This study evaluates a pathway for depressive
risk that integrates cognitive diathesis-stress and stressgeneration
theories, following Hankin and Abramson’s
(2001, Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology,
31(4), 491-504) elaborated cognitive-diathesis transactional
stress model. In this model, young adolescents with
initial depressive symptoms were hypothesised to experience
later stressors that were at least partly dependent on
their behaviour. The interaction of cognitive vulnerability, a
tendency to make depressogenic attributions and to ruminate,
with these dependent stressors was then hypothesised
to predict depressive symptoms after 6 months. This model
was supported in a sample of 756 young adolescents, with
cognitive style and dependent stressors partly mediating the
relationship between initial and subsequent depressive
symptoms. Cognitive vulnerability was also linked with
an increased likelihood of dependent stressors. |