Depressive self-schemas, life stress, and vulnerability to depression.

Abstract

A vulnerability model of depression was tested by hypothesizing that depressogenic self-schemas that interact with schema-congruent negative life events will be associated with depression. Ninety-three college students were followed prospectively for four monthly assessments of both interview-and questionnaire-measured stressful life events, and clinical interview-and questionnaire-measured depression. An information-processing schema model of vulnerability was used to define subgroups of 46 dependent and 32 self-critical schematic individuals at the beginning of the study; the schema groups were based on clinical subtypes discussed both by Beck and by psychodynamically oriented theorists. As predicted, the dependent subgroup showed significantly stronger associations between depression and schema-relevant interpersonal life events than between depression and schema-irrelevant negative achievement events. The predicted opposite pattern for self-critical schematics was observed, but was less often statistically significant. The results are discussed in the terms of the need for integration of cognitive and life-stress models of depression.Depression research that integrates developments in life-stress approaches and cognitive approaches is virtually nonexistent, despite numerous calls for such efforts (e.g.,

Discovering Endophenotypes for Major Depression

“…Attentional and mnemonic biases toward processing of mood-congruent information including sad, unpleasant and negative words, emotional facial expressions, and memories also are reliable and relatively specific neuropsychological findings of MDD (Watkins et al, 1996;Murphy et al, 1999), and have been found in remitted depressed subjects suggesting some state-independence (Hammen et al, 1985;Koschack et al, 2003). Experimental depletion of central serotonin led to the emergence of mood-congruent memory bias , and physiological activation of the brain regions that have been found to be involved in mood-congruent information processing (Elliott et al, 2002) is thought to play a key role in MDD (Drevets et al, 1997), thus implicating good biological validity.…”

Differential Exposure and Reactivity to Interpersonal Stress Predict Sex Differences in Adolescent Depression

“…Probes for episodic stressful life events were embedded in the chronic stress interview (e.g., Hammen, 1991;Hammen, Marks, Mayol, & deMayo, 1985), modeled after the contextual threat assessment of stressful life events (Brown & Harris, 1978). In contrast to chronic stress, episodic stress included discrete life events with a discernable beginning and ending.…”

Adult attachment and sexual behavior

“…These three items were part of the Life Events Scale, a multiitem battery that asks respondents to indicate (1 = yes or 0 = no) whether events in several areas of day-to-day living, including sexuality, had occurred in the past year (Hammen, Marks, De Mayo, & De Mayo, 1985). On this scale, definitions of affair and sexual problems are left up to the respondents themselves.…”