Associations between Social Support Dimensions and Resilience Factors and Pathways of Influence in Depression and Anxiety Rates in Young Adults

Emerging adulthood is an important developmental period, associated to mental health risk. Resilience research points to both social and personal protective factors against development of psychopathology, but there is paucity with their comprehensive study in young adults. This study provides and initial integrative approach to model multiple dimensions of perceived social support (i.e., from family, friends, significant others) and personal factor of trait resilience (i.e., coping and persistence during stress, tolerance to negative affect, positive appraisals, trust) and their hypothesized contributions to reducing depression and anxiety rates. The study was conducted with a sample of 500 Spanish emerging adults (18 to 29 years old). Regression analyses and multiple mediation models were performed to test our hypotheses. Results showed that social support from family was the dimension with the highest strength relating individual differences in resilience. Furthermore, analyses supported a differential mediating role of specific resilience factors (coping and persistence during stress, tolerance to negative affect, positive appraisals, trust) in partially accounting for the association between higher social support from family and lower depression and anxiety levels in young adults. These results may inform new programs of mental health during emerging adulthood via the promotion of different sources of social support and their related resilience pathways contributing to low emotional symptomatology at this stage of development.

Negative interpretation bias as a clinical marker and a scar of depression: New insights from a large-scale study of the scrambled sentence task in formerly, subclinically and clinically depressed individuals

Negative interpretation biases are thought to be clinical markers of depression and risk factors for its recurrence that would remain active after remission. Evidence on the conditions under which negative interpretation biases are active after remission is still unclear, and further studies are required to clarify whether negative interpretation biases are equivalent in magnitude at different depression conditions. A large-scale study of the Scrambled Sentence Task (SST) was conducted (639 participants), where different depression and never-depressed samples were compared in their performance in the SST through three experiments (i.e., formerly - Studies 1 and 2 -, subclinically - Study 2 - and clinically depressed individuals - Study 3 -). Cognitive load manipulations were used while completing the task. Formerly compared to never-depressed individuals showed higher negative interpretation biases at conditions of cognitive load only (Study 1). Formerly and subclinically depressed showed equivalent biases compared to never-depressed individuals (Study 2). Negative interpretation biases were further supported for clinically depressed (Study 3). Comparative analyses showed that both formerly and subclinically differed from clinically depressed individuals in their negative bias magnitude. These results prove the utility of the SST to detect negative interpretation biases in different depression conditions, including those recovered from depression. Results further show that negative bias magnitudes tend to decrease after remission but remain at subclinical levels, potentially conferring risk for depression recurrence.