Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-13T02:46:24.906Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Child-, adolescent- and young adult-onset depressions: differential risk factors in development?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 May 2011

L. Shanahan ,
W. E. Copeland ,
E. J. Costello  and
A. Angold
L. Shanahan*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, NC, USA
W. E. Copeland
Affiliation:
Developmental Epidemiology Program, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC, USA
E. J. Costello
Affiliation:
Developmental Epidemiology Program, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC, USA
A. Angold
Affiliation:
Developmental Epidemiology Program, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC, USA
*
*Address for correspondence: L. Shanahan, Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Department of Psychology, PO Box 26170, Greensboro, NC 27402, USA. (Email: lilly_shanahan@uncg.edu)
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Background

Previous research reported that childhood adversity predicts juvenile- onset but not adult-onset depression, but studies confounded potentially genuine differences in adversity with differences in the recency with which adversity was experienced. The current study paper took into account the recency of risk when testing for differences among child-, adolescent- and young adult-onset depressions.

Method

Up to nine waves of data were used per subject from two cohorts of the Great Smoky Mountains Study (GSMS; n=1004), covering children in the community aged 9–16, 19 and 21 years. Youth and one of their parents were interviewed using the Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Assessment (CAPA) between ages 9 and 16; these same youth were interviewed using the Young Adult Psychiatric Assessment (YAPA) at ages 19 and 21. The most common psychosocial risk factors for depression were assessed: poverty, life events, parental psychopathology, maltreatment, and family dysfunction.

Results

Consistent with previous research, most childhood psychosocial risk factors were more strongly associated with child-onset than with adolescent-/adult-onset depression. When potentially genuine risk differences among the depression-onset groups were disentangled from differences due to the recency of risk, child- and young adult-onset depression were no longer different from one another. Adolescent-onset depression was associated with few psychosocial risk factors.

Conclusions

There were no differences in putative risk factors between child- and young adult-onset depression when the recency of risk was taken into account. Adolescent-onset depression was associated with few psychosocial risk factors. It is possible that some adolescent-onset depression cases differ in terms of risk from child- and young adult-onset depression.

