The effects of attributional style and life events on depression and anxiety in adolescence

Research on depression in adolescence is very limited. Contradictions exist concerning the existence and incidence of clinical depression in an adolescent population. Findings from adult literature have provided a useful starting point for understanding this disorder in adolescents. Two variables which have been implicated in the maintenance of adult depression are attributional style and stressful life events. Depressed adults have been found to make more global, stable, and internal attributions for failure and more specific, unstable, and external attributions for success than do nondepressed adults, and depressive symptoms are most likely to ensue when bad events occur and are interpreted in terms of global, stable, and internal causes.;The present longitudinal study was designed to assess the effects of life events on depression and anxiety as a function of attributional style in a young adolescent population. Measures of depression, anxiety, attributional style, and life events were administered on two occasions with four weeks between testing sessions. The sample consisted of seventh and eighth graders from three school districts in Central Pennsylvania.;Analysis of the data supported the findings from adult research, revealing that adolescents with high levels of stressful life events showed a significantly higher depression than students reporting lower levels of life events or lower levels of negative attributional style. Stressful life events appeared to have a powerful, independent effect on depression, whereas negative attributional style did not; however, without high levels of negative attributional style, high levels of depression were not maintained across time of measurement. Higher levels of negative life events were associated with higher levels of anxiety among students high in anxiety initially and high in negative attributional style. Among students who were low in anxiety initially and high in negative attributional style, high life events produced lowered anxiety. In contrast, the subjects initially low in anxiety who were high in negative attributional style and who experienced low or moderate levels of life events showed substantial increases in anxiety.