Abstract
Although decades of research have documented that children whose parents have a history of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) are at a higher risk of developing depression themselves, not all of these children go on to develop depression themselves, thus highlighting the need to understand potential moderators of risk. The current study examined whether child emotion regulation, specifically, the use of cognitive reappraisal and suppression, moderated the link between parent and child depression. We recruited 458 parents and their children between the ages of 7–11 from the community. The majority of children were Caucasian (74.2%) and approximately half were girls (46.1%). Among children with a parent history of MDD, those who reported using cognitive reappraisal more frequently were less likely to have a history of depressive diagnoses themselves and had higher current levels of positive affect. Although children’s use of suppression was not associated with their levels of depressive symptoms among children with a parent history of MDD, higher levels of suppression were related to higher levels of depressive symptoms among children with no parent history of MDD. These findings suggest that, among children with a history of parent depression, children’s use of cognitive reappraisal may influence their own risk for developing depression and highlights the potential utility of early interventions that focus on improving the use of emotion regulation strategies like cognitive reappraisal among children of depressed parents.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Notes
Consistent with research diagnostic criteria (Spitzer et al. 1978), as well as past research studies of youth focusing on diagnoses of minor depression (e.g., Burkhouse et al. 2015), criteria for minor depression included the presence of a criterion A symptom plus at least one symptom from criterion B, which lasted for at least 2 weeks and resulted in clinically significant impairment. Notably, all of the results in this study were maintained when we excluded children with minor depression and focused solely on diagnoses of MDD.
References
Beck, A., Steer, R., & Brown, G. (1996). Manual for the Beck depression inventory-II. San Antonio: Psychological Corporation.
Burkhouse, K. L., Siegle, G. J., Woody, M. L., Kudinova, A. Y., & Gibb, B. E. (2015). Pupillary reactivity to sad stimuli as a biomarker of depression risk: evidence from a prospective study of children. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 124, 498–506.
Chorpita, B. F., Daleiden, E. L., Moffitt, C., Yim, L., & Umemoto, L. A. (2000). Assessment of tripartite factors of emotion in children and adolescents I: structural validity and normative data of an affect and arousal scale. Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment, 22, 141–160.
Cyranowski, J. M., Frank, E., Young, E., & Shear, M. K. (2000). Adolescent onset of the gender difference in lifetime rates of major depression: a theoretical model. Archives of General Psychiatry, 57, 21–27.
Daleiden, E., Chorpita, B. F., & Lu, W. (2000). Assessment of tripartite factors of emotion in children and adolescents II: concurrent validity of the affect and arousal scales for children. Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment, 22, 161–182.
Feng, X., Shaw, D. S., Kovacs, M., Lane, T., O’Rourke, F. E., & Alarcon, J. H. (2007). Emotion regulation in preschoolers: the roles of behavioral inhibition, maternal affective behavior, and maternal depression. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 49, 132–141.
First, M., Spitzer, R., Gibbon, M., & Williams, J. (2002). Structured clinical interview for DSM-IV-TR axis I disorders, research version, non-patient edition. (SCID-I/NP). New York: Biometrics Research, New York State Psychiatric Institute.
Fleisher, W. P., & Katz, L. Y. (2001). Early onset major depressive disorder. Paediatrics & Child Health, 6, 444–448.
Garnefski, N., & Kraaij, V. (2006). Relationships between cognitive emotion regulation strategies and depressive symptoms: a comparative study of five specific samples. Personality and Individual Differences, 40, 1659–1669.
Garnefski, N., Teerds, J., Kraaij, V., Legerstee, J., & van den Kommer, T. (2004). Cognitive emotion regulation strategies and depressive symptoms: Differences between males and females. Personality and Individual Differences, 36, 267–276.
Goodman, S. H. (2007). Depression in mothers. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 3, 107–135. doi:10.1146/annurev.clinpsy.3.022806.091401.
Goodman, S. H., Rouse, M. H., Connell, A. M., Robbins Broth, M., Hall, C. M., & Heyward, D. (2011). Maternal depression and child psychopathology: a meta-analytic review. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 17, 1–27.
Gross, J. J. (1998). Antecedent- and response-focused emotion regulation: divergent consequences for experience, expression, and physiology. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 224–237.
Gross, J. J., & John, P. (2003). Individual differences in two emotion regulation processes: implications for affect, relationships, and well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 348–362.
Gross, J. J., & Levenson, R. W. (1993). Emotional suppression: physiology, self-report, and expressive behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64, 970–986.
Gullone, E., & Taffe, J. (2012). The emotion regulation questionnaire for children and adolescents (ERQ-CA): a psychometric evaluation. Psychological Assessment, 24, 409–417.
Hammen, C., & Brennan, P. A. (2002). Interpersonal dysfunction in depressed women: impairments independent of depressive symptoms. Journal of Affective Disorders, 72(2), 145–156.
Hammen, C., Shih, J. H., & Brennan, P. A. (2004). Intergenerational transmission of depression: test of an interpersonal stress model in a community sample. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 72(3), 511–522.
Kaufman, J., Birmaher, B., Brent, D., Rao, U., Flynn, C., Moreci, P., et al. (1997). Schedule for affective disorders and schizophrenia for school-age children-present and lifetime version (K-SADS-PL): initial reliability and validity data. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 36, 980–988.
