Transactional Associations Between Youths’ Responses to Peer Stress and Depression: The Moderating Roles of Sex and Stress Exposure

This study examined transactional associations between responses to peer stress and depression in youth. Specifically, it tested the hypotheses that (a) depression would predict fewer effortful responses and more involuntary, dysregulated responses to peer stress over time; and (b) fewer adaptive and more maladaptive responses would predict subsequent depression. Youth (M age = 12.41; SD = 1.19; 86 girls, 81 boys) and their maternal caregivers completed semi-structured interviews and questionnaires at three annual waves. Multi-group comparison path analyses were conducted to examine sex and stress-level differences in the proposed reciprocal-influence model. In girls and in youth exposed to high levels of peer stress, maladaptive stress responses predicted more depressive symptoms and adaptive stress responses predicted fewer depressive symptoms at each wave. These findings suggest the utility of preventive interventions for depression designed to enhance the quality of girls’ stress responses. In boys, depression predicted less adaptive and more maladaptive stress responses, but only at the second wave. These findings suggest that interventions designed to reduce boys’ depressive symptoms may help them develop more adaptive stress responses.     

Mothers as a Resource in Times of Stress: Interactive Contributions of Socialization of Coping and Stress to Youth Psychopathology

This study examined the hypothesis that maternal socialization of coping would make a differential contribution to youth depression and externalizing psychopathology depending on youths’ level of exposure to life stress. A sample of 155 youth (M age = 12.41, SD = 1.21) and their maternal caregivers completed semi-structured interviews and questionnaires in a two-wave longitudinal study over a 1-year period. Results provided evidence for two types of socialization × stress interactions—an amplification-effects model and a differential-effects model. In the context of interpersonal stress, findings supported an amplification-effects model wherein the risk and protective effects of engagement and disengagement socialization of coping emerged in youth exposed to high but not mild levels of stress. In the context of noninterpersonal stress, findings supported a differential-effects model wherein disengagement socialization of coping contributed to heightened risk among youth exposed to high stress but dampened risk among youth exposed to mild stress. This research identifies maternal socialization of coping as a noteworthy contributor to risk for youth psychopathology, and highlights the need to consider parenting × environment interactions when investigating parenting processes related to youth psychopathology.     

Dynamic Associations between Maternal Depressive Symptoms and Adolescents’ Depressive and Externalizing Symptoms

The current prospective study investigated transactional relations between maternal depressive symptoms and children’s depressive and externalizing symptoms. Participants included 240 children (M age = 11.86 years, SD = 0.56; 53.9% female) and their mothers who were part of a 6-year longitudinal study. Measures of maternal depression (Beck Depression Inventory), child depression (Children’s Depression Inventory), and children’s externalizing symptoms (Youth Self-Report Form) were assessed annually. Data analyses using dynamic latent difference score structural equation models indicated that the observed relations between mothers’ and adolescents’ symptoms were stable across the 6 years. Higher levels of maternal depressive symptoms predicted subsequent elevations in children’s depressive symptoms and in their externalizing problems over time. Among mothers with high initial levels of depression, children’s depressive symptoms predicted subsequent declines in mothers’ depressive symptoms. Children’s externalizing problems were not related to subsequent change in maternal symptoms.     

Conceptualizing the Prospective Relationship Between Social Support,Stress, and Depressive Symptoms Among Adolescents

The goal of the current study is to examine the relationship amongst social support, stress, and depressive symptoms within a transactional and diathesis-stress framework using a multi-wave, longitudinal design. At the initial assessment, adolescents (n = 258) completed self-report measures assessing social support (peer, classmate, parent, and total), dependent interpersonal stress, anxious symptoms, and depressive symptoms. Additionally, participants reported stress and symptomology in each of the four waves spanning six months. Results of time-lagged, idiographic, multilevel modeling indicated that stress mediated the relationship between lower parental, classmate, and total social support and subsequent depressive, but not anxious, symptoms. In contrast, lower levels of peer support were not associated with higher levels of stress and subsequent depressive symptoms. Additionally, only classmate support deficits significantly moderated the relationship between stress and depressive symptoms. Overall, the results suggest that deficits in parental and classmate support may play a greater role in contributing to adolescent depression as compared to deficits in peer support.     

