The Importance Of Psychiatric Medication History: The Role Of Trait Worry In The Startle Reflex To Threat

Official URL: https://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b3422568

Worry is an uncontrollable, persistent thinking pattern involving negatively loaded "what if" scenarios. Worry is conceptualized as heightened anticipation of future events. However, psychophysiological studies of worry regarding its function in the face of threat anticipation and uncertainty have indicated inconsistent findings, raising the importance of studying additional variables that might explain the results. This study investigated the role of psychiatric medication history in the association between trait worry and startle reflexes to different degrees of threats. In the current study, university students (n = 65) completed the Threat Probability Task (TPT), which manipulates the occurrence of probability while featuring certain threats (100% chance of electric shock), uncertain threats (20% chance of electric shock), safety conditions, and startle reflexes measured with auditory probes. Selfreported worry tendency was measured using the Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ), and we collected psychiatric medication history via self-report. Multi-level analysis showed the main effect of threat conditions, a two-way interaction between psychiatric medication history and threat conditions, and a three-way interaction between trait worry, threat conditions, and psychiatric mediation history. Higher worry scores are associated with a blunted startle reflex to uncertain threats, particularly among individuals with a history of psychiatric medication, so that high-worry participants with a history of psychiatric medication did not startle more to uncertain threats than certain threats anymore. Our findings are in line with previous studies indicating that individuals who worry have difficulty coping with uncertainty. This study expanded our knowledge regarding the function of worry in uncertain threat anticipation, considering the clinically relevant participant characteristics.