Department of Psychiatry, School of Clinical Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Li Ka Shing, The University of Hong Kong, Queen Mary Hospital, 102 Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong SAR, China.
Department of Social Work and Social Administration, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
Eur Arch Psychiatry Clin Neurosci. 2023 Aug;273(5):1051-1060. doi: 10.1007/s00406-022-01469-7. Epub 2022 Aug 16.
Visual stress is thought to reflect cortical excitability and has been associated with many neurological, neuropsychiatric, and neurodevelopmental conditions. However, its relationships with symptoms of depression and anxiety have not yet been elucidated. We conducted two separate studies to first examine visual stress in a longitudinal community sample of 104 participants (aged 12-24) in association with prospective symptoms of depression, anxiety, and distress after 3 months, and subsequently in a cross-sectional epidemiological sample of 530 participants (aged 15-24) to validate its associations with current mood and distress symptoms. The Pattern Glare Test was used to examine visual stress to three grating patterns with the spatial frequencies (SF) of 0.3, 2.3, and 9.4 cycles per degree (cpd). Other known factors of mental health, including functioning, as well as resilience, hopelessness, and loneliness, were also assessed at baseline. In both studies, we showed that perceptual distortions were highest toward the pattern with mid-SF (2.3 cpd). Multiple linear regression analyses revealed that greater visual stress was significantly associated with not only baseline but also 3-month symptom outcomes, even when accounting for age, years of education, days of no functioning, resilience, hopelessness, and loneliness. Our findings suggest the importance of visual stress in understanding and predicting poor mental health outcomes. As mental health can lead to far-reaching consequences that extend to adulthood, our findings may inform state-of-the-art innovative strategies for the prediction of poor mental health outcomes and suggest visual stress as a potential marker for early risk detection among young people.
视觉压力被认为反映了皮质兴奋性，与许多神经、神经精神和神经发育状况有关。然而，它与抑郁和焦虑症状的关系尚未阐明。我们进行了两项独立的研究，首先在一个由 104 名参与者（年龄在 12-24 岁之间）组成的纵向社区样本中，研究了视觉压力与 3 个月后抑郁、焦虑和痛苦的前瞻性症状之间的关系，随后在一个由 530 名参与者（年龄在 15-24 岁之间）组成的横断面流行病学样本中，验证了视觉压力与当前情绪和痛苦症状的关系。使用图案眩光测试（Pattern Glare Test）检查了三种光栅图案的视觉压力，这些图案的空间频率（SF）分别为 0.3、2.3 和 9.4 周/度（cpd）。心理健康的其他已知因素，包括功能，以及韧性、绝望和孤独，也在基线时进行了评估。在这两项研究中，我们都表明，知觉扭曲在中间 SF（2.3 cpd）的图案中最高。多元线性回归分析显示，视觉压力越大，不仅与基线，而且与 3 个月的症状结果显著相关，即使考虑到年龄、受教育年限、无功能天数、韧性、绝望和孤独。我们的研究结果表明视觉压力在理解和预测不良心理健康结果方面的重要性。由于心理健康可能导致深远的后果，延伸到成年期，我们的研究结果可能为预测不良心理健康结果的最先进创新策略提供信息，并提示视觉压力作为年轻人早期风险检测的潜在标志物。
