The Association Among Recent Stressful Events,COMT Gene Val158Met Polymorphism And College Students’ Depression:The Moderating Effects Of Emotional Attention Bias

Depression is a worldwide emotional problem that has important genetic underpinnings.In recent years,the number of people with depression has increased,which has brought enormous burdens to society.As a special group,college students face many changes from the late adolescence to the early adulthood.Stressful events such as academics,work,and social adjustment appear that make them become a highly depressed group.Depression of college students not only affects their academic level and quality of life,but can even lead to self-harm or suicidal behavior.Therefore,in-depth exploration of the mechanism of college students’ depression is of great practical significance for promoting the physical and mental health of college students.Recent stressful events are closely related to depression.Many empirical studies have further shown that recent stressful events can positively predict individual’s depression.In addition,genetic and psychological factors also play an important role to depression.The COMT gene Val158 Met polymorphism is an important candidate gene for depression.The gene is closely associated with depression.Emotional attention bias as a cognitive factor has received wide attention from researchers.Emotional attention bias means that individuals are more likely to be attracted by emotional stimuli around them.A large number of studies have shown that depressed patients are closely related to negative emotional bias.Therefore,it is necessary to explore the interaction of gene,cognition and environmental factors on depression,as well as to further reveal intrinsic mechanism of depression.Thus,the study was conducted to investigate the interaction of recent stressful events and COMT gene Val158 Met polymorphism on college students’ depression,and the moderating effects of emotional attention bias.In this study,86 male students in junior high school of Shandong Normal University were recruited to participate.They were asked to complete scales,including the recent stressful events scale,childhood negative scale,depression scale.In addition,participants also need to complete the dot probe task.The main conclusions were listed as follows:(1)The main effect of COMT gene Val158 Met polymorphism on depression was not significant,and recent stressful events had a significant positive predictive effect on depression.Positive emotional bias had a significant negative predictive effect on depression.Negative emotional bias did not have a significant main effect on depression.(2)Recent stressful events,COMT gene Val158 Met polymorphism and positive emotional bias interacted with depression: only in individuals carrying the Met allele,positive emotional bias significantly moderated the impact of recent stressful events on depression,specifically,only in the positive avoidance group,the recent stressful events could predict depression of college students,others had no significant predictive effect on depression.In addition,in individuals carrying the Val/Val genotype,emotional attention bias did not moderate the effects of recent stressful events on depression.(3)COMT gene Val158 Met polymorphism and negative emotional bias had an interaction effect on depression,specifically,in the Met allele group,negative emotional bias could predict individual depression,but this effect did not exist in the Val/Val genotype.Recent stressful events,COMT gene Val158 Met polymorphism,negative emotional bias had no significant interactions on depression.