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. 2020 Jun 25:11:1446.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01446. eCollection 2020.

Screening Depressive Disorders With Tree-Drawing Test

Simeng Gu  1 , Yige Liu  1   2 , Fei Liang  3 , Rou Feng  3 , Yawen Li  4 , Guorui Liu  5 , Mengdan Gao  4 , Wei Liu  1 , Fushun Wang  3 , Jason H Huang  6   7
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Free PMC article

Screening Depressive Disorders With Tree-Drawing Test

Simeng Gu et al. Front Psychol. .
Free PMC article

Abstract

Objective: Diagnosis of psychiatric disease is still a major issue. Two key reasons are- there are variations in the opinions of the medical doctors and the presentation of a disease among the patients. Here we introduce a kind of mental projective test, tree-drawing test, trying to extract and analyze objective indexes in tree-drawing test in patients with depression. Methods: The tree-drawing test was administered to 43 patients with major depressive disorders, 48 sub-threshold subjects, and 59 healthy subjects. Features of the drawing trees were analyzed using a kind of computer image recognition and data acquisition software. Quantitative indexes collected from pictures drawn by patients with major depression, patients with sub-threshold depression, and control subjects were compared using the ANOVA test. Results: Five quantitative features (canopy area, canopy height, canopy width, trunk width, and total area of trees) were found to be statistically significant among the groups, while seven other features (trunk area, trunk height, root width, root height, root area, ratio of crown to trunk height, and ratio of crown to trunk area) showed no statistical significance. Further analysis with LSD-t test revealed that six quantitative indexes were significantly related to the depression symptoms, and six others were not statistically significant. Eleven quantitative indexes were not statistically significant when the depressive symptoms were compared with the subthreshold depression group, and the only index with statistical significance was canopy width. Conclusion: Five quantitative indexes in the drawing tree are statistically significant in the depression patients were compared with those of the control subjects. Quantitative indexes of the tree-drawing test are of great value in assisting with the diagnosis of psychiatric disorders.

Keywords: affective disorders; depression; emotion; major depressive disorders; quantitative study; tree-drawing test.

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Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
The distribution of the subjects and their scores in Hamilton Depression Scale. The control group scored less than 10, while the sub-threshold group scored higher than 10, and the MDD group scored higher than 20. The average age for control was 32.3 ± 8.9 (n = 59), sub-threshold group was 35.3 ± 8.6 (n = 48), and MDD group was 34.3 ± 7.8 (n = 43). And the mean score from Hamilton was 4.44 ± 2.6, 14.5 ± 3.5, 28.1 ± 5.4 for the three groups, respectively.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Example of scanned tree in major depression group.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Example of scanned tree in control group.
FIGURE 4
FIGURE 4
Comparisons among the ratios of canopy area, trunk area to root area.
FIGURE 5
FIGURE 5
Percentage of canopy, trunk, and root height in the total height. The differences were not statistically significant (p > 0.05, one way ANOVA).
FIGURE 6
FIGURE 6
Ratio of canopy width and trunk width to root width, the differences were not statistically significant (p> 0.05, one way ANOVA).
FIGURE 7
FIGURE 7
Hypothesis about the representation of a tree-drawing with the consciousness.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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