Electronic Diaries: A Feasible Method of Assessing Emotional Experiences in Youth?

The primary goal of this study was to examine whether electronic diaries are a feasible method of monitoring transitory emotional states with a school-age, community sample of youth. A second goal was to examine preliminary relations between indices of emotional functioning captured via electronic diaries and other measures of child emotional and psychological functioning. Participants included 38 youth between the ages of 7 and 12 (51% males, M age = 9 [1.52] years and 49% females, M age = 9 [1.94] years) and their mothers (M age = 39 years) and fathers (M age = 42 years). Children were prompted to indicate the intensity of their current emotion four times a day for 1 week using Palm Tungsten E2s. Youth also completed self-report measures of emotion intensity, awareness, and dysregulation. Parents completed measures of child emotion regulation and symptoms of externalizing and internalizing psychopathology. Sixty percent of the prompts were answered as intended. Higher levels of positive emotion intensity based on electronic diary ratings were negatively related to parent reports of adaptive emotion regulation and were positively related to youths’ reports of emotion dysregulation and poor emotion awareness. Given that the electronic diary data offered unique information on youth emotional functioning, strategies to increase compliance with the diaries are suggested.     

Mothers’ and Fathers’ Responsive Problem Solving with Early Adolescents: Do Gender,Shyness, and Social Acceptance Make a Difference?

We assessed the extent to which youths’ (n = 231) shyness and social acceptance in preadolescence were associated with parents’ responsive problem solving 1 year later after controlling for initial levels of parents’ problem solving. Teachers (n = 176) completed assessments of youths’ shyness and social acceptance, and parents (n = 231 married pairs) completed assessments of their responsive problem solving with the child. For shy daughters, higher levels of social acceptance from peers predicted more responsive problem solving from fathers. Greater social acceptance predicted marginally less maternal problem solving for sons, but greater social acceptance predicted marginally more maternal problem solving with daughters. Results suggest the salience of child gender, shyness, and social acceptance when considering typical levels of parental involvement with youth. Implications for parents include the importance of successful problem solving discussions with emerging adolescents, especially youth who are shy or excluded by peers.     

Childhood Predictors of Desistance and Level of Persistence in Offending in Early Onset Offenders

Childhood predictors of adolescent offending careers were studied in 310 boys from the longitudinal Pittsburgh Youth Study who started offending prior to age 12. Three main groups were distinguished: serious persisters (n = 95), moderately serious persisters (n = 117), desisters (n = 63), and an intermittent group (n = 35). Group membership was predicted using risk and promotive factors measured in childhood. Serious and moderately serious persisters could be distinguished well from desisters (29.2% and 32.3% explained variance). Distinction between the two persister groups proved somewhat more difficult (20.9% explained variance). More serious persisters than desisters showed disruptive behavior, while moderately serious persisters fell in between. Further, more moderately serious persisters were marked by social disadvantage. Family involvement, small family and positive peer relationships were promotive of desistance. Concluding, early onset offenders show considerable heterogeneity in their adolescent offending careers which seem to some extent to be predicted by different sets of risk and promotive factors.     

Predictors of Stress Generation in Adolescents in Mainland China

The current longitudinal study examined whether the personality vulnerabilities of self-criticism and dependency prospectively predicted stress generation in Chinese adolescents. Participants included 1,116 adolescents (588 girls and 528 boys), aged 15 to 18 years from rural, urban and ultra-urban mainland China. Participants completed self-report measures of personality, depressive and anxious symptoms and participated in a clinical interview assessing lifetime history of depression. The occurrence of negative life events was measured using a contextual-threat interview every 6-months for a total period of 18-months. Logistic regression analyses showed that after controlling for past depressive episodes and current depressive and anxious symptoms, self-criticism was prospectively associated with the occurrence of interpersonal stress generation, but not noninterpersonal stress generation. Dependency also predicted interpersonal stress generation, although only in girls and not boys. In line with previous Western findings, girls reported more interpersonal stress generation. Analyses across 3 levels of urbanization revealed several significant differences including higher reported interpersonal stress generation in urban girls than urban boys and overall higher levels of negative life events in ultra-urban youth. In sum, findings from the current study suggest that the stress generation process may be generalizable to Chinese youth.     

