Week 9 Depression Ii Flashcards
Why inter generational depression.
Genetics
Genetics
Twin studies suggest heritability rates between 35% and 75% Variability is due to differences in measurement and sampling. So is part of story. A genetic component.
Stress reactivity
Makes children more reactive to stressors
Early exposure to stress which may sensitize person to later stress
Problems with emotion regulation
Etiological and Maintenance Models of Depression
- Biological factos of depression
- Children of depressed parents are more likely to be
depressed
- Children of depressed parents are more likely to be
One of the strongest risk factors for childhood depression
Children with a parent who was depressed as a child are 14x more likely to become depressed before age 13
Overall, rates of depression in the school-aged and adolescent children of depressed mothers have been reported to be between 20% and 41%
Which Genes? Contribute to depression?
Recall previous studies on interaction between child maltreatment and serotonin transporter gene 5-HTTLPR
2 versions of the allele – short and long
3 possible combinations – ss, sl, ll
Having a short allele conferred a risk for depression, only in the presence of maltreatment!
Stress connection to depression,
Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal (HPA) axis
Hormonal response to stress
Can measure it looking at cortisol
Prenatal depression
Depression in moms is associated with increased
levels of cortisol
May effect fetus
Number of months a women is depressed during pregnancy predicts elevated levels of cortisol when children are 6-7 years of age
Elevated cortisol associated with internalizing problems
Postnatal depression , stress reactivity.
Amazing baby smell of head lol, oh and how fast they grow!
Infants develop rapidly
Early experiences with mom may have profound influence
Maternal depression is associated with parenting behaviors
that may be problematic
Less responsive, interactions +ve UNLESS DEPRESSED!
May contribute to dysregulation of stress responses, scaffolding and responses not properly built
Although findings are messy, studies have shown that children exposed to depression in the postnatal period show higher levels of cortisol at age 3, age 4.5, and age 13
Suggestion that maternal depression earlier in child’s life (first 1 to 2 years) shows greatest association with children’s later HPA functioning
Cognitive Processing of depression, coming back to:
Social Information Processing
Interpretation
Response Search Generation
Response Decision
Evaluation along different dimensions
Encoding
There is not a lot of evidence that youth depression is
associated with encoding biases
That is, depressed children and adolescents do not show an attentional bias for sad or negative material, not consistant that have negative bias according to Dirks!
Soxial cognitive processing INTERPRETARION for people around you with depression?
Tendency to draw negative conclusions from ambiguous events
Hostile attribution bias
Contribute to low mood
Studies that explicitly ask about interpretations of negative scenarios
“You and your friend are supposed to go to the movies but you can’t find a time that is good for both of you”
We are both really busy
People have better things to do than to see me
I am not organized enough to manage this
Depression associated with a tendency to select negative interpretations
Interpretation bias or response bias?
Interpretation that is accessible to verbal response
Interpretation occurring outside of conscious awareness
The study:
Performance-based measures of interpretation
Interested in whether daughters of mothers who had depression showed interpretation biases
Cognition as a risk factor
Used two different interpretation tasks
risk)
(b) had no maternal history of depression (control)
Procedure:
Blend two words together acoustically
Neutral-negative
Cry-dry
Neutral-positive
Joy-boy
Result is an ambiguous word
Participants shown two choices and asked to select which word they heard
Results:
When pairing was neutral-negative, at risk girls
showed a bias for the negative words, control group
did not
This pattern was specific to depression-related negative words (e.g., sad)
Did not see it for social-threat related negative words (e.g., hated)
When pairing was neutral-positive, control group showed a bias for the positive word, at risk group did not
Dearing and Gotlib: Task 2,
Depression and INTERPRETARION
Story completion
(1) In gym class, your teacher informs the class that
she is starting a softball tournament.
(2) Your teacher picks four team captains and tells them to take turns picking teammates.
(3) You are certain that you will be picked _______.
Subjects encouraged to think of an ending and then to press a key that will bring up a word that completes
a story.
Participant is then shown a word and asked to identify whether it is a grammatically possible ending to the story
First
Last
Front
Participants should be faster to respond to grammatically possible endings that are consistent with their hypothesized ending
At risk girls responded more quickly than control girls when ending was negative
No difference on positive words
Response Search
Identify fewer assertive strategies
Response Decision
Report themselves less able to carry out assertive
strategies
Evaluate avoidant strategies as more likely to result in positive outcomes and assertive strategies as less likely to result in positive outcomes
Summary of depression etiology
Biological
Genetics
Stress Reactivity
Cognitive
No encoding attention bias.
Negative interpretations, meaning given
Generate fewer assertive responses
Think they cannot carry them out
Interpersonal Theories of Depression:p
Behaviors
Less prosocial
Less assertive
More avoidant and withdrawn
Some children with depression are also more hostile and aggressive
Are depressed children and adolescents getting trapped in a vicious cycle?
Children and adolescents may be responding to challenging interpersonal situations in problematic ways
We know, for example, that responding by aggressing or withdrawing when someone aggresses against you may result in continued experience of aggression
We also know
that being treated poorly by peers results in increased depression
Stress Exposure vs. Stress Generation
Stress Exposure Models of Depression
Depression results from exposure to stressful events
Experience of stress precedes the experience of depression Peer rejection leads to an increase in depression
Stress Generation Models
Depression may lead indiviuals to generate stressful life events Difficulties in interactions may cause interpersonal problems
Study of stress generation model
88 children
Clinically referred
Assessed symptoms of depression and externalizing problems
Assessed experience of life stress
Stressful experiences rated by researchers along several dimensions:
Severity
No stress/impact to severe stress/impact
Extent to which child contributed to the event
Completely independent to completely dependent
Independent: Your dad got a new job and you had to move and start at a new school where you don’t know anyone
Dependent: You did not study for your test because you wanted to hang out with your friend instead and you got a really bad grade
Interpersonal or non-interpersonal
Results?
Depression was associated with dependent, interpersonal stress, person was contributing to in some way by their own behaviour
Depression was NOT associated with independent stress
In other words, youth with depression were not more likely than other clinic-referred youth to experience stressors that they had no role in
They WERE more likely to experience interpersonal stressors to which they contributed
Note that all children in this study were clinically referred
Youth with depression may be more likely than non-clinically referred children to experience significant independent stressors
BUT this experience may not be specific to depression
Still suggests support for stress generate model of depression.