Keywords

Depressiondevelopmentepidemiologyonsetpsychosocial risk factors
Type
Original Articles
Information
Psychological Medicine , Volume 41 , Issue 11 , November 2011 , pp. 2265 - 2274
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Achenbach, TM, Edelbrock, C (1983). Manual for the Child Behavior Checklist and Revised Child Behavior Profile. Queen City Printers: Burlington, VT.Google Scholar
Angold, A, Costello, EJ (1995). A test-retest reliability study of child-reported psychiatric symptoms and diagnoses using the Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Assessment (CAPA-C). Psychological Medicine 25, 755–762.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Angold, A, Costello, EJ (2000). The Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Assessment (CAPA). Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 39, 39–48.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Angold, A, Cox, A, Prendergast, M, Rutter, M, Simonoff, E, Costello, EJ, Asher, BH (1999). The Young Adult Psychiatric Assessment (YAPA). Duke University Medical Center: Durham, NC.Google Scholar
Angold, A, Erkanli, A, Silberg, J, Eaves, L, Costello, EJ (2002). Depression scale scores in 8–17-year-olds: effects of age and gender. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 43, 1052–1063.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Angold, A, Worthman, C, Costello, EJ (2003). Puberty and depression. In Gender Differences at Puberty (ed. Hayward, C.), pp. 137–164. Cambridge University Press: New York, NY.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Birmaher, B, Ryan, ND, Williamson, DE, Brent, DA (1996). Childhood and adolescent depression: a review of the past 10 years, Part I. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 35, 1427–1439.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brown, GW, Harris, TO (1978). The Social Origins of Depression: A Study of Psychiatric Disorder in Women. Free Press: New York, NY.Google Scholar
Canli, T, Lesch, KP (2007). Long story short: the serotonin transporter in emotion regulation and social cognition. Nature Neuroscience 10, 1103–1109.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Christie, KA, Burke, JD, Regier, DA, Rae, DS (1988). Epidemiologic evidence for early onset of mental disorders and higher risk of drug abuse in young adults. American Journal of Psychiatry 145, 971–975.Google ScholarPubMed
Cicchetti, D, Toth, SL (1998). The development of depression in children and adolescents. American Psychologist 53, 221–241.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Copeland, WE, Shanahan, L, Costello, EJ, Angold, A (2009). Childhood and adolescent psychiatric disorders as predictors of young adult disorders. Archives of General Psychiatry 66, 764–772.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Copeland, WE, Shanahan, L, Miller, S, Costello, EJ, Angold, A, Maughan, B (2010). Outcomes of early pubertal timing in young women: a prospective population-based study. American Journal of Psychiatry 167, 1218–1225.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Costello, EJ, Angold, A, Burns, BJ, Stangl, DK, Tweed, DL, Erkanli, A, Worthman, CM (1996). The Great Smoky Mountains Study of youth: goals, design, methods, and the prevalence of DSM-III-R disorders. Archives of General Psychiatry 53, 1129–1136.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Costello, EJ, Angold, A, March, J, Fairbank, J (1998). Life events and post-traumatic stress: the development of a new measure for children and adolescents. Psychological Medicine 28, 1275–1288.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Costello, EJ, Mustillo, S, Erkanli, A, Keeler, G, Angold, A (2003). Prevalence and development of psychiatric disorders in childhood and adolescence. Archives of General Psychiatry 60, 837–844.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Costello, EJ, Worthman, C, Erkanli, A, Angold, A (2007). Prediction from low birth weight to female adolescent depression: a test of competing hypotheses. Archives of General Psychiatry 64, 343–350.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Danese, A, Moffitt, TE, Harrington, H, Milne, BJ, Polanczyk, G, Pariante, CM, Poulton, R, Caspi, A (2009). Adverse childhood experiences and adult risk factors for age-related disease. Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine 163, 1135–1143.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ge, X, Conger, RD, Elder, Jr. GH (2001). Pubertal transition, stressful life events, and the emergence of gender differences in adolescent depressive symptoms. Developmental Psychology 37, 404–417.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Giaconia, RM, Reinherz, HZ, Silverman, AB, Pakiz, B (1994). Ages of onset of psychiatric disorders in a community population of older adolescents. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 33, 706–717.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilman, SE, Kawachi, I, Fitzmaurice, GM, Buka, SL (2003). Socio-economic status, family disruption and residential stability in childhood: relation to onset, recurrence and remission of major depression. Psychological Medicine 33, 1341–1355.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goodyer, IM (2001). Life events: their nature and effects. In The Depressed Child and Adolescent, 2nd edn (ed. Goodyer, I. M.), pp. 204–232. Cambridge University Press: New York, NY.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harrington, R (2006). Affective disorders. In A Clinician's Handbook of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (ed. Gillberg, C., Harrington, R. and Steinhausen, H.), pp. 110–143. Cambridge University Press: New York, NY.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hill, J, Pickles, A, Rollinson, L, Davies, R, Byatt, M (2004). Juvenile- versus adult-onset depression: multiple differences imply different pathways. Psychological Medicine 34, 1483–1493.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jaffee, SR, Moffitt, TE, Caspi, A, Fombonne, E, Poulton, R, Martin, J (2002). Differences in early childhood risk factors for juvenile-onset and adult-onset depression. Archives of General Psychiatry 59, 215–222.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kasch, KL, Klein, DN (1996). The relationship between age at onset and comorbidity in psychiatric disorders. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 184, 703–707.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kaufman, J, Martin, A, King, RA, Charney, D (2001). Are child-, adolescent-, and adult-onset depression one and the same disorder? Biological Psychiatry 49, 980–1001.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kessler, RC, Davis, CG, Kendler, KS (1997). Childhood adversity and adult psychiatric disorder in the US National Comorbidity Survey. Psychological Medicine 27, 1101–1119.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kovacs, M, Feinberg, TL, Crouse-Novac, M, Paulauskas, SL, Pollok, M, Finkelstein, R (1984). Depressive disorders in childhood. II. A longitudinal study of the risk for a subsequent major depression. Archives of General Psychiatry 41, 643–649.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kraemer, HC, Stice, E, Kazdin, A, Offord, D, Kupfer, D (2001). How do risk factors work together? Mediators, moderators, and independent, overlapping, and proxy risk factors. American Journal of Psychiatry 158, 848–856.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Miller, GE, Chen, E, Fok, AK, Walker, H, Lim, A, Nicholls, EF, Cole, S, Kobor, MS (2009). Low early-life social class leaves a biological residue manifested by decreased glucocorticoid and increased proinflammatory signaling. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 106, 14716–14721.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moffitt, TE (2006). Life-course-persistent versus adolescence-limited antisocial behavior. In Developmental Psychopathology, vol. 3: Risk, Disorder, and Adaptation, 2nd edn (ed. Cicchetti, D. and Cohen, D. J.), pp. 570–598. John Wiley & Sons Inc.: Hoboken, NJ.Google Scholar
Moffitt, TE, Arseneault, L, Jaffee, SR, Kim-Cohen, J, Koenen, KC, Odgers, CL, Slutske, WS, Viding, E (2008). Research review: DSM-V conduct disorder: research needs for an evidence base. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 49, 3–33.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Power, C, Manor, O, Matthews, S (1999). The duration and timing of exposure: effects of socioeconomic environment on adult health. American Journal of Public Health 89, 1059–1065.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rao, U, Ryan, ND, Birmaher, B, Dahl, RE (1995). Unipolar depression in adolescents: clinical outcome in adulthood. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 34, 566–578.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
SAS Institute (2004). SAS/STAT®Software Version 9. SAS Institute Inc.: Cary, NC.Google Scholar
Schaie, KW (1965). A general model for the study of developmental problems. Psychological Bulletin 64, 92–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Susman, EJ (1997). Modeling developmental complexity in adolescence: hormones and behavior in context. Journal of Research on Adolescence 7, 283–306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weissman, MM, Wolk, S, Wickramaratne, P, Goldstein, RB, Adams, P, Greenwald, S, Ryan, ND, Dahl, RE, Steinberg, D (1999). Children with prepubertal-onset major depressive disorder and anxiety grown up. Archives of General Psychiatry 56, 794–801.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zalsman, G, Brent, DA, Weersing, VR (2006). Depressive disorders in childhood and adolescence: an overview: epidemiology, clinical manifestation and risk factors. Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America 15, 827–841.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed