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Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology

, Volume 47, Issue 8, pp 1391–1399 | Cite as

Adversity and Depression: The Moderating Role of Stress Reactivity among High and Low Risk Youth

  • Shimrit DachesEmail author
  • Vera Vine
  • Charles J. George
  • Maria Kovacs
Article
First Online:

Abstract

Adverse life events have been causally linked to depression among youth at high risk for depression. But given that not all high-risk youth develop depression following adversity, individual differences in various processes, including physiological reactivity to stress, are likely to be at play. This longitudinal prospective study tested the hypothesis that, among high-risk youth exposed to adversities, extent of physiological reactivity to laboratory stress (indexed as respiratory sinus arrhythmia; RSA) would predict subsequent depressive symptoms. Subjects were youth at high (n = 80) and low (n = 74) familial risk for depression. At Time 1 (T1), RSA was assessed during a cognitive stress task. At Time 2 (T2) about 2 years later, parents reported on adversities experienced by their offspring during the interim. At T1 and T2, youth received a diagnostic evaluation, which included assessment of their depressive symptoms. The three-way interaction of group-X-adversities-X-RSA predicted T2 depressive symptoms (controlling for T1 depressive symptoms). This interaction was mostly driven by the moderating effect of RSA among high-risk youth, such that adversities predicted higher depressive symptoms for those who displayed greater RSA reactivity to stress. Among low-risk youth, an inverse marginal moderating effect of RSA was found, such that adversities tended to predict depressive symptoms for those who displayed blunted RSA reactivity to stress. Thus, high physiological stress reactivity appears to be an additional risk factor for depressive symptoms only among youth at elevated risk for such outcomes, and should be taken into consideration in efforts to prevent depression in these populations.

Keywords

Stress reactivity Adversity Depression Respiratory sinus arrhythmia High-risk offspring 
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Notes

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health Grant numbers: RO1 MH085722 and T32 MH018951, Rockville, MD.

Compliance with Ethical Standards

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that there is no potential or actual conflict of interest.

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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2019

Authors and Affiliations

  • Shimrit Daches
    • 1
    • 2
    Email author
  • Vera Vine
    • 2
  • Charles J. George
    • 3
  • Maria Kovacs
    • 2
  1. 1.Department of PsychologyBar-Ilan UniversityRamat GanIsrael
  2. 2.Department of PsychiatryUniversity of Pittsburgh School of MedicinePittsburghUSA
  3. 3.University of Pittsburgh Medical CenterPittsburghUSA

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