Marital functioning and depressive symptoms: Evidence for a stress generation model.

Abstract

The present study applied C.L. Hammen's (1991) stress generation model to depressive symptoms in the context of marriage. The authors predicted that depressive symptoms would lead to increased marital stress, which would in turn lead to increased depressive symptoms. Social support processes were hypothesized to function as a mechanism by which dysphoric spouses generate stress. Hypotheses were tested in a sample of 154 newlywed couples. Depressive symptoms, marital stress, support perceptions, and support behavior (assessed using observational procedures) were assessed initially and 1 year later. Results provided evidence of marital stress generation among wives, and social support processes functioned as a mechanism of stress generation for wives. Results highlight the cyclical course of dysphoria and stress among wives.

Stress Generation, Avoidance Coping, and Depressive Symptoms: A 10-Year Model.

“…A strength of the present study is that it extends stress-generation research, which has generally involved younger persons (e.g., Adrian & Hammen, 1993;Daley et al, 1997;Davila et al, 1997;Potthoff et al, 1995;Rudolph et al, 2000), to a late-middle-aged sample.…”

“…Specifically, the study addressed (a) the role of avoidance coping in prospectively generating both chronic and acute life stressors and (b) the stress-generating role of avoidance coping as a prospective link to future depressive symptoms. We examined these issues in a sample of 1,211 late-middle-aged women and men assessed three times over a 10-year period.A strength of the present study is that it extends stress-generation research, which has generally involved younger persons (e.g., Adrian & Hammen, 1993;Daley et al, 1997;Davila et al, 1997;Potthoff et al, 1995;Rudolph et al, 2000), to a late-middle-aged sample.The growing aging population in the United States has made depression among older persons a key mental health concern, with clinical psychologists focusing increasingly on the etiology (Gatz, 2000) and treatment (Karel, Ogland-Hand, Gatz, & Unuetzer, 2002) of later-life depression. The multiple waves of data and long time interval provided a unique opportunity to view the temporal unfolding of the stress-generation process (also see Chun, Cronkite, & Moos, 2004).…”

“…The multiple waves of data and long time interval provided a unique opportunity to view the temporal unfolding of the stress-generation process (also see Chun, Cronkite, & Moos, 2004). Representation of both women and men in the sample allowed us to broaden the stress-generation model beyond the traditional focus on women (Daley et al, 1997;Davila et al, 1997;Hammen, 1991).The present study is part of a longitudinal project on an initial sample of 1,884 late-middleaged individuals. Previous research with this sample has examined the emergence and course of late-life drinking (Moos, Brennan, & Moos, 1991;Schutte, Brennan, & Moos, 1994, 1998Schutte, Byrne, Brennan, & Moos, 2001) and adjustment to cardiac illness (Holahan et al, 1997).…”

Who Cares about the Environmental Impact of Cars?

“…The sample consisted of 82 men and 104 women (3 participants failed to indicate their sex), with a mean age of 37 years and 9 months. Due to the short, 2-week lag between distribution and final acceptance of the surveys and the lack of incentives for participation, the response rate was lower than we had hoped but was not necessarily uncommon (e.g., Davila, Bradbury, Cohan, & Tochluk, 1997;Joireman et al, 1997).…”

The social psychophysiology of cardiovascular response: An introduction to the special issue

“…For some more recently identified risk factors, other research indicates that interpersonal factors might be important. For example, depression seems to confer increased risk of initial and recurrent cardiac events (43,44), and perturbed interpersonal relations are both a cause and a consequence of depressive conditions (45,46).…”