TY  - JOUR
A1  - Meiser, Susanne
A1  - Esser, Günter
T1  - Interpersonal Stress Generation-A Girl Problem?
BT  - The Role of Depressive Symptoms, Dysfunctional Attitudes, and Gender in Early Adolescent Stress Generation
JF  - Journal of early adolescence
N2  - To provide further insight into stress generation patterns in boys and girls around puberty, this study investigated longitudinal reciprocal relations between depressive symptoms, dysfunctional attitudes, and stress generation, the process by which individuals contribute to the occurrence of stress in interpersonal contexts (e.g., problematic social interactions) or in noninterpersonal contexts (e.g., achievement problems). A community sample of N = 924 German children and early adolescents (51.8% male) completed depressive symptoms and dysfunctional attitudes measures at T1 and again 20 months later (T2). Stressful life events were reported at T2. Dysfunctional attitudes were unrelated to stress generation. Interpersonal, but not noninterpersonal, dependent stress partially mediated the relationship between initial and later depressive symptoms, with girls being more likely to generate interpersonal stress in response to depressive symptoms. Findings underscore the role of interpersonal stress generation in the early development of depressive symptomatology, and in the gender difference in depression prevalence emerging around puberty.
KW  - stress generation
KW  - depression
KW  - dysfunctional attitudes
KW  - children and adolescents
KW  - gender differences
Y1  - 2017
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1177/0272431617725197
SN  - 0272-4316
SN  - 1552-5449
VL  - 39
IS  - 1
SP  - 41
EP  - 66
PB  - Sage Publ.
CY  - Thousand Oaks
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Meiser, Susanne
A1  - Esser, Günter
T1  - How dysfunctional are dysfunctional attitudes?
BT  - a threshold model of dysfunctional attitudes and depressive symptoms in children and adolescents
JF  - Cognitive Therapy and Research
N2  - In order to clarify further the role of Beck’s vulnerability-stress model in the early development of depression, this longitudinal study tested a threshold model of dysfunctional attitudes in children and adolescents. An initially asymptomatic sample of 889 youths aged 9–18 years completed measures of dysfunctional attitudes and depressive symptoms. Twenty months later, participants reported stressful life events and current depressive symptoms. Results support a threshold view of cognitive vulnerability as only dysfunctional attitudes above a certain threshold significantly interacted with life events to predict depressive symptoms. Thus, findings suggest that dysfunctional attitudes must exceed a certain threshold to confer vulnerability to depressive symptomatology in youth. The term “dysfunctional” might therefore only apply to higher levels of the “dysfunctional attitudes” proposed by A. T. Beck. Results also indicate that studies using non-clinical samples may systematically underestimate the effect of dysfunctional attitudes when relying on conventional linear methods.
KW  - Cognitive vulnerability
KW  - Depression
KW  - Children
KW  - Adolescents
KW  - Dysfunctional attitudes
KW  - Threshold models
Y1  - 2017
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-017-9842-0
SN  - 0147-5916
SN  - 1573-2819
VL  - 41
SP  - 730
EP  - 744
PB  - Springer
CY  - New York
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Meiser, Susanne
A1  - Zietlow, Anna-Lena
A1  - Reck, Corinna
A1  - Träuble, Birgit
T1  - The impact of postpartum depression and anxiety disorders on children's processing of facial emotional expressions at pre-school age
JF  - ARCHIVES OF WOMENS MENTAL HEALTH
N2  - To enhance understanding of impaired socio-emotional development in children of postpartum depressed or anxious mothers, this longitudinal study addressed the question of whether maternal postpartum depression and anxiety disorders result in deficits in children's processing of facial emotional expressions (FEEs) at pre-school age. Thirty-two mothers who had fulfilled Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV (DSM-IV) criteria for postpartum depression and/or anxiety disorder and their pre-school aged children were tested for FEE processing abilities and compared to a healthy control group (n = 29). Child assessments included separate tasks for emotion recognition and emotion labelling. Mothers completed an emotion recognition test as well as the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I Disorders I (SCID-I). Children of postpartum depressed and/or anxious mothers performed significantly worse than control children at labelling, but not at recognizing facial expressions of basic emotions. Emotion labelling at pre-school age was predicted by child age and maternal postpartum mental health, but neither current maternal mental health nor current maternal emotion recognition was associated with child FEE processing. Results point to a specific importance of early social experiences for the development of FEE labelling skills. However, further studies involving sensitive measures of emotion recognition are needed to determine if there might also exist subtle effects on FEE recognition.
KW  - Postpartum depression
KW  - Postpartum anxiety disorders
KW  - Emotion recognition
KW  - Emotion labelling
KW  - Pre-school children
Y1  - 2015
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1007/s00737-015-0519-y
SN  - 1434-1816
SN  - 1435-1102
VL  - 18
IS  - 5
SP  - 707
EP  - 716
PB  - Springer
CY  - Wien
ER  -