Genetically Informed Study of Marital Functioning and Depression at Midlife

描述（由申请人提供）：数百项研究将不良的婚姻功能与抑郁症联系起来。最近很少有研究调查他们在成年人后半生的联系。鉴于最近婴儿潮一代离婚率的上升，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，婚姻功能和抑郁症之间的因果关系，而不仅仅是相关性，很难确定。双胞胎方法提供了一种方法来控制非随机的遗传和环境选择混淆，往往掩盖因果关系的发现，在非实验数据。拟议的研究将检查：婚姻行为的变化是否会导致中年抑郁症随着时间的推移而发生变化（具体目标1）;中年育儿转变是否会缓和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）。拟议的研究将使用来自美国中年发展（MIDUS）研究的中年已婚父母（N = 2，402）的遗传信息子样本，这是一个两波数据集，包括婚姻功能的多个尺度以及临床和非临床抑郁症状措施。研究培训计划旨在培养申请人的方法，定量和理论技能，以启动他对抑郁症和亲密关系的研究计划。申请人将接受本领域理论和定量专家的指导，使用潜在稳定和变化得分结构方程方法，基因-环境相互作用方法和其他因素分析方法。（具体过滤）研究中年时期婚姻质量和抑郁症的病因学途径，为了操作和测试可能“打开”介导抑郁症和婚姻功能障碍之间关联的遗传风险因素的压力中年调节器，并探索一些婚姻行为在中年的某个阶段比在其他阶段更重要。虽然由机构NRSA定量培训补助金（T32 AG 020500，PI Nesselroade）资助，MIDUS数据的初步因素分析揭示了潜在的婚姻质量和抑郁症的遗传病因，婚姻质量和抑郁症之间的显着负相关，随着时间的推移，并有足够的力量来检测小到中等大小的遗传和环境的主要影响婚姻质量对抑郁症。拟议的研究通过帮助绘制功能失调的婚姻和幸福之间的社会和遗传途径来支持NIA的战略方向A-1。这些发现将为生命后半期健康身心健康的干预措施提供信息。

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.