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Hopelessness Depression in Children: An Examination of the Symptom Component of the Hopelessness Theory

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Abstract

The goal of the current study was to test the symptom component of the hopelessness theory of depression in a sample of 39 children between the ages of seven and 13 currently exhibiting clinically significant levels of depressive symptoms. Children were categorized into subgroups on the basis of whether or not they (1) possessed a depressogenic attributional style and (2) experienced a negative event prior to the onset of their depressive symptoms. Although children with and without a vulnerability-stress match did not differ in terms of either overall symptom severity or level of non-hopelessness depression symptoms, children with a vulnerability-stress match exhibited higher levels of both hopelessness and hopelessness depression symptoms. In addition, although children in both groups were equally likely to receive a diagnosis of major depressive disorder, minor depressive disorder, dysthymia, and adjustment disorder with depressed mood, children with a vulnerability-stress match were more likely than children without a vulnerability-stress match to receive a diagnosis of hopelessness depression based on criteria set forth by Alloy et al. [J Abnormal Psychol 109:403–418, 2000]. Last, hopelessness depression symptoms exhibited a significantly greater association with hopelessness than did non-hopelessness depression symptoms.

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Notes

  1. Given that hopelessness is the proximal sufficient cause of HD, it is not surprising that the strength of the association between hopelessness and the HD symptom composite score (r = .73) is stronger that the average correlation between HD symptoms themselves (r = .28). More specifically, hopelessness must be present to receive a diagnosis of HD whereas none of the 12 individual symptoms of HD must be present to receive the diagnosis. We would also expect the average strength of the association between hopelessness and each of the 12 symptoms of HD (r = .43) to exceed the average correlation between HD symptoms themselves due to hopelessness’ status as a cause of such symptoms. In terms of judging the mean-inter item correlation of the HD symptoms, for the items on a scale to be considered to be assessing a similar construct, the average inter-item correlation should exceed .20. Our mean-inter-symptom correlation of .28 surpasses this value suggesting that the symptoms of HD are part of a unitary construct.

  2. Ideally, we would be interested in using a 2 (Diagnosis)  × 4 (Group) χ 2 analysis to analyze our data. However, due to the small sample size, this would lead to several cells having too few participants in them. Consequently, we decided to turn the Group variable into a binary variable where 1 = vulnerability-stress match and 0 = No vulnerability-stress match.

  3. Due to the (1) small sample size and (2) the content of our hypotheses, we focused our analyses primarily on comparing children with a vulnerability-stress match to children in the other three groups combined. At the same time, it is important to note that children in the +VUL/+STR group exhibited higher levels of HD symptoms than children in both the −VUL/−STR (t(20) = 2.54, p < .05) and −VUL/+STR (t(26) = 2.13, p < .05) groups but not the +VUL/−STR group (t(19) = 0.52, ns). Similarly, children in the +VUL/+STR group approached significance in exhibiting higher levels of hopelessness than children in both the −VUL/−STR (t(20) = 1.94, p < .06) and −VUL/+STR (t(26) = 2.03, p < .06) groups but not the +VUL/−STR group (t(19) = 0.75, ns). The children in the +VUL/+STR group did not differ from children in each of the other three groups in terms of NON-HD depression symptoms (p > .20). As past research has reported that a depressogenic inferential styles interact with negative events to predict increases in HD but not NON-HD symptoms in children (Abela & Payne, 2003; Abela & Sarin, 2002), our failure to detect significant differences between the +VUL/+STR and +VUL/−STR may be due to lack of statistical power.

    An alternative approach to testing our hypotheses would be to utilize hierarchical multiple regression analyses. Our dependent variables would be hopelessness, hopelessness depression symptoms, and non-hopelessness depression symptoms. In step one, vulnerability and stress would be entered simultaneously as main effects. In step two, the vulnerability × stress interaction would be entered. Due to the small sample size of the current study, however, we lacked the statistical power to separate the main effects and the interaction. Nevertheless, we conducted such analyses, and none of the effects were significant.

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Acknowledgments

The research reported in this article was supported, in part, by a Young Investigator Award from the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression (NARSAD) awarded to John R. Z. Abela. We would like to thank Martin E. P. Seligman and David Zuroff for serving as mentors for the NARSAD award. We would like to thank Geneviève Lepage and Tania Mazzarello for conducting telephone screens, Chris Bryan, Melanie Ewing, Caroline Sullivan, Geneviève Taylor, and Marie-Hélène Véronneau-McArdle for conducting diagnostic interviews, Nathalie Castiel, Eva Dechef, Geneviève Dumas, Marie-Amélie Guilbault, and Nadia Hausfather for administering questionnaires to children, and Christine Ngo, Jacquie Poitras, and Lisa Trayhern for entering data. We would also like to thank Chantale Bousquet and Melanie Ewing for translating the questionnaires.

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  1. Department of Psychology, McGill University, Stewart Biological Sciences Building, 1205 Dr. Penfield Avenue, H3A 1B1, Montreal, Que., Canada

    John R. Z. Abela, Hugo Gagnon & Randy P. Auerbach

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  1. John R. Z. Abela
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  2. Hugo Gagnon
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Correspondence to John R. Z. Abela.

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Abela, J.R.Z., Gagnon, H. & Auerbach, R.P. Hopelessness Depression in Children: An Examination of the Symptom Component of the Hopelessness Theory. Cogn Ther Res 31, 401–417 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-007-9144-z

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