INTERPERSONAL CONTEXT OF ADOLESCENT DEPRESSION

尽管最近广泛认识到儿童抑郁症是一种有效的和潜在的衰弱的临床现象，但关于儿童抑郁症的病因、意义和预后作用仍存在争议。这项拟议的研究的主要目标是确定抑郁症在疾病早期的先兆和后遗症。一个特别的重点是理解青春期抑郁症的上升，特别是在女孩中。指导这项研究的模型假设，以父母抑郁和终生家庭破裂为形式的家庭功能障碍会促进对人际关系和无效应对的不良适应概念的发展，这会导致抑郁的易感性。压力环境，包括标准发展过渡的谈判，被假设为激活了这种脆弱性，导致过渡期的抑郁。由于女孩的个人特点以及在青春期经历的独特挑战，预计女孩对这些过程最敏感。最后，抑郁预计会导致进一步的心理社会混乱，这增加了青春期疾病持续或复发的可能性。我们将使用前瞻性、多信息者、多方法设计来检验所提出的多变量模型。从社区样本中选出的抑郁、外化和对照儿童的亚组将被跟踪调查两年半的时间，以探索抑郁症在疾病早期发生和复发的潜在的社会认知、情感、人际和背景过程。最终，预计来自这类研究的知识可以为创建以经验为基础的干预计划提供信息，旨在治疗儿童期抑郁症。

Despite recent widespread recognition of child depression as a valid and potentially debilitating clinical phenomenon, controversy remains as to the etiology, significance, and prognostic power of depression in childhood. The primary goal of the proposed research is to identify the antecedents and sequelae of depression during the early course of disorder. A particular focus is placed on understanding the rise in depression during adolescence, especially in girls. The model guiding the research posits that family dysfunction in the form of parental depression and lifetime family disruptions fosters the development of maladaptive conceptions of interpersonal relationships and ineffective coping, which create a vulnerability to depression. Stressful circumstances, including the negotiation of normative developmental transitions, are hypothesized to activate this vulnerability, leading to depression during transition periods. Girls are expected to be most sensitive to these processes due to personal characteristics as well as the experience of unique challenges during adolescence. Finally, depression is expected to induce further psychosocial disruption, which increases the likelihood of persistence or recurrence of disorder across adolescence. This proposed multivariate model will be examined using a prospective, multi-informant, multi-method design. Subgroups of depressed, externalizing, and comparison children selected from a community sample will be followed over a period of 2 1/2 years to explore the social-cognitive, affective, interpersonal, and contextual processes underlying onset and recurrence of depression during the early course of disorder. Ultimately, it is anticipated that knowledge from such research can inform the creation of empirically based intervention programs designed to treat childhood-onset depression.