Stress sensitivity in women with a history of recurrent versus first-episode major depression.

Approximately 50 % of people who recover from an initial episode of major depressive disorder (MDD) experience a recurrence, and the risk for recurrence increases with each additional episode. Consistent with the stress sensitization model, there is evidence that whereas initial MDD onsets are often preceded by major negative life events, recurrences are often triggered by more minor events. However, it is unclear whether this is due to increased frequency of minor life events, increased reactivity to these events, or both.

Editorial: Evidence for Transactional Relations Between Reward Processing and Depressive Symptoms in Adolescence.

Reward processing deficits play a clear role in depression and depression risk. For example, more than a decade of research has shown that individual differences in initial reward responsiveness, indexed by the reward positivity (RewP) event-related potential (ERP) component, are associated with current depression and future depression risk. Mackin and colleagues' study builds on this previous literature by asking 2 key questions: (1) Is the magnitude of the impact of RewP on prospective changes in depressive symptoms similar during late childhood and adolescence? and (2) Are prospective links between RewP and depressive symptoms transactional, with depressive symptoms also predicting future change in RewP during this developmental window? These questions are important, because this is a time period during which rates of depression increase dramatically and when there are normative changes in reward processing.

Prospective associations between social anxiety and depression in youth: The moderating role of maternal major depressive disorder.

Introduction: Although social anxiety symptoms and exposure to maternal major depressive disorder (MDD) have each been conceptualized as key contributors to the development of depression symptoms in youth, these risk factors have not been integrated into a single model of risk. The current study evaluated a two-hit model of risk to determine whether the impact of social anxiety on prospective changes in youth depressive symptoms is stronger among youth exposed to maternal MDD than among those of never-depressed mothers.

Methods: Participants were youth (aged 8-14 at baseline, 50.

Brief report: preliminary evidence that co-rumination fosters adolescents' depression risk by increasing rumination.

Mounting research shows that the tendency to co-ruminate with peers regarding ongoing problems increases adolescents' depression risk; however, the means by which this interpersonal process fosters risk has not been identified. This said, theorists have proposed that co-rumination increases depression risk, in part, by increasing one's tendency to ruminate when alone. We tested this hypothesis in a study of 201 high-school freshmen who completed two assessments, six months apart.