Interpersonal Stress Severity Longitudinally Predicts Adolescent Girls' Depressive Symptoms: the Moderating Role of Subjective and HPA Axis Stress Responses.

Interpersonal Stress Severity Longitudinally Predicts Adolescent Girls' Depressive Symptoms: the Moderating Role of Subjective and HPA Axis Stress Responses. J Abnorm Child Psychol. 2018 Oct 08;: Authors: Owens SA, Helms SW, Rudolph KD, Hastings PD, Nock MK, Prinstein MJ Abstract In recent decades, stress response models of adolescent depression have gained attention, but it remains unclear why only certain adolescents are vulnerable to the depressogenic effects of stress while others are not. Building on evidence that affective and physiological responses to stress moderate the impact of stress exposure on depression, the current study examined whether the interaction between severity of interpersonal stress, subjective affective reactivity, and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis reactivity to an acute, in-vivo psychosocial stressor prospectively predicted depressive symptoms nine months later. Hypotheses were examined with a clinically-oversampled group of 182 adolescent girls (aged 12-16) to ensure an examination of the widest possible range of risk. Self-report measures of affect and salivary cortisol samples were collected before and after an in-vivo stress task to assess affective reactivity and HPA axis reactivity, respectively. Severity of interpersonal stress between baseline and nine months was assessed using a semi-structured interview and was objectively coded for severity and content theme (i.e., interpersonal vs....
Source: Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: J Abnorm Child Psychol Source Type: research