title: The relationship of life adversity, social support, and coping to hospitalization with major depression.
abstract: We evaluated the relationship between life events, social support, coping, and depression in 27 male inpatients meeting the requirements for Research Diagnostic Criteria major depressive disorder and in 35 age- and sex-matched nonpatients. Overall, the hospitalized depressed patients reported significantly more events and difficulties than did the controls, but this difference in statistical significance disappeared after excluding from analysis "non-independent" happenings which could have been brought on by depression. More hospitalized depressed patients (23 of 27, or 85%) than controls (8 of 35, or 22.9%) experienced markedly threatening events and difficulties ("marked adversities") in the 6 months before their interview. The depressed group also reported having significantly fewer social supports, being less satisfied with the emotional component of this support, and using more emotion-focused coping than the controls. A discriminant analysis predicted depressive status from a combination of marked adversities, reduced number of social supports, and greater use of emotion-focused coping. The results indicate that the relationship of life events to depression is complex. The excess number of events might be partly a product of dysfunctional behavior that "produces" depression-related events which might, in turn, exacerbate depression; simultaneously, patients are more likely to experience highly adverse events which might precipitate the depression in the first place. Reduced social supports and the use of emotion-focused coping appear to also be associated with hospitalization for major depression.
authors.affiliation: Psychiatry Service, Veterans Affairs Medical Center, San Diego, California 92161.
authors.forename: M E
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: McNaughton
authors.forename: T L
authors.initials: TL
authors.lastname: Patterson
authors.forename: M R
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Irwin
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Grant
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000328:Adult; D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D006760:Hospitalization; D006801:Humans; D008016:Life Change Events; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010555:Personality Inventory; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D012944:Social Support