title: Positive Affectivity is Dampened in Youths with Histories of Major Depression and Their Never-Depressed Adolescent Siblings.
abstract: While hedonic capacity is diminished during clinical depression, it is unclear whether that deficit constitutes a risk factor and/or persists after depression episodes remit. To examine these issues, adolescents with current/past major depression (probands; n=218), never depressed biological siblings of probands (n=207), and emotionally-well controls (n=183) were exposed to several positively valenced probes. Across baseline and hedonic probe conditions, controls consistently reported higher levels of positive affect than high-risk siblings, and siblings reported higher levels of positive affect than probands (remitted and depressed probands' reports were similar). Extent of positive affect across the protocol predicted adolescents' self-reports of social support network and parental reports of offspring's use of various adaptive mood repair responses in daily life. Attenuated hedonic responding among youths remitted from depression offers partial support for anhedonia as a trait, while its presence among never depressed high-risk siblings argues for anhedonia as a potential diathesis for clinical depression.
authors.affiliation: University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry, Pittsburgh, PA.
authors.forename: Maria
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kovacs
authors.affiliation: University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry, Pittsburgh, PA.
authors.forename: Lauren M
authors.initials: LM
authors.lastname: Bylsma
authors.affiliation: Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH.
authors.forename: Ilya
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Yaroslavsky
authors.affiliation: University of South Florida, Tampa, FL.
authors.forename: Jonathan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Rottenberg
authors.affiliation: University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Pittsburgh PA.
authors.forename: Charles J
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: George
authors.affiliation: Szeged University, Szeged, Hungary.
authors.forename: Enikő
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Kiss
authors.affiliation: Szeged University, Szeged, Hungary.
authors.forename: Kitti
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Halas
authors.affiliation: Szeged University, Szeged, Hungary.
authors.forename: István
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Benák
authors.affiliation: Szeged University, Szeged, Hungary.
authors.forename: Ildiko
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Baji
authors.affiliation: Szeged University, Szeged, Hungary.
authors.forename: Ágnes
authors.initials: Á
authors.lastname: Vetro
authors.affiliation: Szeged University, Szeged, Hungary.
authors.forename: Krisztina
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kapornai
keywords: anhedonia; childhood depression; depression; high-risk siblings; positive affect