Childhood Maltreatment and Stress Sensitization in Depression: Moderation by Age Group and Depression History
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Major Depressive Disorder is a highly prevalent and recurrent psychological disorder, affecting approximately 12% of Canadians across their lifetime and 5% each year.Studies have shown that a history of childhood maltreatment increases risk for depression by conferring a vulnerability to the effects of stressful life events (i.e., stress sensitization).The goal of the current investigation was to examine whether the relation between childhood maltreatment and stress sensitization in depression is influenced by age group and depression history.This study also sought to investigate whether specific characteristics of the maltreatment experience differentially relate to stress sensitization.Two hundred and seven clinically depressed adolescents (i.e., 12 -17 years; n = 59) and adults (i.e., 18 -64 years; n = 148) participated in this study.Childhood accounts of maltreatment were assessed using the Childhood Experience of Care and Abuse Scale, and stressful life events experienced 3-months prior to depression onset were assessed using the Life Events and Difficulties Schedule.Results revealed that individuals with a history of severe maltreatment reported lower severity levels of stressful life events prior to depression onset than did those without such a history, but only among adolescents.Further, this relation was specific to independent stressors (i.e., those totally or nearly totally independent of the behaviour of the individual) and not dependent stressors (i.e., those at least partly due to the individual's behaviour), and was specific to emotional abuse.Results also suggested that it is the experience of severe maltreatment, rather than particular aspects of it, that sensitizes individuals to the effects of stress.In summary, this study provides support for the relation of childhood maltreatment to stress sensitization in adolescents.Maltreated adolescents may be especially vulnerable to the depressogenic effects of stress, perhaps because their maltreatment experience is more proximal to iii depression onset.In contrast, other relevant processes (e.g., cognitive schema and neurobiological consolidation, chronic stress) may drive stress sensitization in adulthood; however, further research is required to investigate such mechanisms.Limitations and clinical implications are discussed.Harkness.Over the past two years, she has provided me with endless guidance and support.I am very grateful for the opportunity to learn from her and look forward to working together in the years to come.I would also like to thank my committee members, Dr. Ron Holden and Dr. Chris Bowie, for their contributions.Their comments and suggestions offered novel insight and helped to improve the final product.I am grateful to my fellow labmates, Jeremy Stewart and Dustin Washburn, who have provided so much inspiration and support over the past two years.Whether I needed someone to lean on or someone to celebrate with, they were always available and I cherish our friendship.I would also like to acknowledge the many exceptional and dedicated members of the Mood Research Lab.These individuals have contributed countless hours of data collection, entry, and emotional support, and this project would not have been possible without their help.I owe many thanks to my family and friends in Kelowna, Kingston, and everywhere in between.I am especially grateful for the continued support of those who have been there through the ups and downs of my university career.My parents, Dan and Mary, and my big sis, Danielle, have shown me unconditional love and support, even during my most neurotic moments.Dr. Jan Cioe has inspired me to believe in my abilities and take pride in my accomplishments, and I am
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".