The Latent Structure of Youth Responses to Peer Provocation

This study examined whether the three categories often applied to children’s behavior—aggressive, avoidant, and assertive—actually capture the structure of a naturalistic sample of youth behavior coded at a more micro level. A sample of lower-income youth (N = 392; M age = 12.69, SD = 0.95) completed a new multiple-choice measure asking them to select responses to scenarios depicting physical, verbal, and relational provocation by a peer. Youth responses to the vignettes showed the expected associations with self-reported aggression and regulation of anger, providing preliminary evidence for the convergent validity of the measure. Factor analysis confirmed that responses loaded on three factors: aggression, avoidance, and assertion. Model fit was adequate (RMSEA = .028) and cross-validated in a second sample (RMSEA = .039). Several types of responses loaded on two factors suggesting that some strategies that youth use to manage provocation are not “pure” examples of these broadband categories. Implications for conceptualization and measurement of youth social behavior are discussed.     

Feasibility and Preliminary Outcomes of a School-Based Mindfulness Intervention for Urban Youth

Youth in underserved, urban communities are at risk for a range of negative outcomes related to stress, including social-emotional difficulties, behavior problems, and poor academic performance. Mindfulness-based approaches may improve adjustment among chronically stressed and disadvantaged youth by enhancing self-regulatory capacities. This paper reports findings from a pilot randomized controlled trial assessing the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary outcomes of a school-based mindfulness and yoga intervention. Four urban public schools were randomized to an intervention or wait-list control condition (n = 97 fourth and fifth graders, 60.8% female). It was hypothesized that the 12-week intervention would reduce involuntary stress responses and improve mental health outcomes and social adjustment. Stress responses, depressive symptoms, and peer relations were assessed at baseline and post-intervention. Findings suggest the intervention was attractive to students, teachers, and school administrators and that it had a positive impact on problematic responses to stress including rumination, intrusive thoughts, and emotional arousal.     

Rumination in Response to Stress as a Common Vulnerability Factor to Depression and Substance Misuse in Adolescence

The current study examined rumination in response to stress as a common vulnerability factor to both depression and substance use problems in adolescence. Specifically, we used a multi-wave longitudinal design to examine whether adolescents who tend to ruminate in response to stress exhibit increases in depressive symptoms and substance misuse following the occurrence of negative events. At time 1, adolescents (n = 161) completed measures assessing depressive symptoms, substance misuse, and the tendency to ruminate in response to stress. Every 6 weeks for the next 18 weeks participants completed measures assessing the occurrence of negative events, depressive symptoms, and substance misuse. Hierarchical linear modeling analyses indicated that adolescents who tend to ruminate in response to stress report greater elevations in depressive symptoms and substance misuse following elevations in negative events than other adolescents. The relationship between rumination, negative events, and substance misuse was moderated by age. Support was not obtained for fluctuations in depressive symptoms as a mediator of the relationship between negative events and substance misuse. Fluctuations in negative affect, however, were found to mediate this relationship.

Post Traumatic Stress,Context, and the Lingering Effects of the Hurricane Katrina Disaster among Ethnic Minority Youth

This study examined the stability of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms in a predominantly ethnic minority sample of youth exposed to Hurricane Katrina. Youth (n = 191 grades 4th thru 8th) were screened for exposure to traumatic experiences and PTSD symptoms at 24 months (Time 1) and then again at 30 months (Time 2) post-disaster. PTSD symptoms did not significantly decline over time and were higher than rates reported at earlier time points for more ethnically diverse samples. Younger age, female sex, and continued disrepair to the child’s home predicted stable elevated PTSD symptoms. Findings are consistent with predictions from contextual theories of disaster exposure and with epidemiological data from adult samples suggesting that the incidence of PTSD post Katrina is showing an atypical pattern of remittance. Theoretical, applied, and policy implications are discussed.     

