Depression, violence and cortisol awakening response: a 3-year longitudinal study in adolescents.
Psychol Med
; 49(6): 997-1004, 2019 04.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-30012227
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND:
Despite evidence of links between depression and violent outcomes, potential moderators of this association remain unknown. The current study tested whether a biological marker, cortisol, moderated this association in a longitudinal sample of adolescents.METHODS:
Participants were 358 Dutch adolescents (205 boys) with a mean age of 15 years at the first measurement. Depressive symptoms, the cortisol awakening response (CAR) and violent outcomes were measured annually across 3 years. The CAR was assessed by twomeasures:
waking cortisol activity (CAR area under the curve ground) and waking cortisol reactivity (CAR area under the curve increase). Within-individual regression models were adopted to test the interaction effects between depressive symptoms and CAR on violent outcomes, which accounted for all time-invariant factors such as genetic factors and early environments. We additionally adjusted for time-varying factors including alcohol drinking, substance use and stressful life events.RESULTS:
In this community sample, 24% of adolescents perpetrated violent behaviours over 3 years. We found that CAR moderated the effects of depressive symptoms on adolescent violent outcomes (ßs ranged from -0.12 to -0.28). In particular, when the CAR was low, depressive symptoms were positively associated with violent outcomes in within-individual models, whereas the associations were reversed when the CAR was high.CONCLUSIONS:
Our findings suggest that the CAR should be investigated further as a potential biological marker for violence in adolescents with high levels of depressive symptoms.Key words
Full text:
1
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Violence
/
Hydrocortisone
/
Depression
Type of study:
Observational_studies
/
Prognostic_studies
/
Risk_factors_studies
Limits:
Adolescent
/
Female
/
Humans
/
Male
Language:
En
Year:
2019
Type:
Article