WASHINGTON — The role of parental depression is not a consistent, equivalent risk factor for youth depression, Benjamin L. Hankin, Ph.D., said at the annual meeting of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies.
Parental depression affects children in two main ways, Dr. Hankin noted. First, children can be exposed to such high levels of stress due to parental depression that the children's normal coping skills cannot handle the initial stress and hence they develop depressive symptoms when confronted with additional outside stressors.
Second, depressed parents model poor skills for coping with stress, which leaves the child susceptible to depressive symptoms in the face of additional stress.
The extent to which parental depression is a risk factor for youth depression depends on the contextual domain of the stressor, said Dr. Hankin, of the University of South Carolina, Columbia.
Dr. Hankin and associates conducted a longitudinal study of 421 8th- and 10th-grade students from 18 suburban Chicago high schools. About 55% were female, and 87% were white. The youth were evaluated at baseline, 6 months, and 12 months.
The results were based on reports from both the parents and the youths. The data included self-report questionnaires and a 7-day reporting of events at each of the three measurement times using a daily diary in which the youth recorded the worst events of each day. Entries ranged from dropping books in the hallway and receiving poor test grades to fighting with a girlfriend or being kicked out of school.
The researchers analyzed the responses and divided the events into categories of interpersonal stressors, such as family, romantic, peer, and athletic. Parental depressive symptoms interacted with youth stressors to increase the odds of depression in the youth when the interpersonal stressors fell into the family or romantic categories, Dr. Hankin said.
Parental depressive symptoms also contributed to poor coping skills among youth. These poor coping skills, when combined with stressors in the family or romantic categories, left the youth more vulnerable to depressive symptoms, Dr. Hankin said.
The results were consistent with the limited studies on depressive symptoms in youths whose parents are depressed.