Biomedical subjects

C J Robins

Publications and source records attributed to C J Robins.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2001

Couple functioning in depression: the roles of sociotropy and autonomy.

We evaluated the hypothesis that interpersonal relationships of depressed persons would vary as a function of the personality variables sociotropy and autonomy. Depressed psychiatric patients who reported being in a current intimate relationship for at least six months were administered measures of sociotropy, autonomy, and several aspects of relationship functioning. Results indicated that sociotropy was related significantly to patients' reporting their own behavior as demanding and their partners' behavior as withdrawing, whereas autonomy was related to patients' reporting their partners' behavior as demanding and their own behavior as withdrawing. Autonomy also was related to greater relationship dissatisfaction, and there was a trend for autonomy to be related to greater criticism of the partner. The results are consistent with a model in which sociotropy and autonomy increase vulnerability to depression, in part, through their effects on interpersonal relationships.

Adult↗

PubMed2000

A cross-cultural comparison of depressive symptom manifestation: China and the United States.

This study compared depressive symptomatology among Chinese psychiatric outpatients versus the general Chinese population, and across 3 cultural groups--Chinese, Chinese American, and Caucasian American students--by use of the Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression Scale (CES-D; L. S. Radloff, 1977) and the Chinese Depression Scale (N. Lin, 1989), translated from the CES-D. Results indicate that Chinese patients (n = 112) endorsed a higher proportion of somatic symptoms than nonpatients (n = 112). The intercultural comparison found that Chinese students (n = 98) had the lowest levels of somatic depressive symptom endorsement compared to both U.S. groups (n = 198). These findings seem to suggest that the tendency toward somatic symptom reporting is not any greater among Chinese populations but may be a function of having a mental illness or of help seeking in China.

Adult↗

PubMed1999

Perceived social support among depressed elderly, middle-aged, and young-adult samples: cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses.

BACKGROUND: A number of studies have concluded that the perceived quality of support is more strongly associated with mental health than with the actual structure of personal networks. This study examined clinical, historical, and phenomenological variables associated cross-sectionally and longitudinally with perceived social support. METHODS: Participants included elderly, middle-aged, and young-adult depressed samples derived from the Duke Clinical Research Center for the Study of Depression in Late Life. RESULTS: Cross-sectional multivariate analyses revealed that perceived social support was: (1) for the elderly associated with pessimistic thinking, being divorced, having strange ideas, the degree of social interaction, and instrumental support; (2) for middle-age associated with dysthymia, divorce, pessimistic thoughts, social interaction, and instrumental support; and (3) among young adults with instrumental support only. Longitudinal multivariate analyses indicated that only perceived social support at Time 1 predicted perceived social support 1 year later among elderly and middle-aged subjects, whereas only instrumental support predicted perceived social support 1 year later among the young-adult sample. LIMITATIONS: The small number of subjects among the young-adult sample limit conclusions regarding this group. In addition, only patients provided data. Future studies should consider using multiple informants to enhance the accuracy of reported social support. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings indicate that in addition to whatever else they do for depressed patients, clinicians must endeavor to address relationship or social support difficulties, especially in the elderly.

Adult↗

PubMed1999

Correlates of suicidal ideation among an elderly depressed sample.

BACKGROUND: Suicidal ideation has been shown to be strongly associated with suicide completion and elders take their own lives more than any other age group. METHODS: The present study examined clinical and phenomenological correlates of suicidal ideation among an elderly sample (n = 167) derived from subjects enrolled in the Duke Clinical Research Center for the Study of Depression in Late Life. RESULTS: Bivariate results indicated that clinical variables associated with psychomotor retardation, a history of dysthymia, a previous psychiatric in-patient stay, and being a 'younger' elder were related to greater suicidal ideation. Multivariate analyses indicated that feeling guilty, sinful, or worthless was associated with over six times greater odds of having suicidal thoughts. LIMITATIONS: Findings are based on correlational analyses, and thus, the direction of causality cannot be inferred. CONCLUSIONS: This study provides evidence for clinicians of some of the 'red flags' associated with the presence of suicidal ideation among depressed older adults.

Aged↗

PubMed1999

New onset and remission of suicidal ideation among a depressed adult sample.

BACKGROUND: Previous research has demonstrated that suicidal ideation often predicts suicide completion. METHODS: The present study examined clinical and phenomenological variables associated with the presence, development and remission of suicidal ideation among depressed adults. The sample (n = 81) was derived from subjects enrolled in the Duke Clinical Research Center for the Study of Depression in Late Life. RESULTS: Greater pessimistic thinking at baseline predicted the development of suicidal ideation one year later and the older a person was when he or she first experienced depression, the more likely he or she was to report remission from suicidal ideation one year following onset. LIMITATIONS: Longitudinal analyses were based on relatively small samples. Variables that were not significant in these analyses might be in a larger sample. CONCLUSIONS: The longitudinal design of this study mitigates limitations associated with cross-sectional or retrospective designs and advances our understanding of a clinical profile associated with the development and remission of suicidal thoughts.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1993

An appraisal of cognitive therapy.

