Citation

Owens SA, Helms SW, Rudolph KD, Hastings PD, Nock MK, Prinstein MJ. J. Abnorm. Child Psychol. 2019; 47(5): 895-905.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Davie Hall, Campus Box 3270, Chapel Hill, NC, 27599-3270, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s10802-018-0483-x

PMID

30298267

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. non-interpersonal).

RESULTS indicate that experiences of severe interpersonally-themed stress predict elevated levels of depressive symptoms longitudinally only for adolescent girls with elevated affective reactivity to stress, and suggest that these deleterious effects of stress are most exacerbated for girls with elevated physiological responses to stress.

FINDINGS suggest that it may be critical to examine both affective and physiological stress responses when assessing risk for depression in adolescents.

Language: en

Keywords

Adolescence; Depression; Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis; Interpersonal stress; Positive affect