Department of Psychology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel.
Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
J Abnorm Child Psychol. 2019 Aug;47(8):1391-1399. doi: 10.1007/s10802-019-00527-4.
Adverse life events have been causally linked to depression among youth at high risk for depression. But given that not all high-risk youth develop depression following adversity, individual differences in various processes, including physiological reactivity to stress, are likely to be at play. This longitudinal prospective study tested the hypothesis that, among high-risk youth exposed to adversities, extent of physiological reactivity to laboratory stress (indexed as respiratory sinus arrhythmia; RSA) would predict subsequent depressive symptoms. Subjects were youth at high (n = 80) and low (n = 74) familial risk for depression. At Time 1 (T1), RSA was assessed during a cognitive stress task. At Time 2 (T2) about 2 years later, parents reported on adversities experienced by their offspring during the interim. At T1 and T2, youth received a diagnostic evaluation, which included assessment of their depressive symptoms. The three-way interaction of group-X-adversities-X-RSA predicted T2 depressive symptoms (controlling for T1 depressive symptoms). This interaction was mostly driven by the moderating effect of RSA among high-risk youth, such that adversities predicted higher depressive symptoms for those who displayed greater RSA reactivity to stress. Among low-risk youth, an inverse marginal moderating effect of RSA was found, such that adversities tended to predict depressive symptoms for those who displayed blunted RSA reactivity to stress. Thus, high physiological stress reactivity appears to be an additional risk factor for depressive symptoms only among youth at elevated risk for such outcomes, and should be taken into consideration in efforts to prevent depression in these populations.
生活逆境与易患抑郁症的青年的抑郁之间存在因果关系。但是，鉴于并非所有高风险青年在经历逆境后都会发展为抑郁症，因此，各种过程（包括对压力的生理反应）中的个体差异可能会起作用。这项纵向前瞻性研究检验了这样一个假设，即在经历逆境的高风险青年中，对实验室压力的生理反应程度（以呼吸窦性心律失常（RSA）为指标）将预测随后的抑郁症状。研究对象为高（n=80）和低（n=74）家族性抑郁风险的青年。在第一时间（T1），在认知压力任务期间评估 RSA。大约 2 年后的第二时间（T2），父母报告了子女在间隔期内经历的逆境。在 T1 和 T2，青年接受了诊断评估，其中包括评估他们的抑郁症状。组-X-逆境-X-RSA 的三向交互作用预测了 T2 的抑郁症状（控制了 T1 的抑郁症状）。这种相互作用主要是由高危青年的 RSA 调节作用驱动的，即逆境对那些对压力的 RSA 反应性较高的人预测了更高的抑郁症状。在低危青年中，发现了 RSA 的反向边缘调节作用，即逆境倾向于预测那些对压力的 RSA 反应性迟钝的人出现抑郁症状。因此，高生理压力反应性似乎只是那些易患此类结果的青年发生抑郁症状的另一个危险因素，在这些人群中预防抑郁症时应考虑到这一点。
