Risk and Prevention of Depression in Youth

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This is a request for an NIH Independent Scientist Award (K02) to enhance the Pl's ability to contribute to the understanding of the processes underlying the development of depressive disorders in children and adolescents and to develop and test interventions aimed at preventing depression in youth. The Pl's research program has evolved from studying psychosocial risk factors that predict depression in children and adolescents, to examining the role of these risk factors as mediators of the link between parent and child psychopathology, to testing a prevention program that targets several of the risk factors identified in the earlier studies. This proposal describes three research programs involving five different but related studies. The first program includes two separate longitudinal studies that examine the contribution of varbus psychosocial factors (e.g., family dysfunction, social feedback, stress) to the development of negative cognitions and depressive disorders in children and adolescents. The second program is comprised of two different investigations of whether decreases in parents' depression as a result of treatment (cognitive-behavioral and/or pharmacotherapy) are associated with changes in their children's psychopathology and functioning, and whether these changes are mediated by improvements in parent-child relationships, negative cognitions, and/or decreases in stressful life events. The last project uses knowledge about risk factors learned from the first two research programs to test a cognitive-behavioral intervention for preventing depression in adolescents at risk for mood disorders due to their having a parent in treatment for depression, and themselves having either a past depressive ecandidatesode or current subsyndromal depressive symptoms. The goal of the career development plan is to expand the candidate's skills in two areas: quantitative methods and prevention science. Because most of the candidate's research is longitudinal, learning state-of-the-art statistical methods (e.g. latent growth curve, linear and non-linear mixed effects models, survival analysis, structural equations modeling) will broaden the kinds of research questions that can be addressed with both existing and new data. In addition, she will update and expand her knowledge of preventive interventions, particularly cognitive-behavioral approaches, with the aim of further developing and testing the efficacy of programs for preventing depression in high-risk adolescents. This K award will allow the candidate to bridge emcandidaterical research with practice by using basic knowledge about etiology to address the practical problem of preventing the onset and recurrence of the serious public health condition of depression, particularly among those at greatest risk for the disorder.