Project Summary

John R.Z. Abela, Ph.D. (Young Investigator 2000) of McGill University, is testing the “hopelessness theory of depression” in a sample of 150 high risk children aged 6-14. The procedure will include a baseline assessment of depressive symptoms, level of intellectual development, hopelessness, and three cognitive styles hypothesized to be vulnerability factors for depression. Subjects will be re-assessed four times, once every six months, during which depressive symptoms, hopelessness, and the occurrence of negative events will be assessed. At each assessment, children will be classified according to the level of cognitive development. Among the hypotheses to be tested, Dr. Abela will examine whether children who think in terms of general ideas and abstract concepts (“formal operational”), and who have pessimistic cognitive styles, will show increases in depressive symptoms following negative events; and he will investigate whether children who understand the world in terms of reason and whose thinking is tied to concrete reality (“concrete operational”) will show increases in depressive symptoms only following negative events. Finally, he will assess whether “formal operational” children with depressogenic inferential styles will show increases in depression following negative events because they develop hopelessness.

Program Area: MOOD DISORDERS\Depression (Unipolar)

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