Abstract
Although children of depressed mothers are at an increased risk for suicidal thinking, little is known about the potential mechanisms by which this occurs. The present study is the first to our knowledge to utilize a prospective design with the goal of examining whether the impact of maternal depression on children’s risk for suicidal ideation is mediated by children’s levels of overt and relational peer victimization. Participants were 203 mother-child pairs recruited from the community. The age range of the children was 8 to 14 years old (50.2 % girls). Mothers either met criteria for a major depressive disorder (MDD) during their child’s lifetime (n = 96) or had no lifetime diagnosis of any DSM-IV mood disorder and no current Axis I diagnosis (n = 107). At the baseline assessment, diagnostic interviews were used to assess mothers’ and children’s histories of MDD and children completed a self-report measure of peer victimization. Follow-up assessments were conducted at 6, 12, 18, and 24 months after the initial assessment during which time interviewers assessed for the occurrence of suicidal ideation in the children. Utilizing a mediated moderation model, we found significant indirect pathways from maternal depression to children’s suicidal ideation through both relational and overt forms of peer victimization among girls, but not among boys. The current study suggests that peer victimization may constitute one of the potential mechanisms by which daughters of depressed mothers are at increased risk for suicidal thinking.
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Notes
For the interested reader, we should note that mother MDD was significantly more strongly related to girls’ levels of relational victimization than overt victimization, z = 1.96, p = .025.
When both forms of peer victimization were entered into the model, neither was significant in predicting the emergence of suicidal thinking in children, suggesting that the effects were due to peer victimization generally rather than overt or relational victimization, specifically.
Details of these analyses are available from the first author.
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Acknowledgments
The project was supported by National Institute of Child Health and Human Development grant HD057066 and National Institute of Mental Health grant MH098060 awarded to B. E. Gibb and the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under Grant No. 1120674 awarded to A. Tsypes. Any opinion, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Institutes of Health or the National Science Foundation.
We would like to thank Ashley Johnson, Lindsey Stone, Sydney Meadows, Michael Van Wie, Andrea Hanley, Katie Burkhouse, Mary Woody, Anastacia Kudinova, Effua Sosoo, Erik Funk, and Cope Feurer for their help in conducting assessments for this project.
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Ethical Approval
All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
Informed Consent
Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
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Tsypes, A., Gibb, B.E. Peer Victimization Mediates the Impact of Maternal Depression on Risk for Suicidal Ideation in Girls but not Boys: A Prospective Study. J Abnorm Child Psychol 43, 1439–1445 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-015-0025-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-015-0025-8