https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0853-6187
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ABSTRACT
Previous research has found that insecure attachment is associated with depression. In the present study, we use an accelerated longitudinal cohort design to examine how the association between attachment and depression develops during childhood and adolescence. Specifically, 690 children from 3 distinct cohorts (grades 3, 6, and 9) completed self-report measures of attachment and depressive symptoms 3 times over 3 years. Growth curve analyses indicated that attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance were uniquely related to depressive symptoms. Higher levels of attachment anxiety and avoidance predicted higher levels of depressive symptoms over time. Additionally, changes in attachment security were associated with changes in depressive symptoms. The analyses suggest that insecure attachment and depressive symptoms co-vary and that these dynamics are evident in childhood and adolescence.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank all the parents and children that participated in the Gene-Environment-Mood (GEM) project. We would also like to thank the National Institute of Mental Health for providing funding for the GEM project and making our work possible.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. Our pre-registration includes another research question that we were unable to address. This question involves examining time-lagged associations between the residuals of interest. Modeling time-lagged associations requires the inclusion of autoregressive paths. However, inclusion of autoregressive paths prevented the univariate models from converging. Thus, we removed autoregressive paths from all analyses and, consequently, were unable to answer our third research question.