Overgeneral autobiographical memory and chronic interpersonal stress as predictors of the course of depression in adolescents

Abstract

This study investigated whether overgeneral autobiographical memory (OGM) predicts the course of depression in adolescents. As part of a larger longitudinal study of risk for emotional disorders, 55 adolescents with a past history of major depressive disorder or minor depressive disorder completed the Autobiographical Memory Test. Fewer specific memories predicted the subsequent onset of a major depressive episode (MDE) over a 16-month follow-up period, even when covarying baseline depressive symptoms. This main effect was qualified by an interaction between specific memories and chronic interpersonal stress: Fewer specific memories predicted greater risk of MDE onset over follow-up at high (but not low) levels of chronic interpersonal stress. Thus, our findings suggest that OGM, in interaction with chronic interpersonal stress, predicts the course of depression among adolescents, and highlight the importance of measuring interpersonal stress in OGM research.

Keywords:

• Autobiographical memory
• Memory specificity
• Depression
• Stress
• Overgeneral autobiographical memory

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the National Institutes of Health for supporting our research (Grant# R01MH065652 to REZ and SM, and R01MH065651 to MGC). JWG is now at the Department of Medical Social Sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL. KNR is now at the Edith Nourse Rogers Memorial VA Hospital, Bedford, MA.

We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of the many students who helped with data collection.

Notes

¹We used proportion agreement to measure inter-rater reliability given the low base rate of clinically significant mDD at Time 1. We do not report this statistic for Time 3 because there were no clinically significant cases of mDD in the cases randomly selected for reliability.

²Like some other investigators (e.g., Kleim & Ehlers, 2008), we only examined specific memories. Participants retrieved few categoric memories; the proportion of categoric memories ranged from 0 to 0.31 (M=0.03, SD=0.07). The range for the proportion of specific memories was much less restricted (range = 0.53–1.00).

³The step for the interaction of the proportion of specific memories and chronic interpersonal stress remained significant when we only included the 41 individuals in remission from MDD at Time 2 (OR = 0.15, p=.02). However, the steps for IDD and the proportion of specific memories were no longer significant (OR = 1.62, p=.26 for IDD; OR = 0.75, p=.56 for the proportion of specific memories).