A prospective study of the cognitive-stress model of depressive symptoms in adolescents.

Abstract

This prospective study investigated a cognitive diathesis–stress model of depression in adolescents across the transition from 6th to 7th grade using individual, additive, weakest link, and keystone approaches to operationalizing the cognitive vulnerability. Participants were 240 young adolescents (mean age = 11.87 years, SD = 0.57) who differed in risk for mood disorders based on their mother’s history of depression. Results of the hierarchical multiple regression analyses indicated some support for the individual, additive, weakest link, and keystone diatheses. In particular, the weakest link diathesis interacted with stress and gender to predict increases in depressive symptoms in 7th grade; the form of this interaction was consistent with the cognitive diathesis–stress model for boys, whereas for girls the pattern of relations reflected more of a dual-vulnerability model. That is, high levels of depressive symptoms were found for all girls except those with more positive cognitive styles and low stress levels. These findings highlight the utility of examining different approaches to combining measures of cognitive vulnerability in conjunction with stress in predicting depressive symptoms, and the importance of exploring gender differences with regard to the cognitive diathesis–stress model.

Optimistic Attributional Style and Parental Behaviour in the Educational Framework: A Cross-Cultural Perspective

“…The higher the positive score, the more optimistic the attributional style was. In this sample, Cronbach's alpha coef fi cients for positive events were moderate (.36 for Romanian, .43 for Hungarian adolescents from Banat and .31 for Romanian adolescents from Moldova) and similar with the internal consistencies reported in other studies (Morris et al 2008 ;Thompson et al 1998 ) .…”

“…Total scores range from 0 to 54, with higher scores indicating greater symptom severity. The CDI has a good internal consistency and convergent validity with other self-report measures (Abela et al 2007 ;Morris et al 2008 ) . The alpha coef fi cients for the CDI ranged from .53 to .61 across all samples.…”

“…These people would be more likely to develop depression when faced with stressful situations than people with an optimistic attributional style -who habitually offer external, unstable and speci fi c causes to explain negative events but internal, stable and global causes to explain negative events. Prospective and retrospective tests of the hopelessness theory in adults and adolescents have supported the hypothesis that a pessimistic attributional style increases the risk of depression (Abela et al 2007 ;Morris et al 2008 ) and decreases school performance (Martin-Krumm et al 2005 ) .…”

Does the Hopelessness Theory Account for Sex Differences in Depressive Symptoms Among Young Adults?

“…For example, whereas, some studies among adolescents have suggested that inferential styles are more likely to moderate the relation between negative life events and depressive symptoms in girls than boys (Abela 2001;Abela and McGirr 2007), other studies have found the reverse pattern Morris et al 2008). In contrast, the few other studies examining sex moderation have not yielded significant effects in adolescents (Abela 2002;Hankin 2008) or college students (Abela and Seligman 2000).…”

Adaptación del Inventario de la Triada Cognitiva Infantil en población española

“…Estévez y Calvete, 2009;Morris, Ciesla y Garber, 2008). Dado que es una teoría de diáthesis-estrés, la investigación se ha centrado en dos aspectos fundamentales: por una parte, se han tratado de confirmar los componentes presentes en la relación entre la diá-thesis (esquemas cognitivos vulnerables, depresivos) y el estrés ocasionado por situaciones vitales negativas, aversivas (Auerbach, Eberhart y Abela, 2010).…”