This study examined data from a 4-year school-based longitudinal study (n = 1,124), to test whether the increase in major depression that occurs among girls during adolescence may be partially explained by the body-image and eating disturbances that emerge after puberty. Elevated body dissatisfaction, dietary restraint, and bulimic symptoms at study entry predicted onset of subsequent depression among initially nondepressed youth in bivariate analyses controlling for initial depressive symptoms. Although the unique effect for body dissatisfaction was not significant in the multivariate model, this set of risk factors was able to fairly accurately foretell which girls would go on to develop major depression. Results were consistent with the assertion that the body-image- and eating-related risk factors that emerge after puberty might contribute to the elevated rates of depression for adolescent girls.
This study examined the prospective relations of naturalistic weight-reduction efforts to growth in relative weight and onset of obesity with data from a community study of female adolescents (N = 692). Initial self-labeled dieting, appetite suppressant/laxative use, incidental exercise, vomiting for weight-control purposes, and binge eating predicted elevated growth in relative weight over the 4-year period. Dietary restraint, self-labeled dieting, exercise for weight-control purposes, and appetite suppressant/laxative use predicted an increased risk for obesity onset. Data imply that the weight-reduction efforts reported by adolescents are more likely to result in weight gain than in weight loss and suggest the need to educate youth on more effective weight-control strategies.
The authors examined the prospective influence of stress, self-esteem, and social support on the postpartum depressive symptoms of 191 inner-city women (139 European Americans and 52 African Americans) over 3 waves of data collection. Depressive symptomatology was measured by multiple indicators, including self-report and clinical scales. Women became less depressed as they move from prenatal to postpartum stages and adjusted to their pregnancy and its consequences. LISREL and regression analyses indicated that stress was related to increased depression, whereas greater income and social support were related to decreased depression. Self-esteem was related to lower depression at the prenatal and postpartum periods but not to change in depression from the prenatal to the postpartum period. The results also indicated that self-esteem and social support did not have additional stress-buffering effects over and above their direct effects on depression. Finally, African American women did not differ from European American women terms of depression or in terms of how they were impacted by stress or psychosocial resources.
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