Emotion Dysregulation in Girls at Risk for Depression

描述（由申请人提供）：抑郁症是所有精神疾病中最普遍和最昂贵的。一个紧迫的公共卫生需要是确定在增加个人对抑郁症的脆弱性方面发挥作用的因素。患有抑郁症的父母的后代患这种疾病的风险更高。因此，对这些儿童进行评估对于阐明与这种风险相关的因素和机制至关重要。建议的综合项目旨在研究生物，认知和心理社会因素和机制，可能会增加精神病理学的风险从未紊乱的11至14岁的女儿的母亲与复发性严重抑郁症的历史。我们将比较这组女孩与另外两个年龄匹配组的女儿的功能：复发性抑郁母亲的以前抑郁的女儿，以及没有精神病理学史的母亲的从未紊乱的女儿。我们建议评估两个广泛的结构，这是至关重要的，在理解抑郁症母亲的女儿的精神病理学风险增加：（1）女儿的感知和评价的压力在他们的环境中，这决定了他们的即时反应的压力;和（2）女儿的调节技能，在应对压力，这决定了长期的后果暴露于压力。我们的研究是独一无二的结合脑成像技术，昼夜和反应性皮质醇水平的测量，信息处理偏差的评估，自我报告的措施，以评估情绪失调和压力反应的女儿抑郁的母亲。从素质压力的角度来看，我们将管理压力和情绪诱导程序之前，评估感兴趣的结构。我们还将进行18个月的随访评估，以检查在非抑郁状态下评估的压力反应和情绪调节困难是否可预测抑郁发作的发作和/或复发。这些数据有望帮助我们更全面地了解压力反应，神经内分泌功能，情绪调节，认知过程和神经反应模式的相互作用，使抑郁母亲的孩子患情感障碍的风险增加，并将确定功能障碍的关键领域，可作为预防计划的目标。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Depression is among the most prevalent and costly of all psychiatric disorders. A pressing public health need is to identify factors that play a role in increasing individuals' vulnerability to depression. Offspring of parents with depression are at heightened risk for the development of this disorder. Consequently, assessing these children is of critical importance in elucidating factors and mechanisms associated with this risk. The proposed integrative project is designed to examine biological, cognitive, and psychosocial factors and mechanisms that may elevate the risk for psychopathology in never-disordered 11 - to14-year-old daughters of mothers with a history of recurrent Major Depressive Disorder. We will compare the functioning of this group of girls with that of daughters in two additional age-matched groups: formerly depressed daughters of recurrent depressed mothers, and never-disordered daughters of mothers with no history of psychopathology. We propose to assess two broad constructs that are of critical importance in understanding the increased risk for psychopathology of daughters of depressed mothers: (1) the daughters' perception and evaluation of stressors in their environment, which determine their immediate response to the stressors; and (2) the daughters' regulatory skills in response to the stressors, which determine the long-term consequences of exposure to the stressors. Our study is unique in combining brain imaging techniques, measurement of both diurnal and reactive cortisol levels, assessment of information-processing biases, and self-report measures to assess emotion dysregulation and stress reactivity in daughters of depressed mothers. Working from a diathesis-stress perspective, we will administer stress- and mood-induction procedures prior to assessing the constructs of interest. We will also conduct an 18-month follow-up assessment to examine whether difficulties in stress reactivity and emotion regulation assessed in a nondepressed state predict the onset and/or the recurrence of depressive episodes. These data promise to help us gain a more comprehensive understanding of the interplay of stress reactivity, neuroendocrine functioning, emotion regulation, cognitive processes, and patterns of neural reactivity in placing children of depressed mothers at elevated risk for affective disorder, and will identify critical areas of dysfunction that may serve as targets for prevention programs.