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Maternal Depression History Moderates the Association Between Criticism (but not Praise) and Depressive Symptoms in Youth

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Abstract

Children of mothers with past depression are at increased risk for developing the disorder themselves; however, the specific factors that increase their risk are unclear. Aberrant reactivity to social experiences may be one characteristic that increases risk for depression in offspring. This study investigates whether mothers’ depression history is associated with increased reactivity to criticism and decreased reactivity to praise in offspring by examining 72 youths (ages 8–15). Every evening for 21 days, youths reported their depressive symptoms and whether they were criticized and/or praised by their mothers, fathers, siblings, and friends, resulting in 1,382 data entries across participants. Mothers reported their own depression history and current depressive symptoms. Maternal depression history moderated offspring’s response to criticism. Although all youths reacted to perceived criticism from family members with transient increases of depressive symptoms, only children of mothers with higher (vs. lower) levels of past depression exhibited cumulative, person-level associations between perceived criticism and their own depressive symptoms. Additionally, only children of depressed mothers exhibited increases in depressive symptoms on days in which they were criticized by friends. Perceived parental praise was associated with lower levels of depression in youths regardless of maternal depression. Youth depressive symptoms were more strongly related to their parents’ (vs. siblings or friends) criticism and praise, highlighting parents’ more central role in youth depression risk. Taken together, our results reveal that maternal depression history is associated with increased reactivity to perceived criticism across relational contexts potentially contributing to youths’ risk for developing depression.

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Notes

  1. β denotes fixed effects; b denotes random effects.

  2. ANOVA was conducted only on participants who had all four sources of criticism and praise; however, frequencies in Table 1 are presented for all participants.

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Funding

The present study National Institute of Mental Health Translational Developmental Neuroscience Training Grant (T32 #MH18268), The Israeli Council for Higher Education Postdoctoral Research Fellowship for Women, and the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship (786460) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program awarded to Dr. Gadassi Polack, and the National Institute of Mental Health R21 MH119552 awarded to Dr. Joormann and Dr. Kober.

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  1. Hedy Kober and Jutta Joormann have contributed equally to this work.

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  1. Yale University, New Haven, USA

    Reuma Gadassi-Polack, Julia Chertkof, Hedy Kober & Jutta Joormann

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  1. Reuma Gadassi-Polack
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Contributions

The authors would like to thank Haran Sened and Itay Polack Gadassi for their assistance in setting up the study, to Samantha Aubé on her helpful comments, and to Ralitza Gueorguieva for advice regarding data analysis, to the research assistants who helped with data collection, and to the families who participated.

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Correspondence to Reuma Gadassi-Polack.

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Gadassi-Polack, R., Chertkof, J., Kober, H. et al. Maternal Depression History Moderates the Association Between Criticism (but not Praise) and Depressive Symptoms in Youth. Res Child Adolesc Psychopathol 49, 1097–1110 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-021-00803-2

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