Risk and Prevention of Depression in Youth

描述（由申请人提供）：这是一份NIH独立科学家奖（K02）的申请，旨在提高Pl对儿童和青少年抑郁症发展过程的理解能力，并开发和测试旨在预防青少年抑郁症的干预措施。Pl的研究项目已经从研究预测儿童和青少年抑郁的社会心理风险因素，到研究这些风险因素作为父母和儿童精神病理学之间联系的中介的作用，再到测试针对早期研究中确定的几个风险因素的预防项目。本提案描述了三个研究项目，涉及五项不同但相关的研究。第一个项目包括两个独立的纵向研究，检查各种社会心理因素（如家庭功能障碍、社会反馈、压力）对儿童和青少年消极认知和抑郁症发展的贡献。第二个项目由两项不同的调查组成，即治疗（认知行为和/或药物治疗）导致的父母抑郁的减少是否与孩子的精神病理和功能变化有关，以及这些变化是否通过改善亲子关系、消极认知和/或减少压力生活事件来调节。最后一个项目利用从前两个研究项目中了解到的风险因素知识，测试一种认知行为干预方法，用于预防青少年的抑郁，这些青少年有情绪障碍的风险，因为他们的父母正在接受抑郁症治疗，他们自己要么过去有抑郁症候选症状，要么现在有亚综合征抑郁症状。

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.