Genetically Informed Study of Marital Functioning and Depression at Midlife

描述(由申请者提供)：数百项研究将婚姻状况不佳与抑郁联系起来。最近很少有研究调查它们与成年后半生之间的关系。鉴于最近婴儿潮一代的离婚率上升，有必要了解关键的婚姻变量如何影响中年及以后的幸福感。然而，婚姻功能和抑郁之间的因果关系，而不是仅仅是相关的，很难确定。孪生方法论提供了一种控制非随机遗传和环境选择混淆的方法，这些混淆往往掩盖了非实验数据中的因果发现。拟议的研究将审查：婚姻行为的变化是否会导致中年抑郁的变化(具体目标1)；中年育儿转变是否会缓解与婚姻功能障碍变化相关的抑郁症状的遗传风险(具体目标2)；以及婚姻生活各方面的结构是否会在中年发展的不同阶段发生变化(具体目标3)。这项拟议的研究将使用来自美国中年发展研究(MIDUS)的具有遗传信息的中年已婚父母(N=2,402)的子样本，该研究是一个两波数据集，包括多个婚姻功能量表以及临床和非临床抑郁症状衡量标准。研究培训计划旨在培养申请者的方法、数量和理论技能，以启动他关于抑郁症和一生中亲密关系的研究计划。申请者将接受其领域的理论和定量专家的指导，使用潜在稳定和变化分数结构方程式方法、基因-环境交互作用方法和其他因素分析方法(具体过滤)来研究婚姻质量和中年抑郁的病因路径，操作和测试压力较大的中年调节因素，这些因素可能“开启”调节抑郁和婚姻功能障碍之间联系的遗传RIS因素，并探索某些婚姻行为如何在中年的一个阶段比其他阶段更重要。在Institution NRSA Quantity Trading Grant(T32AG020500，Pi Nesselroade)的资助下，使用MIDUS数据进行的初步因素分析揭示了潜在婚姻质量和抑郁的遗传病因，婚姻质量与抑郁之间在一段时间内和随时间的显著负相关，以及足够的能力来检测婚姻质量对抑郁的中小遗传和环境主效应。这项拟议的研究通过帮助绘制病态婚姻与幸福之间的社会和遗传路径图，支持了美国国家航空航天局S的战略方向A-1。这一发现将为后半生健康身心健康的干预提供依据。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Hundreds of studies link poor marital functioning to depression. Few recent studies have investigated their association among adults in the second half of the lifespan. There is a need to understand how key marital variables affect wellbeing during midlife and beyond given the recent rise in divorce among the baby boomers. However, the causal, as opposed to merely correlational, pathway between marital functioning and depression is difficult to establish decisively. Twin methodology offers one way to control for nonrandom genetic and environmental selection confounds that often obscure causal findings in nonexperimental data. The proposed research will examine: whether changes in marital behaviors cause changes in depression over time in midlife (Specific Aim 1); whether midlife parenting transitions moderate the genetic risk for depressive symptoms associated with changes in marital dysfunction (Specific Aim 2); and whether the structure of facets of married life changes over different stages of midlife development (Specific Aim 3). The proposed research will use a genetically informed subsample of middle-aged married parents (N = 2,402) from the Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS) study, a two-wave data set that includes multiple scales of marital functioning and clinical and nonclinical depressive symptom measures. The research training program is designed to develop the applicants methodological, quantitative, and theoretical skills to launch his program of research on depression and intimate relationships over the lifespan. The applicant will receive mentoring from theoretical and quantitative experts in his field to use latent stable and change score structural equation methods, gene- environment interaction methods, and other factor analytic methods (idiographic filtering) to study the etiological pathways underlying marital quality and depression during midlife, to operationalize and test stressful midlife moderators that may "turn on" the genetic ris factors mediating the association between depression and marital dysfunction, and to explore how some marital behaviors matter more during one stage of midlife than at others. While funded by Institutional NRSA Quantitative Training Grant (T32AG020500, PI Nesselroade), preliminary factor analyses with the MIDUS data reveal a genetic etiology for latent marital quality and depression, significant negative correlations between marital quality and depression within and over time, and sufficient power to detect small-to-moderate sized genetic and environmental main effects of marital quality on depression. The proposed research supports the NIA¿s Strategic Direction A-1 by helping map the social and genetic pathways between dysfunctional marriages and wellbeing. The findings will inform interventions for healthy physical and mental wellbeing in the second half of the lifespan.