Detecting Impending Symptom Transitions Using Early-Warning Signals in Individuals Receiving Treatment for Depression

Drawing on dynamical systems theory, we investigated whether within-persons-detected early-warning signals in momentary affect preceded critical transitions toward lower levels of depressive symptoms during therapy. Participants were 41 depressed individuals who starting psychological treatment. Positive and negative (high low arousal) measured 5 times a day using ecological assessments over 4 months ( M = 522 observations per individual). Depressive assessed weekly 6 months. Within-persons rising autocorrelation was found for 89% with at least one variable (vs. 62.5% without transitions) consistently higher proportion the separate variables (~44% across measures) than (~27%). Rising variance few individuals, both preceding (~11%) (~12%). Part our sample showed slowing down, but may have limited value as personalized prediction method.