Introduction
Depression is defined by the DSM-5 as depressed mood or loss of interest for more than two weeks, change in mood from the person’s baseline, and impairment in social, work, or educational life. There are many other symptoms that go along with depression including weight change and thought of hurting one's self. Depression can affect one's daily life any many ways. As one of the most common psychiatric disorder, along with anxiety, depression is a serious, sometimes life threatening, disorder that has been stigmatized in today's society. Depression has been estimated to effect 2.5% of all children in the United States. For many of these children, their first episode is brought on by a major traumatic event such as the death …show more content…
There were 68 participants ages ranged from 18 to 31 years old, 63% were female and middle was the average social class. Thirty-two of the participants had depression, thirteen had experienced one prior major depressive episode, ten had experienced two prior, and nine had experienced three or more. The participants were given the SCID-I modules and then completed the BDI-II. They were then given a second cortisol sample and then escorted to another room to perform a task given to them by the researcher. The participants that were given a high-stress condition were told that their performance would be judge by a panel of evaluators. The participant in the low-stress condition were told that their task would not be observed. All participants completed a mental arithmetic task after a speech task. Participants provided the third cortisol sample between the speech and arithmetic tasks and the fourth cortisol sample immediately following the arithmetic task. They then completed a questionnaire, rest and gave their fifth cortisol sample. After that they rested again for ten minutes then completed their sixth and final cortisol sample. Eight months after the baseline assessment, the researcher called and conducted a measure of life events interview using PES and then the LIFE interview to asses depressive symptoms …show more content…
With both studies, we see that the relationship between depressive symptoms and dependent life stress level decreases ass the amount of depression recurrences increases. The researcher found that adolescents with two or more major depressive episodes and three or more for young adults exhibited the stress generation effect. An important thing to note is that the stress generation effect was observed in both those who had a history of depressive episodes and those who had no prior history of depressive episodes. Because of this we may be able to speculate even subclinical depressive symptoms may contribute to dependent stressors. Researchers found that adolescents depressive symptoms were related more strongly to dependent stress levels. They also found that in adolescents and adults there was a high ability to predict increase in depressive symptoms to independent stress levels. Overall this study show that early in the onset of depression people tend to have an increase in dependent life stressors. Some limitation of both studies included the use of objective interview-based stress measure. It could have also used a larger sample size and a longer follow-up time period allowing the researchers to treat prior major depressive episodes as a time-varying predictor. Neither of these studies also address the