Identifying Trajectories of Adolescents’ Depressive Phenomena: An Examination of Early Risk Factors

Abstract

Few studies have examined risk factors of childhood and early adolescent depressive symptomatology trajectories. This study examined self-report depressive symptomatology across a 6-year time period from 2nd to 8th grade to identify latent groups of individuals with similar patterns of depressive phenomena in a sample of 951 children (440 girls, 511 boys). Analyses, using semiparametric group modeling (SGM), identified 5 trajectory groups for girls and boys: low depressed stables, low depressed risers, mildly depressed stables, moderately depressed changers, and moderately depressed risers. Individual risk factors, with the exception of shy/ withdrawn behavior, were significantly different across trajectory group membership for boys and girls, as was low-income status for boys. Boys in the low depressed and mildly depressed stable trajectory groups had significantly higher levels of antisocial behavior, attention problems, and lower social competency compared to girls in similar groups. These results suggest that universal prevention programs implemented in early elementary school that target selected risk factors may be helpful in reducing future adolescent mental health problems, specifically depressive symptomatology. KeywordsTrajectories; Children's Depression; Early Risk Factors Depression in children and adolescents continues to be a serious problem (Jellinek & Snyder, 1998) and has been a major focus for youth mental health prevention and intervention programs (Lewinsohn, Gotlib, & Seeley, 1995;Reinherz, Giaconia, Carmola Hauf, Wasserman, & Paradis, 2000). The prevalence of major depressive disorder in elementary school children ranges from 2% to 5% (Reynolds & Johnston, 1994) and increases significantly to 15% to 20% among adolescents (Lewinsohn, Clarke, Seeley, & Rohde, 1994). Understanding the early risk factors would be an important first step for developing prevention and intervention programs.Correspondence regarding this article and requests for reprints should be directed to James J. Mazza, Box 353600, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195-3600. Email: mazza@u.washington.edu. Phone: (206)221-3195. NIH Public AccessAuthor Manuscript J Youth Adolesc. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2011 June 1. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author ManuscriptThe focus of research on depression is complicated by the lack of a standard definition in using the term "depression" (Compas, Ey, & Grant, 1993), thus making it difficult to compare results of research across studies. One approach to mitigate the confusion has been to use three categories that represent the continuum of depression and/or depressive symptomatology: depressed mood, depressive syndrome, and depressive disorders (Compas et al., 1993;Hammen & Compas, 1994). These categories are not mutually exclusive and have been collectively referred to as depressive phenomena (see Compas et al., 1993 for more detail). For consistency purposes of this literature review, we will refer to depressive categories when they a...

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