Investigation of the effect of childhood trauma and negative life event on decision making in patients diagnosed with major depressive disorder

During childhood and adolescence, decision-making processes continue to develop gradually. However, little information is available about how childhood trauma (CT) will affect decision making. Depression patients with traumatic experiences may differ from other depressive patients in decision making. The Iowa gambling task (IGT) has been previously performed in patients with depression and has not been studied in those with traumatic experiences. In this study, we aimed to investigate the decision-making styles and behaviors of depression patients with traumatic life events. The hypothesis of the study; The presence of childhood traumas and negative life events in patients with depression adversely affects their decision-making performance. The study was carried out with a total of 70 MDD patients, 52 of whom had CT and 18 of whom were without CT, and 51 healthy volunteers, who applied to the Aydın Adnan Menderes University Research Hospital Psychiatry Outpatient Clinic. Sociodemographic data form, Clinician's Version of Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-5 (SCID-5-CV), Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI), Childhood Mental Trauma Questionnaire, Life Events Checklist-5, The Melbourne Decision-Making Scale and the Iowa Gambling Test (IKT) were applied to all participants. Type-1 error level was taken as 5%. There was no statistically significant difference between the patient group with CT and healthy controls in terms of experiencing negative life events. While it was determined that the patient group with CT had higher rates of experiencing and witnessing the physical attack in person than the patient group without CT, there was no difference in other negative life events. There was no statistically significant difference in IGT performance between patients with MDD with CCT, MDD patients without CCT, and healthy volunteers. In our study, it was determined that as the CT scale scores of individuals with CT increased, they used maladaptive decision-making styles, which is one of the decision-making styles evaluated with the Melbourne Decision-Making Scale .Our hypothesis of disadvantageous decision making as assessed by IGT could not be confirmed. The result of our study is that decision making is a complex cognitive and emotional process. Possible mechanisms underlying IGT performance are still unclear. Further studies using more detailed behavioral tasks are needed to elucidate decision-making processes.