Objective-Given the risk for adolescent depression in girls to lead to a chronic course of mental illness, prevention of initial onset could have a large impact on reducing chronicity. If symptoms of depression that emerge during childhood were stable and predictive of later depressive disorders and impairment, then secondary prevention of initial onset of depressive disorders would be possible.Method-Drawing from the Pittsburgh Girls Study, an existing longitudinal study, 232 nine-yearold girls were recruited for the present study, half of whom screened high on a measure of depression at age 8 years. Girls were interviewed about depressive symptoms using a diagnostic interview at ages 9, 10, and 11 years. Caregivers and interviewers rated impairment in each year.Results-The stability coefficients for DSM-IV symptom counts for a 1-to 2-year interval were in the moderate range (i.e., intraclass coefficients of 0.40-0.59 for continuous symptom counts and Kendall τ-b coefficients of 0.34-0.39 for symptom level stability). Depressive disorders were also relatively stable at this age. Poverty moderated the stability, but race and pubertal stage did not.©2008 by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.Correspondence to Dr. Kate Keenan, Department of Psychiatry, MC 3077, Room W-415, University of Chicago, 5841 South Maryland Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637; e-mail: E-mail: kkeenan@yoda.bsd.uchicago.edu. Disclosure: The authors report no conflicts of interest. NIH Public Access NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author ManuscriptAmong the girls who did not meet criteria for a depressive disorder at age 9 years, the odds of meeting criteria for depressive disorders and for demonstrating impairment at age 10 or 11 years increased by 1.9 and 1.7, respectively, for every increase in the number of depression symptoms.Conclusions-Early-emerging symptoms of depression in girls are stable and predictive of depressive disorders and impairment. The results suggest that secondary prevention of depression in girls may be accomplished by targeting subthreshold symptoms manifest during childhood. Keywords girls; childhood; depression; DSM-IV; predictionDepressive disorders are one of the most common mental disorders among adolescents. Prevalence of depression increases dramatically from 1% in childhood to 8% in adolescents, with a lifetime prevalence in adolescents of 15% to 20%, which is comparable to that found in adults. 1 It is primarily girls who account for the increase in adolescence, 2,3 evidencing a 2:1 sex difference in depression that continues throughout the reproductive years. 4 Initial episodes of depression are more severe and longer in duration for girls than for boys, 5 and girls who experience depression for the first time in childhood or adolescence, compared with females with onsets later in life, have a prolonged period of risk for future episodes. 6 Depressive disorders continue to be among the most common disorders for females later in life and are cited as the leading ca...

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Identifying childhood precursors for depression has been challenging and yet important for understanding the rapid increase in the rate of depression among adolescent girls. This study examined the prospective relations of preadolescent girls' emotion regulation and parenting style with depressive symptoms. Participants were 225 children and their biological mothers recruited from a larger longitudinal community study. Girls' observed positive and negative emotion during a conflict resolution task with mothers, their ability to regulate sadness and anger, and their perception of parental acceptance and psychological control were assessed at age 9. Depressive symptoms were assessed by self-report at ages 9 and 10. The results indicated interactions between child emotion characteristics and parenting in predicting later depression. Specifically, low levels of positive emotion expression predicted higher levels of depressive symptoms in the context of moderate to high parental psychological control. Low levels of sadness regulation were predictive of high levels of depressive symptoms in the context of low to moderate parental acceptance. Findings from this study support the hypothesis that the prospective association between vulnerabilities in emotion regulation and depression are moderated by the caregiving environment. Keywords depression; emotion regulation; emotion expression; parenting; preadolescent girls It has been consistently reported that the rate of depression increases rapidly among girls during adolescence (see review by Keenan & Hipwell, 2005), resulting in a prevalence rate of depressive disorders that is twice as high in adult females compared to adult males (Lewinsohn, Clark, Seeley, & Rhode, 1994;Nolen-Hoeksema, 1994). Children and adolescents who experience depression are likely to encounter severe, recurrent depression later in life (Costello, Angold, & Keeler, 1999;Kovacs, Gatsonis, Paulauskas, & Richards, 1989;Pine, Cohen, Gurley, Brook, & Ma, 1998; see Weissman, Wolk, Wickramaratne, Goldstein, Adams, et al., 1999 for exception). Kovacs and colleagues (Kovacs, Obrosky, & Sherrill, 2003) have shown that childhood onset depression is likely to recur in adolescence in 40% to 60% of clinicallyreferred cases. Early-onset depression also has serious consequences for psychosocial functioning (Lewinsohn, Rohde, Seeley, Klein, & Gotlib, 2003 e.g., Cole, Peeke, Martin, Truglio, & Seroczynski, 1998;Nolen-Hoeksema, Girgus, & Seligman, 1992) and predictive of depressive disorders (Keenan, Hipwell, Feng, Babinski, Hinze et al., in press). Thus, identifying preadolescent precursors that predict emerging depressive symptoms in girls is of great importance in understanding the phenomenology of depression in females, as well as for timely prevention and intervention.Dysregulated emotion has been hypothesized to precede the onset of psychological disorders such as depressive disorders (Chaplin, Cole, & Zahn-waxler, 2005;Cole et al., 2003). The importance of studying emotion regulation lies in the f...

To optimize the effectiveness of youth mentoring it is important to begin to identify specific preexisting characteristics of mentors that lead to positive experiences for adolescent mentees. College women mentors, aged 18 to 22 years, were paired with middle school girls, aged 11 to 14 years, for weekly one‐on‐one and group mentoring in an 8‐month, school‐based youth mentoring program. For the sampled 142 mentor‐mentee dyads participating in the program, mentor's reported academic self‐worth, parent relationship, and not being too autonomous were important preexisting characteristics related to mentee satisfaction. Mentor's initial level of depression was negatively correlated with mentee's self‐reported improvement in competence, while mentor anxiety was positively correlated. Finally, the relationship between mentor's autonomy (negative) and ethnocultural empathy (positive) and mentee outcomes were stronger for cross‐race versus same‐race pairs. Implications for mentoring programs that use college students as youth mentors are discussed.

Despite the substantial amount of data supporting a link between HPA-axis functioning and depression, the ontogeny of this association is not known. The aim of the present study was to contribute data on the developmental interface of HPA-axis functioning and depression in girls by testing associations between repeated measures of depression symptoms and cortisol levels in childhood and early adolescence. Girls (N= 232) and their mothers, who were participating in a longitudinal study, were interviewed about depression symptoms annually from ages 9 to 12 years. Cortisol was assayed from saliva at ages 10 and 12 years upon arrival to the lab and following administration of the cold pressor task (CPT). Time of day of collection of saliva and level of pubertal development were included as covariates in model testing. Although most girls did not show an increase in cortisol in response to the CPT, lower levels of output during the CPT were associated with higher levels of depression symptoms. These findings were observed only for cortisol levels assessed at age 12 years. Girls with low levels of cortisol output at age 12, and decreases in output from ages 10 to 12, had stable or slightly increasing depression symptoms from ages 9 to 12 years. We conclude that associations between HPA-axis functioning and depression emerge as early as age 12. However, individual differences in cortisol levels at age 12 also were associated with depression symptoms at earlier ages. The data suggest two possibilities: 1) that childhood depression is associated with HPA-axis dysregulation, but that age related changes in the sensitivity or plasticity of the HPA-axis may result in a delay in the emergence of such an association, or 2) that dysregulation of the functioning of the HPA-axis develops following repeated experience of depression symptoms.