Attention Bias Modification Treatment for Young Adults With Major Depressive Disorder

Department of Psychology, Hunan Normal University

In this study, the investigators test whether a 4-week 12-session attention bias modification treatment (ABMT) could reduce depressive symptoms relative to placebo controls in young adults with major depressive disorder at post-training and 3-month follow-ups. Meanwhile, the investigators also test whether a 2-week 4-session ABMT booster training for every three months could reduce residual depressive symptoms and recurrences relative to placebo controls for 1-year follow-up

Attention Bias Modification Training was a modified dot-probe task, in which 90% of the targets appeared at the neutral word position and 10% at the sad word position. The placebo training procedure is a classic dot-probe task in which the targets appeared with equal probability in the sad (50%) and neutral (50%) word positions. The investigators assess attention bias scores, depressive symptoms, trait anxiety, rumination and self-report attention control ability at 1-week, 2-week, 4-week,7-week,3-month,4-month, 5-month, 6-month and 12-month follow-ups after training.

Inclusion Criteria:

• The presence of definite and probable MDD (i.e., at least 1 core symptom plus 3 further depressive symptoms present for at least 2 weeks) diagnoses

Exclusion Criteria:

• a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or mood disorder due to a general medical condition or substance-induced mood disorder; and any concurrent treatment (i.e., psychotherapy and/or pharmacotherapy).