report of symptoms was obtained at baseline and every 12 weeks thereafter for a period of 1 year. Using several criteria to establish the presence of affective symptoms, baseline rates of depression and anxiety were 42 and 33 percent, respectively. ANOVA showed a significant drop of approximately 10% in self-report of these symptoms from screening to baseline evaluation. However, little change was observed in the self-reported rate of these disorders over time. Patients with a diagnosis of AIDS-Related Complex showed a slightly greater prevalence of these disorders when compared to AIDS patients. Overall, these data support the position that affective symptoms are more prevalent in advanced HIV disease than in the general population. Further, the rate of depression and anxiety was higher than that reported for HIV- and HIV+ asymptomatic persons. Finally, these data strongly suggest the need for intervention in light of the large proportion of patients who reported affective symptoms as well as the stability of this self-report.

Schutz, L. E., & Schutz, J. A. Prediction of Neurorehabilitation Outcome by Assessment Data at Intake: The Predictive Power Lies in the Psychological Measures. A series of studies investigating the prediction of cognitive neurorehabilitation treatment outcomes used predictors available at intake. Prior pilot investigations disclosed that the most potent predictor variables available from a large neuropsychological battery were personality trait variables and tests of nonverbal cognitive skills. For the present study a composite neuropsychological battery with expanded nonverbal contents was augmented by an inventory of premorbid personality traits. In addition, Prigatano's findings concerning the prognostic significance of awareness of deficit were operationalized through a symptom checklist. This study examined the predictive ability of treatment