title: Child-, adolescent- and young adult-onset depressions: differential risk factors in development?
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Previous research reported that childhood adversity predicts juvenile- onset but not adult-onset depression, but studies confounded potentially genuine differences in adversity with differences in the recency with which adversity was experienced. The current study paper took into account the recency of risk when testing for differences among child-, adolescent- and young adult-onset depressions.
  
  
  METHODS
  Up to nine waves of data were used per subject from two cohorts of the Great Smoky Mountains Study (GSMS; n=1004), covering children in the community aged 9-16, 19 and 21 years. Youth and one of their parents were interviewed using the Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Assessment (CAPA) between ages 9 and 16; these same youth were interviewed using the Young Adult Psychiatric Assessment (YAPA) at ages 19 and 21. The most common psychosocial risk factors for depression were assessed: poverty, life events, parental psychopathology, maltreatment, and family dysfunction.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Consistent with previous research, most childhood psychosocial risk factors were more strongly associated with child-onset than with adolescent-/adult-onset depression. When potentially genuine risk differences among the depression-onset groups were disentangled from differences due to the recency of risk, child- and young adult-onset depression were no longer different from one another. Adolescent-onset depression was associated with few psychosocial risk factors.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  There were no differences in putative risk factors between child- and young adult-onset depression when the recency of risk was taken into account. Adolescent-onset depression was associated with few psychosocial risk factors. It is possible that some adolescent-onset depression cases differ in terms of risk from child- and young adult-onset depression.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, NC 27402, USA. lilly_shanahan@uncg.edu
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Shanahan
authors.forename: W E
authors.initials: WE
authors.lastname: Copeland
authors.forename: E J
authors.initials: EJ
authors.lastname: Costello
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Angold
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D017668:Age of Onset; D002648:Child; D002649:Child Abuse / Q000523:psychology; D016241:Child of Impaired Parents / Q000523:psychology; D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006803:Human Development; D006801:Humans; D008016:Life Change Events; D016015:Logistic Models; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D009657:North Carolina / Q000453:epidemiology; D011203:Poverty; D011610:Psychosocial Deprivation; D012307:Risk Factors; D055815:Young Adult