Adaptive and adverse life events across developmental periods, resilience, and depressive symptoms: cross-sectional path analyses in patients with major depression.

Objectives

We investigated whether resilience accounts for the associations between lifetime adaptive and adverse life events and depressive symptoms in adults diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), and whether these associations are evident across childhood, youth, and adulthood.

Methods

In this cross-sectional study, 133 psychiatric inpatients with current MDD completed the Traumatic Antecedents Questionnaire (TAQ), Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC), and Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II). Path analyses estimated direct and indirect effects of life experiences (lifetime and across childhood, youth, and adulthood) on depressive symptoms via resilience. An exploratory assessment was conducted in an independent clinical sample of 67 patients (PDD/BPD).

Results

Adaptive life experiences were associated with lower depressive symptoms through an indirect-only effect via resilience (βz = -0.17, p = .004). Conversely, adverse experiences showed a direct effect on depressive symptoms (βz = 0.22, p = .004) that was not accompanied by a significant indirect effect. Exploratory analyses showed that the indirect effect via resilience was significantly larger for adaptive experiences during adulthood than during childhood. In the independent sample, the association between resilience and depressive symptoms was replicated, whereas the indirect effect via resilience was not confirmed.

Conclusions

Findings in the discovery sample are consistent with resilience accounting for the association between adaptive life experiences and depression severity, particularly for events occurring in adulthood. In contrast, adverse experiences were related to depressive symptoms independently of resilience. These results suggest that clinical practice may benefit from expanding beyond a symptom-oriented focus to actively promote positive life experiences.