Patients:

Inclusion Criteria:

• Age 18-60
• Both males and females
• Current diagnosis of major depression
• Lifetime comorbidity is allowed

  We are particularly interested in diagnosed women who have a daughter between 9-14 years of age, although this is neither an inclusion nor an exclusion criterion.

Exclusion Criteria:

• Concurrent comorbidity among the three diagnoses of major depression, social phobia, or panic disorder

Healthy Controls:

Exclusion Criteria:

• Any head trauma with loss of consciousness
• Drug abuse/dependence within the last six months
• Hearing or vision loss
• Untreated medical illness
• Current psychiatric disorder

What Will Subjects Do?

Subjects participate in several sessions. In the first session (after an initial phone-screen eligibility interview), they are administered a SCID and complete a number of questionnaires. In the second session they participate in a battery of computer-driven information-processing tasks, including an emotion Stroop task and an emotion face-recognition task. In the third session we conduct a psychophysiological assessment with the subjects, in which they watch emotional film clips as we measure their autonomic reactivity. And in a final session, those participants who are eligible to do so participate in an fMRI assessment, in which patterns of brain activation are examined while they process positive and negative emotional stimuli.

Subjects Needed:

Characteristic Subjects: 275

Healthy Controls: 75

If you would like to participate in this study, whether or not you think you qualify, please click the Sign Up button below, and let us know of your interest.