Stress Reactivity as a Pathway from Attentional Control Deficits in Everyday Life to Depressive Symptoms in Adolescent Girls

The goal of this research was to expand theoretical models of adolescent depression to determine whether individual differences in cognitive processing—specifically attentional control deficits—help to explain increased risk for depression during adolescence. We also examined whether this pathway was stronger in girls than in boys. A longitudinal design was used to examine whether poor attentional control in everyday life (i.e., difficulties shifting between ideas, tasks, and activities) contributes to depression over time by fostering higher levels of stress reactivity. Youth (298 boys, 338 girls) completed questionnaires assessing stress reactivity (6th and 7th grades) and depressive symptoms (6th, 7th and, 8th grades); teachers completed the shifting subscale of the Behavior Rating Scale of Executive Function (Gioia et al. 2000a) to assess attentional control (6th and 7th grades). Structural equation modeling analyses provided support for the predicted pathway in girls but not boys, yielding a significant indirect effect from 6th grade shifting deficits to 8th grade depressive symptoms via 7th grade stress reactivity. These results suggest that attentional control deficits in early adolescence heighten girls’ sensitivity to stress and consequent depressive symptoms, providing a critical direction for efforts to decrease adolescent girls’ risk for depression.     

Does Childhood Executive Function Predict Adolescent Functional Outcomes in Girls with ADHD?

We prospectively followed an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse sample of preadolescent girls with ADHD (n = 140) and matched comparison girls (n = 88) over a period of 5 years, from middle childhood through early/mid-adolescence. Our aim was to examine the ability of measures of childhood executive function (EF) to predict functional outcomes in adolescence. Measures of neuropsychological functioning comprised the childhood predictors, with academic, social, and global functioning serving as adolescent criterion measures. Results indicated that childhood EF predicted (a) academic achievement and social functioning across our entire sample (independent of diagnostic group status) and (b) global functioning only in girls with ADHD (independent of IQ). These results highlight the non-specificity of EF deficits and suggest the importance of assessing and developing interventions that target EF impairments, particularly in those at high-risk for negative outcomes, in order to prevent long-term difficulties across a range of important functional domains.     

Resilience in Young Adulthood: The Moderating Influences of Gender-related Personality Traits and Coping Flexibility

The study was designated to explore the resilient (moderating) influences of gender-related personality traits and coping flexibility on the relations between life event stress and psychosocial adjustment in a sample of 291 Chinese young adults. Multiple outcomes (i.e., psychological, physical, and interpersonal aspects of adjustments) were separately examined with regression analysis. The interaction effects explained 5% of the unique variance in the psychological distress model and 4% of the unique variance in the interpersonal functioning model beyond the main effects. Coping flexibility tended to reduce the associations between life event stress and depression. Furthermore, masculinity buffered the link between life event stress and interpersonal functioning. The three-way interaction masculinity × femininity × stress also predicted additional unique variance in interpersonal functioning, which indicates that non-gender-typed respondents showed greater resilience to recent life stress than did their gender-typed counterparts. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

In the Eye of the Beholder: Alcohol Use and Perceptions Among Student-Patrons of ‘Joints’ in Three Nigerian University Communities

Alcohol use and its associated problems among university students have attracted empirical investigation by researchers and scholars. While many of these studies have reported a very high level of alcohol consumption and highlighted the various problems this portends, alcohol-related perceptions of this vulnerable population, which could be germane to intervention aimed at curtailing the problem, have remained largely under-researched. This cross-sectional survey examined the use and perceptions of alcohol by student-patrons (n = 1,705) of beer parlours or ‘joints’ in three university communities in Southwest Nigeria. Respondents were interviewed using AUDIT, a socio-demographic prototype and an open-ended section on alcohol-related perceptions of the students. Findings indicated that overall, 72% of the respondents perceived that alcohol is good for socializing, 68% perceived that alcohol is good in the aspect of stress reduction, 58% believed that alcohol consumption is indicative of maturity, 36% perceived that alcohol enhances their sexual performance while 39% perceived that alcohol serves to enhance alertness/concentration. Results also showed that gender (β = −. 23; p < .05), paternal alcohol use (β = .36; p < .01), parental socio-economic status (β = .33; p < .01), and residential status of university of respondents (β = .21; p < .05) significantly predicted alcohol use. The study concluded that perceptions about alcohol are very germane to understanding students’ alcohol use and should be reckoned with in designing intervention programmes. The need to adopt a ‘client-centered’ approach to the problem of student drinking behaviour was emphasized.     

