Week 8: Etiology and Maintenance of Depression (1) Flashcards
Biological Factors
Children of depressed parents are more likely to be depressed
Overall, rates of depression in the school aged and adolescent children of depressed mothers have been reported to be
between 20% and 41%
Children with a parent who was depressed as a child are 14x more likely to become depressed before age 13
Heritability
Heritability
Twin studies suggest heritability rates between 35% and 75%
Variability is due to differences in measurement and sampling
Stress Reactivity
Stress reactivity
Early exposure to stress which may sensitize person to later stress
Having a depressed mom is stressful
Stress reactivity
Measuring cortisol
Hypothalamic Pituitary Adrenal (HPA) axis
Hormonal response to stress
Can measure it looking at cortisol
In saliva
Prenatal depression as a risk factor
Prenatal depression
Depression in moms is associated with increased levels of cortisol
May affect 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
In uero exposure - increased cortisol - depression
Postnatal depression as a risk factor (biological)
Biological
- Exposure through breastmilk
- Limited work with human samples
A study documented that higher levels of maternal cortisol predicted greater
fearfulness, but only for infants who were breast fed
One study documented that higher levels of cortisol in breastmilk were associated with greater negative affectivity at 3 months
Postnatal depression as a risk factor (behavioral)
Infants develop rapidly
Early experiences with caregivers may have profound influence
Maternal depression is associated with parenting behaviors that may be problematic for
children’s development - it is very hard to be warm and responsive when depressed
Less responsive
May contribute to dysregulation of stress responses
Infants cannot regulate their own emotion
Although findings are not unequivocal, 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
Moms cannot respond right, kids get messed up
Social-Cognitive Processing Overview (again)
Social Information Processing Encoding Attention Interpretation Response Search Generation Response Decision Evaluation along different dimensions
Encoding
There is some evidence that youth depression might be associated with a bias towards sad information
Not as strong as literature on threat perception and anxiety but ok
Interpretation
Tendency to draw negative conclusions from ambiguous events
-Hostile attribution bias
Can cause hostile behavior
-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”
Could be:
(a) We are both really busy
(b) People have better things to do than to see me
(c) I am not organized enough to manage this
Depression associated with a tendency to select negative interpretations (like b and c)
These all work consciously, perhaps it is not?
Unconscious work in interpretation in depression
Interpretation bias or response bias?
Just picking the most negative option available
Interpretation that is accessible to verbal response
Give the more negative interpretation when you are asked directly
Interpretation occurring outside of conscious awareness would be something that participants could not self report
Unconscious interpretation bias study
Compared girls (aged 10 to 14) who:
(a) had a mother with a history of depression
Not got depression yet
AT RISK GROUP
(b) had no maternal history of depression (Girls did not meet criteria for any current or past DSM diagnosis
CONTROL
Unconscious interpretation bias study
Blended words
Task 1
Blend two words together acoustically
Neutral negative
Cry dry
Neutral positive
Joy boy
Result is an ambiguous word
When undergraduates listened to the blended words, 50% of the
time they identified the emotional word
Participants shown two choices and asked to select which word they heard
Interpretative bias is deviation from 50% (expected rate of choosing
the emotional word)
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
So at risk group shows a negative bias AND a lack of positive bias
Unconscious interpretation bias study
Story completion
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
E.g.
First
Last
Front
Participants should be faster to respond to grammatically possible endings that are consistent with their hypothesized ending
If it already in your head, you should be FASTER
RESULTS
At risk girls responded more quickly than control girls when ending was negative
No difference on positive words
Social-Cognitive Processing
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