Kessler, R. C., Davis, C. G., & Kendler, K. S. (1997). Childhood adversity and adult psychiatric disorder in the US National Comorbidity Survey. Psychological Medicine, 27(5), 1101–1119.
Kessler, R. C., Zhao, S., Blazer, D. G., & Swartz, M. (2003). Prevalence, correlates, and course of minor depression and major depression in the national comorbidity survey. Journal of Affective Disorders, 45, 19–30.
Kopp, S., & Neufeld, S. (2003). Emotional development during infancy. In R. J. Davidson, K. Scherer, & H. Goldsmith (Eds.), Handbook of affective sciences (pp. 347–374). London: Oxford University Press.
Kovacs, M. (1985). The Children’s depression, inventory (CDI). Psychopharmacology Bulletin, 21, 995–998.
Kraemer, H. C., Measelle, J. R., Ablow, J. C., Essex, M. J., Boyce, W. T., & Kupfer, D. J. (2003). A new approach to integrating data from multiple informants in psychiatric assessment and research: mixing and matching contexts and perspectives. American Journal of Psychiatry, 160, 1566–1577.
Kühn, S., Gallinat, J., & Brass, M. (2011). “Keep calm and carry on”: structural correlates of expressive suppression of emotions. PloS One, 6, e16569.
Langrock, A. M., Compas, B. E., Keller, G., Merchant, M. J., & Copeland, M. E. (2002). Coping with the stress of parental depression: parents’ reports of children’s coping, emotional, and behavioral problems. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 31, 312–324.
Lazarus, R. S., & Alfert, E. (1964). Short-circuiting of threat by experimentally altering cognitive appraisal. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 69, 195–205.
Lewinsohn, P., Clarke, G., Seeley, J., & Rohde, P. (1994). Major depression in community adolescents: age at onset, episode duration, and time to recurrence. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 33, 809–818.
Little, R. J. A., & Rubin, D. B. (2002). Statistical analysis with missing data. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Inc..
Luby, J. L. (2009). Early childhood depression. The American Journal of Psychiatry, 166, 974–979.
Moon, T. K. (1996). The expectation-maximization algorithm. IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, 13, 47–60.
Naicker, K., Galambos, N. L., Zeng, Y., Senthilselvan, A., & Colman, I. (2013). Social, demographic, and health outcomes in the 10 years following adolescent depression. The Journal of Adolescent Health, 52, 533–538.
Ohira, H., Nomura, M., Ichikawa, N., Isowa, T., Iidaka, T., Sato, A., et al. (2006). Association of neural and physiological responses during voluntary emotion suppression. NeuroImage, 29, 721–733.
Santos, V., Paes, F., Pereira, V., Arias-Carrión, O., Silva, A. C., Carta, M. G., et al. (2013). The role of positive emotion and contributions of positive psychology in depression treatment: systematic review. Clinical Practice and Epidemiology in Mental Health, 9, 221–237.
Schafer, J. L., & Graham, J. W. (2002). Missing data: our view of the state of the art. Psychological Methods, 7, 147–177.
Silk, J. S., Shaw, D. S., Forbes, E. E., Lane, T. L., & Kovacs, M. (2006). Maternal depression and child internalizing: the moderating role of child emotion regulation. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 35, 116–126.
Smucker, M. R., Craighead, W. E., Craighead, L. W., & Green, B. J. (1986). Normative and reliability data for the Children’s depression inventory. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 14, 25–39.
Spitzer, R. L., Endicott, J., & Robins, E. (1978). Research diagnostic criteria: rationale and reliability. Archives of General Psychiatry, 35, 773–782.
Sullivan, P. F., Neale, M. C., & Kendler, K. S. (2000). Genetic epidemiology of major depression: review and meta-analysis. American Journal of Psychiatry, 157, 1552–1562.
Thompson, R. A. (2008). Emotion regulation: a theme in search of definition. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 59, 25–52.
Tracy, M., Zimmerman, F. J., Galea, S., McCauley, E., & Stoep, A. V. (2008). What explains the relation between family poverty and childhood depressive symptoms? Journal of Psychiatric Research, 42, 1163–1175.
WHO (2016). Retrieved 2016, from www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs369/en/
Zisook, S., Lesser, I., Stewart, J. W., Wisniewski, S. R., Balasubramani, G. K., Fava, M., et al. (2007). Effect of age at onset on the course of major depressive disorder. American Journal of Psychiatry, 164, 1539–1546.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Max Owens, Cope Feurer, Eric Funk, Effua Sosoo, Sydney Meadows, Michael Van Wie, Devra Alper, Katie L. Burkhause, Mary L. Woody, Aliona Tsypes, Nathan Hall, Kiera James, and Aholibama Lopez for their help in conducting assessments for this project. This project was supported by National Institute of Mental Health grant MH098060 awarded to B.E. Gibb.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of Interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Ethical Approval
All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
Informed Consent
Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Kudinova, A.Y., James, K. & Gibb, B.E. Cognitive Reappraisal and Depression in Children with a Parent History of Depression. J Abnorm Child Psychol 46, 849–856 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-017-0333-2
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-017-0333-2