The majority of women for the majority of the time experienced MT without a high severity of depressed mood while a small group of women had mood worsening over time and others improved. Depressed mood that occurs during the MT should not be attributed automatically to menstrual cycle changes or normative changes. Instead, features of a woman's life that contribute to depression should also be considered.

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Although women in the late MT stage are vulnerable to depressed mood, factors that account for depressed mood earlier in the life span continue to have an important influence and should be considered in studies of etiology and therapeutics.

This article describes the risks and protective factors for symptoms of depression in pregnancy among low-income African American and Caucasian women. Data were collected from 130 women who were between 16 and 28 weeks' gestation and enrolled in an urban prenatal clinic. The questionnaires used in the face-to-face interviews consisted of sociodemographic items, the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II), the Prenatal Psychosocial Profile (PPP), 3 items from the Jarel Spiritual Well-Being Scale, the Spiritual Perspective Scale, and 4 items on health risk behaviors. Twenty-seven percent of the women reported depressive symptoms at levels indicating risk for clinical depression. However, there were no significant differences between African American and Caucasian women. Sociodemographic factors accounted for 13% of the variance (P < .01) in BDI-II scores. Psychosocial and behavioral risk factors accounted for an additional 19% of the BDI-II variance (P < .001), and psychosocial and spiritual resources accounted for 7% of the variance (P < .001), resulting in these variables accounting for 54% of the total variance in BDI-II scores. Higher levels of stress, lower levels of self-esteem and social support, and higher religiosity had a significant relationship with more symptoms of depression. This supports the need to routinely screen for and to assess factors associated with depressive symptoms in pregnant low-income women.

To date many researchers have focused on depression as a discrete episode, attempting to relate its occurrence to a transition in menopausal stage or other factors that might account for its occurrence. Characterizing change over time requires consideration of pattern or trajectory, not merely discrete events. The purposes of this paper are to: 1) to explore methods for intraindividual and interindividual (group) analysis of patterns of depressed mood among midlife women 2) to identify challenges for analytic strategies for understanding depressed mood as it is experienced by midlife women, with special concern for its relationship to the menopausal transition. Data from the Seattle Midlife Women's Health Study were used to illustrate approaches to intraindividual and interindividual analysis of patterns of depressed mood. For most women, menopausal transition was not a time when there was a new episode of depression. Instead, a minority of women showed evidence of becoming depressed once the transition had begun. The most prevalent pattern was that of non-depressed mood across the years of the menopausal transition. Association of several factors with a pattern of depressed mood included life stressors, perceived poor health, and vasomotor symptoms.

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