Feminism: What is it Good For? Feminine Norms and Objectification as the Link between Feminist Identity and Clinically Relevant Outcomes

The goal of this study was to explore the relationships between feminism and clinical outcomes, such as eating attitudes, depression, and self-esteem, employing structural equation modeling to look at indirect relationships. This study examined female participants’ (N = 282) responses to an online survey measuring feminist self-identification, conformity to feminine norms, objectified body consciousness, eating attitudes, depression, and self-esteem. Participants were recruited on two college campuses and through online listservs. Feminist self-identification was related to rejecting the feminine norms of thinness, appearance, and the importance of romantic relationships. Endorsing these norms was related to increased body surveillance and shame. Objectification variables were related to negative clinical outcomes. Thus, feminism is a distal, rather than proximal, influence on clinical variables.     

Parents’ Reactions to Youths’ Hyperactivity,Impulsivity, and Attention Problems

Hyperactivity, impulsivity, and attention problems (HIA) in children and adolescents are stressful for parents. In this study, we used theories of parents’ perceived power and attributions for youths’ behaviors to develop a model to understand parents’ reactions to their youths’ HIA. We followed 706 youths (376 boys and 330 girls, aged 10–12 years at T1) and their parents in a community-based project over 5 years. Measures of youths’ HIA, youths’ unresponsiveness to correction, parents’ feelings of powerlessness, parental monitoring, and parents’ negative behaviors toward their youths, were used. HIA in youths predicted increases in parents’ perceptions that their youths were unresponsive to correction, which in turn prompted parents to feel more powerless over time. Further, parents’ feelings of powerlessness were associated with increases in negative parenting behaviors over time. These results indicate a movement to more negative parenting practices over time as a result of youths’ HIA.     

Parent Stress and Coping: Waiting for a Child to Receive a Kidney Transplant

The current study examined the degree of parent stress and depression among mothers and fathers of children with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) listed for a kidney transplant, to determine whether demographic factors, stress, and coping would predict parent depression. Eighty-six mothers and 58 fathers of children with ESRD preparing for a kidney transplant completed standardized measures of parent stress related to the child’s chronic illness (PIP), coping style (Brief Cope), and depression (BDI-II). Information about the disease was obtained from the medical record. Maternal depression was predicted by having a lower family income, higher degree of parent stress associated with the child’s illness, and the use of avoidant coping strategies. Paternal depression was only predicted by higher parent stress. Illness related variables did not contribute significantly to the understanding of parent outcomes. Pre-transplant evaluations should screen for elevated levels of stress and depression, and develop interventions to help parents cope with their child’s renal disease.     

Stress, appraisal, coping, and social support as predictors of adaptational outcome among dementia caregivers

A stress and coping model was used to study predictors of individual differences in caregiver adaptation. A total of 54 family caregivers of elderly dementia patients completed interviews and questionnaires assessing the severity of patient impairment and caregiving stressors; caregiver appraisals, coping responses, and social support and activity; and caregiver outcomes, including depression, life satisfaction, and self-rated health. Correlational and regression analyses supported the utility of the stress and coping model. Appraisal, coping responses, and social support and activity were significant predictors of caregiver outcome, even when severity of caregiving stressors was statistically controlled. The importance of a multidimensional approach to assessing caregiver outcomes was supported by regression analyses indicating that each caregiver outcome was predicted by different patterns of stressors, appraisal, coping, and social support and activity. Results are discussed in terms of a stress and coping model of caregiving, and clinical implications for work with caregiving families.