The authors tested the cognitive vulnerability hypotheses of depression with a retrospective behavioral high-risk design. Individuals without current Axis I diagnoses who exhibited either negative or positive cognitive styles were compared on lifetime prevalence of depressive and other disorders and the clinical parameters of depressive episodes. Consistent with predictions, cognitively high-risk participants had higher lifetime prevalence than low-risk participants of major and hopelessness depression and marginally higher prevalence of minor depression. These group differences were specific to depressive disorders. The high-risk group also had more severe depressions than the low-risk group, but not longer duration or earlier onset depressions. The risk group differences in prevalence of depressive disorders were not mediated by current depressive symptoms.

Do negative cognitive styles provide similar vulnerability to first onsets versus recurrences of depressive disorders, and are these associations specific to depression? The authors followed for 2.5 years prospectively college freshmen (N = 347) with no initial psychiatric disorders at high-risk (HR) versus low-risk (LR) for depression on the basis of their cognitive styles. HR participants had odds of major, minor, and hopelessness depression that were 3.5-6.8 times greater than the odds for LR individuals. Negative cognitive styles were similarly predictive of first onsets and recurrences of major depression and hopelessness depression but predicted first onsets of minor depression more strongly than recurrences. The risk groups did not differ in incidence of anxiety disorders not comorbid with depression or other disorders, but HR participants were more likely to have an onset of anxiety comorbid with depression.

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