Depression and sensitization to stressors among young women as a function of childhood adversity.

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Abstract

The authors tested a stress-sensitization version of a diathesis-stress approach to depression. In a 2-year longitudinal follow-up design, exposure to stressful life events was examined in young women in the transition to adulthood. The authors hypothesized that those who had experienced one or more significant childhood adversities would have a lower threshold for developing a depressive reaction to stressors. Results indicated that women with exposure to one or more childhood adversities--such as family violence, parent psychopathology or alcoholism, and others--were more likely to become depressed following less total stress than women without such adversity. The results could not be accounted for by chronic stress or prior depression. Both biological and psychological sensitization mechanisms may be speculated to play a role, but the actual mechanisms of stress sensitization remain to be explored.

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Children of depressed parents: an integrative review.

Geraldine Downey, James C Coyne (1990)

This article reviews the various literatures on the adjustment of children of depressed parents, difficulties in parenting and parent-child interaction in these families, and contextual factors that may play a role in child adjustment and parent depression. First, issues arising from the recurrent, episodic, heterogeneous nature of depression are discussed. Second, studies on the adjustment of children with a depressed parent are summarized. Early studies that used depressed parents as controls for schizophrenic parents found equivalent risk for child disturbance. Subsequent studies using better-defined samples of depressed parents found that these children were at risk for a full range of adjustment problems and at specific risk for clinical depression. Third, the parenting difficulties of depressed parents are described and explanatory models of child adjustment problems are outlined. Contextual factors, particularly marital distress, remain viable alternative explanations for both child and parenting problems. Fourth, important gaps in the literature are identified, and a consistent, if unintentional, "mother-bashing" quality in the existing literature is noted. Given the limitations in knowledge, large-scale, long-term, longitudinal studies would be premature at this time.

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Psychosocial functioning and depression: distinguishing among antecedents, concomitants, and consequences.

Peter Barnett, Ian Gotlib (1988)

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Predictors and consequences of childhood depressive symptoms: a 5-year longitudinal study.

Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, Joan S. Girgus, Martin Seligman (1992)

A 5-year longitudinal study investigated the interrelationships among children's experiences of depressive symptoms, negative life events, explanatory style, and helplessness behaviors in social and achievement situations. The results revealed that early in childhood, negative events, but not explanatory style, predicted depressive symptoms; later in childhood, a pessimistic explanatory style emerged as a significant predictor of depressive symptoms, alone and in conjunction with negative events. When children suffered periods of depression, their explanatory styles not only deteriorated but remained pessimistic even after their depression subsided, presumably putting them at risk for future episodes of depression. Some children seem repeatedly prone to depressive symptoms over periods of at least 2 years. Depressed children consistently showed helpless behaviors in social and achievement settings.