Mood Repair and Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia in Children of Depressed Mothers Público

Abstract

Depression often runs in families, and children of depressed mothers face an especially high risk for developing the disorder. Among children of mothers with depression, those whose mothers have chronic and severe depression are at greater risk for developing the disorder than those whose mothers have mild and infrequent depression. Children’s difficulties with regulating negative emotions is a likely contributor to this heightened risk. Past studies suggest that familial risk for depression is linked to difficulties with emotion regulation on a strategic level, as indexed by mood repair, and a physiological level, as indexed by respiratory sinus arrhythmia. However, these relationships are relatively unexplored among children in middle childhood and children of depressed mothers. As first depressive episode onset often occurs in adolescence, studies on high-risk children’s emotion regulation in middle childhood may inform early intervention efforts aimed at preventing or mitigating depression in youths. The current study sought to clarify these relationships by examining differences in mood repair and respiratory sinus arrhythmia among a sample of 131 children ages 8 to 10 with and without a maternal history of depression. We predicted that children of mothers with a history of depression would demonstrate attenuated mood repair and respiratory sinus arrhythmia compared to children of mothers without a history of depression. Furthermore, we examined the extent to which duration of maternal depressive episodes was associated with children’s mood repair and respiratory sinus arrhythmia. Analyses revealed no significant group differences regarding mood repair or respiratory sinus arrhythmia scores, and no significant associations between mood repair and respiratory sinus arrhythmia scores. Duration of maternal depressive episodes was not significantly associated with either mood repair or respiratory sinus arrhythmia. The developmental and methodological implications of these results are discussed along with directions for future research. 

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

I. Introduction………………………………………………………………….. 1

II. Method………………………………………………………………………… 6

III. Results……………………………………………………………………….. 11

IV. Discussion.…………………………………………..…………………….... 15

V. References…………………………………………...……………………….. 22

VI. Tables …………………………………………………………………..…... 27

VII. Appendix ……………………………………………………………..…… 39

 

List of Tables

 

Table 1. Associations between History of Maternal Depression and Dichotomous Sociodemographic Variables

 

Table 2. Differences in Continuous Sociodemographic Characteristics between Children of Depressed Mothers and Children of Mothers without a Lifetime History of Depression 

 

Table 3. Mean Scores, Standard Deviations, t-tests, and Effect Sizes for the Differences between Dichotomous Sociodemographic Groups on Adaptive Feelings and Me, Child Version Scores 

 

Table 4. Correlations between Continuous Sociodemographic Variables, FAM-C, RSA, and Duration of Maternal Depressive Episodes for the Sample as a Whole 

 

Table 5. Mean Scores, Standard Deviations, t-tests, and Effect Sizes for the Differences between Dichotomous Sociodemographic Groups on Maladaptive Feelings and Me, Child Version Scores 

 

Table 6. Mean Scores, Standard Deviations, t-tests, and Effect Sizes for the Differences between Dichotomous Sociodemographic Groups on Baseline Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia Scores 

 

Table 7. Mean Scores, Standard Deviations, t-tests, and Effect Sizes for the Differences between Dichotomous Sociodemographic Groups on Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia Reactivity Scores 

 

Table 8. Mean Scores, Standard Deviations, Mann-Whitney’s U Statistics, and Effect Sizes for the Differences between Sociodemographic Groups on Duration of Maternal Depressive Episodes 

 

Table 9. Differences between Groups on Feelings and Me, Child Version (FAM-C) and Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia (RSA) Scores 

 

Table 10. Analysis of Covariance for Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia Reactivity between Maternal Depression Groups, with Baseline Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia as a Covariate

 

Table 11. Correlations between Feelings and Me, Child Version, Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia, and Duration of Maternal Depressive Episodes for Children of Mothers with and without a History of Depression

 

Table 12. Predicting Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia Reactivity Scores from Baseline Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia and Duration of Maternal Depressive Episodes

About this Honors Thesis

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School	Emory College
Department	Psychology
Subfield / Discipline	Clinical Psychology
Degree	B.A.
Submission	Honors Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	Psychology, Physiological Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Clinical
Palavra-chave	Mood Repair Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia Emotion Regulation Mothers Middle Childhood Depression Developmental Psychopathology
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Goodman, Sherryl H., Emory University
Committee Members	Cheong, Yuk Fai, Emory University Bhasin, Paul, Emory University

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