title: Social factors and the psychobiology of depression: relations between life stress and rapid eye movement sleep latency.
abstract: We examined psychosocial factors (i.e., life stress) and biological factors (i.e., REM sleep latency) that are hypothesized to be of complementary importance for defining depressive subtypes in a sample of 61 nonpsychotic, endogenous major depressives. Subjects were evaluated on several diagnostic scales for life stress, on electroencephalographic sleep data, and on 2 symptom measures for depression. As predicted, persons with severe stress that occurred shortly before depression onset had essentially normal REM latency values; patients without such stress had reduced REM latency values. Both stress and REM latency were also associated with greater severity of self-reported depressive symptoms. Alternative explanations of these findings are discussed, with particular emphasis on different roles of pre-onset and post-onset stressors.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Oregon, Eugene 97403-1227.
authors.forename: S M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Monroe
authors.forename: M E
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: Thase
authors.forename: A D
authors.initials: AD
authors.lastname: Simons
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000328:Adult; D001143:Arousal; D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008016:Life Change Events; D008297:Male; D010555:Personality Inventory; D011930:Reaction Time; D012895:Sleep, REM