Amanda C. Collins

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• Doctor of Philosophy
• Faculty Member at Massachusetts General Hospital

Individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD) experience fewer positive and more negative emotions and use fewer positive words to describe themselves. Natural language processing techniques have been used to predict depression, with pronoun and emotion usage being identified as important features. However, it is unclear how depressed individual...

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is conceptualized by individual symptoms occurring most of the day for at least two weeks. Despite this operationalization, MDD is highly variable with persons showing greater variation within and across days. Moreover, MDD is highly heterogeneous, varying considerably across people in both function and form. Recent...

Reward devaluation theory posits that depressed individuals avoid and devalue positivity, suggesting that they may hold fewer positive self-schemas. Previous meta-analytic reviews have supported this theoretical framework regarding positivity but have not assessed for self-referential stimuli. Self-referential encoding and recall tasks assess for s...

Positive psychology interventions (PPIs) are effective at increasing happiness and decreasing depressive symptoms. PPIs are often administered as self-guided web-based interventions, but not all persons benefit from web-based interventions. Therefore, it is important to identify whether someone is likely to benefit from web-based PPIs, in order to...

Objectives: Reward devaluation theory (RDT) posits that some depressed individuals avoid positivity due to its previous association with negative outcomes. Behavioral indicators of avoidance of reward support RDT, but self-report indicators have yet to be examined discriminantly. Two candidate self-report measures were examined in relation to depre...

Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) offers advantages over retrospective questionnaires by reducing recall bias and capturing rapid symptom dynamics, and it is increasingly used to measure depression symptoms. However, few depression symptom measures are validated for EMA use in the manner expected for traditional questionnaires. Therefore, the c...

Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) offers advantages over retrospective questionnaires by reducing recall bias and capturing rapid symptom dynamics, and it is increasingly used to measure depression symptoms. However, few depression symptom measures are validated for EMA use in the manner expected for traditional questionnaires. Therefore, the c...

Background: Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is characterized by negative recall biases, which may impact how individuals with depressive symptoms report physical activity (PA), sedentary, and sleep behaviors. Additionally, there are discrepancies between subjective and objective behaviors in MDD. Thus, the current study investigated whether individ...

Reward motivation, a construct tied to depression, has been studied using the Effort-Expenditure for Rewards Task (EEfRT). Prior work indicates that anhedonia can reduce reward motivation on the EEfRT, as those with higher levels of anhedonia tend to engage in low reward tasks that require less effort as opposed to expending higher levels of effort...

Individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD) experience fewer positive and more negative emotions and use fewer positive words to describe themselves. Natural language processing (NLP) techniques have been used to predict depression, with pronoun and emotion usage being identified as important features. However, it is unclear how depressed indi...

Anxiety and depression are highly comorbid with each other, warranting a need to better understand transdiagnostic mechanisms. Anhedonia has been hypothesized as a transdiagnostic mechanism but has often been investigated as a unidimensional factor. Thus, the current study examined how anticipatory and consummatory anhedonia, including how they int...

Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is a prevalent mental health disorder often identified by persistentlow mood, and a lack of motivation and energy. Persons with MDD often experience largefluctuations in their symptoms over hours and days, which can offer valuable clinical insights,highlighting potential targets for treatment and intervention strateg...

Large language models (LLMs) show promise for health applications when combined with behavioral sensing data. Traditional approaches convert sensor data into text prompts, but this process is prone to errors, computationally expensive, and requires domain expertise. These challenges are particularly acute when processing extended time series data....

Background Depressed individuals have both heightened negative self-views and reduced positive self-views. The self-referential encoding task (SRET) can capture depressed individuals’ self-schemas by asking them to endorse whether a word describes them or not. Digital interventions that target positive biases in depression can help improve positive...

Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) offers advantages over retrospective questionnaires by reducing recall bias and capturing rapid symptom dynamics, and it is increasingly used to measure depression symptoms. However, few depression symptom measures are validated for EMA use in the manner expected for traditional questionnaires. Therefore, the c...

Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) offers advantages over retrospective questionnaires by reducing recall bias and capturing rapid symptom dynamics, and it is increasingly used to measure depression symptoms. However, few depression symptom measures are validated for EMA use in the manner expected for traditional questionnaires. Therefore, the c...

Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) offers advantages over retrospective questionnaires by reducing recall bias and capturing rapid symptom dynamics, and it is increasingly used to measure depression symptoms. However, few depression symptom measures are validated for EMA use in the manner expected for traditional questionnaires. Therefore, the c...

Negative rumination and emotion regulation difficulties have been consistently linked with depression. Despite anhedonia—the lack of interest in pleasurable experiences—being a cardinal symptom of depression, emotion regulation of positive emotions, including dampening, are considered far less in the literature. Given that anhedonia may manifest th...

In recent years, large language models (LLMs), including ChatGPT, have exponentially grown in application. Given existing barriers to mental health services, alongside the capability of LLMs to generate therapeutic responses, LLMs have potential to serve as accessible precursors, adjuncts, or alternatives to traditional therapy. However, little is...

The presentation of major depressive disorder (MDD) can vary widely due to its heterogeneity, including inter- and intraindividual symptom variability, making MDD difficult to diagnose with standard measures in clinical settings. Prior work has demonstrated that passively collected actigraphy can be used to detect MDD at a disorder level; however,...

Background: Despite major strides in conceptualizing and modeling the multifaceted nature of suicidal thought and behavior (STB) over the past few decades, the overall predictability of STB has not improved. This may be partly due to the dynamic nature of suicidal ideation (SI), which often fluctuates over hours, yet is largely overlooked in studie...

