Prospective Models of Depressive Symptoms in Early Adolescence

Abstract

Models of depressive symptoms were compared in a 6-month prospective study of 95 nonreferred 11- to 13-year-olds. Maladaptive attributional style and social support correlated with multiple measures of concurrent depressive symptoms. Life stress generally failed to correlate with concurrent depressive symptoms. Prospectively, attribution style failed to predict depressive symptoms, whereas social support predicted mother, but not self-, ratings of depressive symptoms. The interaction between attributional style and subsequent life stress generally failed to predict future depressive symptoms. Limited specificity was found in that risk factors correlated similarly with depressive symptoms and aggressive behaviors. Findings showed that attributional style was primarily a concomitant of depressive symptoms in the present sample, although length of follow-up and age need to be considered when testing the temporal relationships posited by causal attributional style models. In addition, future research should examine further the etiological role of social support in models of early adolescent depression.