1. Objectifs

Intentions :
« The focus of the present study is the examination of trajectories to depressive symptoms reported by individuals who demonstrated varying levels of aggressive and withdrawn behaviour in their school environnements as children. » (p. 3)
Questions/Hypothèses :
« Based on the idea that prolonged negative person/environment relations create or exacerbate stressful life circomstances, and that such circumstances increase the risk of depression, it was hypothesized that :
1) the family environment contributes to the level of children’s aggressive and withdrawn behaviours;
2) higher levels of both aggression and withdrawal in childhood increase the likehood of depression in adulthood;
3) the links between childhood aggression and withdrawal and adult depression are strengthened by mediating stressful life experiences including depression in adolescence;
4) depression in adolescence is related to depression in adulthood;
5) aggression and withdrawal in childhood are associated with externalizing and internalizing behaviours respectively in adulthood and
6) adult externalizing and internalizing behaviours are related to adult depression » (p. 19)

2. Méthode

Échantillon/Matériau :
146 participants (63 males, 83 females), of whom 15 had been rated as aggressive in childhood, 22 as withdrawn, 18 as aggressive-withdrawn, and 91 as controls. Participants in this study comprised a subsample of the Concordia High Risk Project’s research population. Participants were French-speaking children from primarily low-income families in Montreal.

Instruments :
All measures completed by the participants of this study were administred in French. French translation from the original English was effected by bilingual research assistants.
- Household Prestige Scale (Nock & Rossi, 1978, 1979) for socioeconomic status of the family;
- Parental separation, divorce or death prior to children’s participation in the study;
- Pupil Evaluation Inventory (PEI : Pekarik, Prinz, Liebert, Weintraub & Neale, 1976);
- Statistics Canada Low-Income Cutoff (LICO : Ross, Shillington & Lochead, 1994);
- Symptom Check list-90-Revised (SCL-90-R : Derogatis, 1977);
- Life Experiences Survey (LES : Sarason, Johnson & Siegel, 1978);
- Health Questionnaire, constructed for the purposes of the Concordia project;
- NEO-S (Costa & McCrae, 1989);
- Measure of Parenting Style (Parker et al., 1997);
- MacArthur Foundation’s Childhood Victimization questionnaire;
- Conflict Tactics Scales (Strauss, 1979);
- Neighborhood Context Questionnaire (Coulton, Korbin & Su, 1996);
- Daily Hassles and Uplifts Scale (DeLongis, Folkman & Lazarus, 1988);
- Stress Coping Questionnaire (Parker et al., 1998);
- Child Behavior Checklist-Youth Self Report (YSR : Achenbach & Edelbrock, 1983);
- Structured Clinical Interview for the DSM-IV, Axis 1/Non-patient Version (SCID-I/NP : First, Spitzer, Gibbon & Williams, 1996);
- Stress Coping Questionnaire (Parker et al., 1998).
Type de traitement des données :
Analyse statistique

3. Résumé

« Structural equation modeling was used to examine pathways from aggression and social withdrawal in childhood to depession and to externalizing and internalizing behaviours in adulthood. It was hypothesized that children’s agression and withdrawal are influenced by early family environment and create enduring negative person/environment relations which lead to an increased risk of early depression and stress over time. Stress and previous depressive episodes, in turn, increase the risk of adult depression. The sample was drawn from the Concordia Longitudinal Risk Project and comprised 146 participants. Peer ratings of aggression and withdrawal were collected when participants were in grades 1, 4 or 7 in 1978. Assessments of adolescent depression, negative life experiences, adult depression and adult aggression and withdrawal were made over a period spanning 23 years. Finding showed that negative family environment was related to aggression but not to withdrawal in childhood. A direct path led from childhood aggression to adult depression, whereas the pathway from childhood withdrawal to adult depression was mediated by adolescent depression and negative life experiences. Childhood aggression and adult externalizing behaviour were not related, but childhood and adult withdrawal were linked via adolescent depression and negative life experiences. Adult depression and adult aggression and withdrawal were unrelated. The implications of these findings are discussed, particularly the idea that contrasting behaviour styles in childhood can lead to similar clinical outcomes in adulthood. » (p. iii)