Anhedonia as a Transdiagnostic Symptom Across Psychological Disorders: A Network Approach
Melissa G Guineau1, N Ikani1, M Rinck1
1Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands (Guineau, Ikani, Rinck, Becker, Vrijsen); Overwaal, Center of Expertise for Anxiety, Obsessive-Compulsive, and Posttraumatic Stress Disorders, Pro Persona, Institute for Integrated Mental Health Care, Nijmegen, The Netherlands (Guineau, Ikani); Department of Psychiatry, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, The Netherlands (Ikani, Collard, van Eijndhoven, Tendolkar, Schene, Vrijsen); Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands (Ikani, van Eijndhoven, Tendolkar, Schene, Vrijsen); Depression Expertise Center, Pro Persona Mental Health Care, Nijmegen, The Netherlands (Ikani, Vrijsen); Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Hospital Essen, Essen, Germany (Tendolkar).
Background:
Anhedonia is apparent in different mental disorders and is suggested to be related to dysfunctions in the reward system and/or affect regulation. It may hence be a common underlying feature associated with symptom severity of mental disorders.
Methods:
We constructed a cross-sectional graphical Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (LASSO) network and a relative importance network to estimate the relationships between anhedonia severity and the severity of symptom clusters of major depressive disorder (MDD), anxiety sensitivity (AS), attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in a sample of Dutch adult psychiatric patients (N = 557).
Results:
Both these networks revealed anhedonia severity and depression symptom severity as central to the network. Results suggest that anhedonia severity may be predictive of the severity of symptom clusters of MDD, AS, ADHD, and ASD. MDD symptom severity may be predictive of AS and ADHD symptom severity.
Conclusions:
The results suggest that anhedonia may serve as a common underlying transdiagnostic psychopathology feature, predictive of the severity of symptom clusters of depression, AS, ADHD, and ASD. Thus, anhedonia may be associated with the high comorbidity between these symptom clusters and disorders. If our results will be replicated in future studies, it is recommended for clinicians to be more vigilant about screening for anhedonia and/or depression severity in individuals diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, ADHD and/or ASD.Appeared originally in Psychol Med 2023; 53:3908-3919.
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