Adaptation of the Preventive Intervention Program for Depression for Use with Predominantly Low-Income Latino Families

This paper describes the process for and safety/feasibility of adapting the Beardslee Preventive Intervention Program for Depression for use with predominantly low income, Latino families. Utilizing a Stage I model for protocol development, the adaptation involved literature review, focus groups, pilot testing of the adapted manual, and open trial of the adapted intervention with 9 families experiencing maternal depression. Adaptations included conducting the intervention in either Spanish or English, expanding the intervention to include the contextual experience of Latino families in the United States with special attention to cultural metaphors, and using a strength-based, family-centered approach. The families completed preintervention measures for maternal depression, child behavioral difficulties, global functioning, life stresses, and an interview that included questions about acculturative stressors, resiliency, and family awareness of parental depression. The postintervention interview focused on satisfaction, distress, benefits of the adapted intervention, and therapeutic alliance. The results revealed that the adaptation was nonstressful, perceived as helpful by family members, had effects that seem to be similar to the original intervention, and the preventionists could maintain fidelity to the revised manual. The therapeutic alliance with the preventionists was experienced as quite positive by the mothers. A case example illustrates how the intervention was adapted.     

Parent and Adolescent Depressive Symptoms: The Role of Parental Attributions

This study examined whether negative parental attributions for adolescent behaviour mediate the association between parental and adolescent depressive symptoms, and whether this relationship is moderated by adolescent gender. Mothers and fathers and 124 adolescents (76 girls and 48 boys; ages 14 to 18) participated. Adolescents were primarily Caucasian, and varied in the level of depressive symptoms (with 27% of the sample meeting diagnostic criteria for a current unipolar depressive disorder). Parents and adolescents completed measures of depressive symptoms, and participated in a videotaped problem-solving discussion. After the discussion, each parent watched the videotape and, at 20 s intervals, offered attributions for their adolescent’s behaviour. Adolescent gender moderated the relation between parental attributions and adolescent depressive symptoms, with stronger associations for female adolescents. For both mothers and fathers, both parental depressive symptoms and negative attributions about the adolescent’s behaviour made unique contributions to the prediction of depressive symptoms in adolescent females. There also was evidence that negative attributions partially mediated the link between depressive symptoms in mothers and adolescent daughters. The results are interpreted as consistent with parenting as a partial mediator between parental and adolescent depressive symptoms, and suggest that adolescent girls may be particularly sensitive to parents’ negative interpretations of their behaviour.     

Translating Evidence to Practice: Two Stories from the Field

Translating research evidence into daily practice is a challenging process at the organizational level. Conceptual models about this process point to the importance of resources for change and environmental influences as two key factors that need to be addressed in translation efforts. Two organizational case studies focused on improving care for adults with depression are described that illustrate lessons about translating evidence to practice that may be helpful to others.     

Emotion Regulation in Youth with Emotional Disorders: Implications for a Unified Treatment Approach

Given the relationship between internalizing disorders and deficits in emotion regulation in youth, the emotion science literature has suggested several avenues for increasing the efficacy of interventions for youth presenting with anxiety and depression. These possibilities include the identification and addition of emotion-regulation skills to existing treatment packages and broadening the scope of those emotions addressed in cognitive-behavioral treatments. Current emotion-focused interventions designed to meet one or both of these goals are discussed, and the developmental influences relevant to the selection of emotion-focused treatment goals are explored using the framework of a modal model of emotion regulation. These various lines of evidence are woven together to support the utility of a novel emotion-focused, cognitive-behavioral intervention, the Unified Protocol for the Treatment of Emotional Disorders in Youth, a transdiagnostic treatment protocol that aims to treat the range of emotional disorders (i.e., anxiety and depression) simultaneously. Avenues for future directions in treatment outcome and assessment of emotion regulation are also discussed.     

大学生抑郁情绪与成人依恋的关系研究

目的:考察大学生的抑郁情绪与成人依恋的关系方法采用流调中心用抑郁量表和成人依恋量表,对河南某高校随机抽取的288名大一至大四的学生进行了调查,并进行有关的统计分析。结果:大学生的抑郁情绪在性别与年级的交互作用上差异显著;大学生成人依恋的不同类型对其抑郁情绪有影响,其中,拒绝型和恐惧型的大学生在抑郁情绪上有显著差异。结论:拒绝型与恐惧型成人依恋在大学生的抑郁情绪上有显著差异,不同年级和性别之间的抑郁情绪有显著交互作用。     

Racial/Ethnic Differences in Internalizing and Externalizing Symptoms in Adolescents

The prevalence of most adult psychiatric disorders varies across racial/ethnic groups and has important implications for prevention and intervention efforts. Research on racial/ethnic differences in the prevalence of internalizing and externalizing symptoms and disorders in adolescents has been less consistent or generally lacking. The current study examined the prevalence of these symptom groups in a large sample of sixth, seventh, and eighth graders in which the three major racial/ethnic groups in the U.S. (White, Black, and Hispanic/Latino) were well-represented. Hispanic females reported experiencing higher levels of depression, anxiety, and reputational aggression than other groups. Black males reported the highest levels of overtly aggressive behavior and also reported higher levels of physiologic anxiety and disordered eating than males from other racial/ethnic groups. Hispanic females also exhibited higher levels of comorbidity than other racial/ethnic groups.     

Negative life events, cognitive emotion regulation and emotional problems

A new questionnaire, named the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire, has been constructed, measuring nine cognitive coping strategies people tend to use after having experienced negative life events. A test–retest design was used to study the psychometric properties and relationships with measures of depression and anxiety among 547 high school youngsters. Principal component analyses supported the allocation of items to subscales, while alphas of most subscales exceeded 0.80. Cognitive coping strategies were found to play an important role in the relationship between the experience of negative life events and the reporting of symptoms of depression and anxiety. The results suggest that cognitive coping strategies may be a valuable context of prevention and intervention     

Perceived stress,life events,dysfunctional attitudes,and depression in adolescent psychiatric inpatients

Hewitt, Flett, and Mosher (1992) examined the factor structure of the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) and its relation to depression in adult psychiatric patients. This study sought to replicate and extend their findings, using a sample of 203 adolescent psychiatric inpatients. All patients admitted to the adolescent unit in a psychiatric hospital over a 3-year period were administered the PSS, as well as measures of depression, life events, dysfunctional attitudes, and intellectual abilities. Consistent with Hewittet al., two factors were found in the PSS, reflecting perceived distress and perceived coping ability. Regression analyses indicated that, for males, both factors account for independent variance in depression, whereas for females, only the distress factor is related to depression. In addition, for both male and female, dysfunctional attitudes account for significant variance in depression in addition to PSS, but negative life events do not. None of the variables were related to intellectual abilities. Implications for clinical assessment and intervention are discussed.     

Rational or uncommitted? Depression and indecisiveness in interpersonal decision making

Two studies were run which tested the prediction that clinically depressed persons, known for difficulties in making a decision, would process predecisional information relevant to an interpersonal choice in a more impartial, less biased way than non-depressed persons. Both studies provided confirmation for this hypothesis. In each case, the depressed group focused less on specific alternatives, asked more criterion-based questions, and made decisions on the basis of information which was more evenly distributed over alternatives, thus conforming less to biasing, dominance structuring processes, than non-depressed participants. The depressed and non-depressed participants did not differ, however, in evaluative aspects of their decisions, suggesting a relative independence of affective and informational aspects of predecisional processes. The question arises: are depressed patients less biased and hence more rational when making decisions or are they just indifferent and uncommitted? The data have been discussed with reference to research on effortful versus automatic information processing in depression.