Mood, Interest and Pleasure

Mood, Interest and Pleasure

Research suggests that some individuals with Cornelia de Lange syndrome may experience low mood.

Low mood

Following on from the study described in the short film above, researchers have compared people with Cornelia de Lange syndrome to people with Cri du Chat and fragile X syndromes over time.  Information on mood, interest and pleasure was collected on two occasions (two years apart).  The results showed that individuals with Cornelia de Lange syndrome had lower mood than the two other groups at both time points.  Lower mood was characteristic of older adolescents (over 15 years) and adults with Cornelia de Lange syndrome.  The older group also experienced lower levels of interest and pleasure in their environment.  Individuals aged 19-22 years were reported to experience the lowest levels of interest and pleasure overall; however, this part of the analysis had very small numbers of individuals participating, so should be treated with caution. Overall, the findings fit with previous research that has reported that approximately 1 in 10 individuals with Cornelia de Lange receive a diagnosis of depression.  However, it is important to remember that every person is unique and low mood is not inevitable.

More recently, a 7-year long research study at the University of Birmingham (United Kingdom) also explored how mood, interest, pleasure and depression symptoms change over time, comparing individuals with CdLS to those with FXS of a similar age and displaying ASD behaviours. Results of the study indicated individuals with CdLS generally had lower mood compared to those with FXS. Over time, interest and pleasure decreased for those with CdLS, however, not FXS.

The researchers looked at the factors that were predictive of low mood in Cornelia de Lange syndrome.  They found that insistence on sameness and autism characteristics, as well as older age, predicted low mood scores over time.  This fits with previous research that has shown that changes in routine or unpredictable environments lead to low interest in activities and low mood.  Later adolescence may be a particularly difficult time because of the changes that occur during this period to people’s routines, such as leaving school; and also as a result of neurological changes.

The presence of health difficulties have been linked to low mood in people with intellectual disability so these should be monitored regularly in Cornelia de Lange syndrome.