Cognitive, life stress, and interpersonal approaches to a developmental psychopathology model of depression

Abstract One pathway to depression in children and adults is hypothesized to result from complex transactions among cognitive, stress, and interpersonal variables. Cognitive vulnerability includes not only appraisals of events and circumstances that emphasize personal unworthiness and incompetence, but also underlying beliefs and “working models” of the self and others. Such cognitions arise in part in the context of maladaptive attachment relations with the parents and may be reinforced by interpersonal incompetencies and difficulties in peer, family, and social relationships. Stressful conditions in early life and throughout development may undermine or erode the development of effective coping competencies. Moreover, maladaptive cognitions about the self and others, and ineffective coping competencies, may contribute to the occurrence of stressful events and circumstances —and these in turn may trigger depressive reactions. For many depressed people with chronic or recurrent depression, therefore, developmental processes play critical roles in the origin and continuation of the disorder.