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Child-, adolescent- and young adult-onset depressions: differential risk factors in development?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 May 2011

L. Shanahan ,
W. E. Copeland ,
E. J. Costello  and
A. Angold
L. Shanahan*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, NC, USA
W. E. Copeland
Affiliation:
Developmental Epidemiology Program, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC, USA
E. J. Costello
Affiliation:
Developmental Epidemiology Program, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC, USA
A. Angold
Affiliation:
Developmental Epidemiology Program, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC, USA
*
*Address for correspondence: L. Shanahan, Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Department of Psychology, PO Box 26170, Greensboro, NC 27402, USA. (Email: [email protected])
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Abstract

Background

Previous research reported that childhood adversity predicts juvenile- onset but not adult-onset depression, but studies confounded potentially genuine differences in adversity with differences in the recency with which adversity was experienced. The current study paper took into account the recency of risk when testing for differences among child-, adolescent- and young adult-onset depressions.

Method

Up to nine waves of data were used per subject from two cohorts of the Great Smoky Mountains Study (GSMS; n=1004), covering children in the community aged 9–16, 19 and 21 years. Youth and one of their parents were interviewed using the Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Assessment (CAPA) between ages 9 and 16; these same youth were interviewed using the Young Adult Psychiatric Assessment (YAPA) at ages 19 and 21. The most common psychosocial risk factors for depression were assessed: poverty, life events, parental psychopathology, maltreatment, and family dysfunction.

Results

Consistent with previous research, most childhood psychosocial risk factors were more strongly associated with child-onset than with adolescent-/adult-onset depression. When potentially genuine risk differences among the depression-onset groups were disentangled from differences due to the recency of risk, child- and young adult-onset depression were no longer different from one another. Adolescent-onset depression was associated with few psychosocial risk factors.

Conclusions

There were no differences in putative risk factors between child- and young adult-onset depression when the recency of risk was taken into account. Adolescent-onset depression was associated with few psychosocial risk factors. It is possible that some adolescent-onset depression cases differ in terms of risk from child- and young adult-onset depression.

Keywords

Depressiondevelopmentepidemiologyonsetpsychosocial risk factors
Type
Original Articles
Information
Psychological Medicine , Volume 41 , Issue 11 , November 2011 , pp. 2265 - 2274
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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