Anxiety and depression are often comorbid and chronic disorders. Previous research indicates that positivity relinquishment is a moderator of anxiety and depression, such that only anxious individuals who endorsed relinquishing positivity were also depressed. We sought to extend those findings by conducting three network analyses with self-report m...

Background: Existing interventions for co-occurring depression and cannabis use often do not treat both disorders simultaneously and can result in higher rates of symptom relapse. Traditional in-person interventions are often difficult to obtain due to financial and time limitations, which may further prevent individuals with co-occurring depressio...

Major depressive disorder (MDD) and borderline personality disorder (BPD) often co-occur, with 20 % of adults with MDD meeting criteria for BPD. While MDD is typically diagnosed by symptoms persisting for several weeks, research suggests a dynamic pattern of symptom changes occurring over shorter durations. Given the diagnostic focus on affective s...

Anhedonia and depressed mood are two cardinal symptoms of major depressive disorder (MDD). Prior work has demonstrated that cannabis consumers often endorse anhedonia and depressed mood, which may contribute to greater cannabis use (CU) over time. However, it is unclear (1) how the unique influence of anhedonia and depressed mood affect CU and (2)...

Objectives Each person possesses a unique view surrounding depressive symptomology and etiology that is shaped by idiosyncratic experiences. However, the influence that subjective etiological beliefs regarding a person's depressive symptoms have on actual symptom presentation and organization is seldom considered. Methods The current study employe...

Speech-based diaries from mobile phones can capture paralinguistic patterns that help detect mental illness symptoms such as suicidal ideation. However, previous studies have primarily evaluated machine learning models on a single dataset, making their performance unknown under distribution shifts. In this paper, we investigate the generalizability...

Background: Depression is often found to be treatment resistant. Examining the disorder as a homogenous entity could be hindering progress. Research focusing on unique pathways toward the development of depression could better inform treatment. Thus, the goal of this present study is to assess the unique and interactive relationships of fear of hap...

Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is a heterogeneous disorder, resulting in challenges with early detection. However, changes in sleep and movement patterns may help improve detection. Thus, this study aimed to explore the utility of wrist-worn actigraphy data in combination with machine learning (ML) and deep learning techniques to detect MDD using...

BACKGROUND Existing interventions for co-occurring depression and cannabis use often do not treat both disorders simultaneously and can result in higher rates of symptom relapse. Traditional in-person interventions are often difficult to obtain due to financial and time limitations, which may further prevent individuals with co-occurring depression...

Depressive symptoms have been shown to be negatively related to academic achievement, as measured by grade point average (GPA). Grit, or the passion for and the ability to persevere toward a goal despite adversity, has been linked to GPA. Thus, grit may potentially buffer against the negative effects of depressive symptoms in relation to academic a...

ImportanceMajor Depressive Disorder (MDD), is a widespread and often debilitating mental health condition characterized by significant heterogeneity in symptom profiles, which poses a challenge for early detection. Changes in sleep and movement patterns associated with MDD carry valuable diagnostic information. This study explored the utility of wr...

Some individuals devalue positivity previously associated with negativity (Winer & Salem, 2016). Positive emotions (e.g. happiness) may be seen as threatening and result in active avoidance of future situations involving positivity. Although some self-report measures can capture emotions of happiness-averse individuals, they are not always capable...

Background and objectives: Reward Devaluation Theory suggests that devaluation of positivity may be integral in understanding depression (Winer & Salem, 2016). Specifically, the anticipatory (e.g., fear of happiness) and responsive (e.g., dampening) behaviors related to the processing of positivity may play a role in the development and maintenanc...

Depressed individuals hold negative schemas and experience less positivity in their lives. Network analyses suggest that this may be due to connectivity among negative concepts within depressed individuals’ schemas. However, the extent to which positivity interacts with negativity in depressed persons’ schemas has not been thoroughly assessed. Thus...

Reward Devaluation Theory posits that depressed individuals avoid and devalue positivity, suggesting that they may be less likely to hold positive self-schemas. Previous meta-analytic reviews support this theoretical framework with regard to positivity but have not assessed for self-referential stimuli. Self-referential encoding and recall tasks as...

Background and objectives: Positive affect treatments, which hold great promise to connect with those who are otherwise resistant to depression treatments, attempt to upregulate positive emotions. These treatments have potential advantages over standard therapies because they target cross-diagnostic core symptoms (e.g., anhedonia) that may respond...

Objectives Components of rumination, including brooding and reflection, as well devaluating prospective positivity, may help maintain depressive symptoms. We examined these components together for the first time using network analysis. Methods We examined the robustness of rumination communities of closely-related items in one network and then exa...

Background Difficulty tolerating emotional distress has been identified as a transdiagnostic risk factor for psychopathology. However, despite evidence that low distress tolerance is associated with increased symptoms of depression, little is known as to how and why this relationship exists. Previous work suggests that difficulty tolerating distres...

Depressed individuals hold negative schemas and experience less positivity in their lives. Network analyses suggest that this may be due to connectivity among negative concepts within depressed individuals’ schemas. However, the extent to which positivity interacts with negativity in depressed persons’ schemas has not been thoroughly assessed. Thus...

Anhedonia has been implicated as a core symptom of depression and schizophrenia, and studying anhedonia has yielded a wide array of important findings aiding the understanding and identification of psychological disorders. However, anhedonia is a complex and multifaceted construct; indeed, the term anhedonia has been defined in psychological and ps...