This review describes the development of cognitive therapy (CT) for depression in the 1960s and 1970s and its application to diverse clinical populations. The question of how CT works, in terms of both active therapeutic ingredients and mechanisms of change within the individual, is addressed. The limitations of CT are discussed, as well as recent developments and modifications of the therapy that have evolved in response to these perceived limitations and that bring it closer to other therapy approaches. The review concludes with some directions for future research.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

PubMed1992

Sociotropy and autonomy: relationship to antidepressant drug treatment response and endogenous-nonendogenous dichotomy.

This study evaluated the relationship of sociotropic and autonomous personality traits with response to pharmacotherapy for 217 depressed outpatients using the Sociotropy-Autonomy Scale. Sociotropy was related to nonendogenous depression, whereas autonomy was related to endogenous depression. Subjects who had high autonomous-low sociotropic traits showed greater response to antidepressants (and greater drug-placebo differences) than those who had high sociotropic-low autonomous traits (who showed no drug-placebo differences). Hierarchical multiple regression analysis showed that the sociotropy-autonomy, but not the endogenous-nonendogenous, distinction was a predictor of drug treatment response. The combination of endogeneity and autonomy predicted response to placebo. If replicated, these findings may enable better matching of patient traits to various treatment modalities for depression.

Adult↗

PubMed1991

Sociotropy and autonomy: differential patterns of clinical presentation in unipolar depression.

We examined the relations between sociotropy and autonomy and clinical features of depression. Beck (1983) proposed that sociotropy is related to a sense of deprivation and clinical features associated with reactive depression and that autonomy is related to a sense of defeat and clinical features associated with endogenous depression. Robins, Block, & Peselow (1989) found support for the hypothesis for sociotropy but not for autonomy, and they suggested that the autonomy scale may be problematic. We administered new measures of sociotropy and autonomy and a more comprehensive assessment of clinical features to 50 unipolar depressed inpatients. The results support the selective relations of both sociotropy and autonomy to the predicted sets of clinical features. This study adds to the growing evidence that these personality dimensions are important to the understanding of depression.

Adult↗

PubMed1990

Congruence of personality and life events in depression.

Consistent with the personality-event congruence hypothesis, highly sociotropic depressed patients (n = 19) reported more recent negative interpersonal events than negative autonomy events and more negative interpersonal events than did highly autonomous depressed patients (n = 22), for whom the hypothesis was not supported. There was no evidence of such congruence among nondepressed schizophrenic patients (n = 44). In a second study, there was significant personality-event congruence in dysphoric students (n = 26) but not in nondysphoric students (n = 56). Both the high-sociotropy and high-autonomy dysphoric groups separately yielded nonsignificant trends consistent with congruence. These findings add to the growing support for the importance of the sociotropy construct in depression and weaker support for the autonomy construct or its measurement, and they suggest that the congruence effect does not generalize to all psychopathologies.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1990

Endogenous and non-endogenous depressions: relations to life events, dysfunctional attitudes and event perceptions.

A comparison was made between endogenous and non-endogenous depressed patients on several characteristics on which they traditionally have been asserted to differ, and which play important roles in cognitive approaches to depression. The non-endogenous patients reported more dysfunctional attitudes and a greater number of recent life events than did endogenous patients. These results support the distinction between endogenous and non-endogenous depressions, and suggest that cognitive theories of aetiology may be more relevant for the latter group. However, both groups perceived their recent upsetting events in relatively maladaptive ways, consistent with the idea that biased perceptions are more related to the depressive state, whereas dysfunctional attitudes may represent a trait vulnerability.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

PubMed1989

Social-cognitive processing and depressive symptoms in children: a comparison of measures.

We assessed aspects of the reliability and validity of three measures of social-cognitive processing in children that have been developed to investigate the relations of such processes to childhood depression: the Children's Attributional Style Questionnaire (CASQ), the Children's Negative Cognitive Error Questionnaire (CNCEQ), and the Common Beliefs Inventory for Students (CBIS). In an unselected sample of 61 children, aged 8 to 12, the internal consistencies of the total scores on the CNCEQ and the CBIS were good; for the CASQ, it was only moderate. Internal consistencies of all subscale scores were inadequate. Despite this, several subscale and total scores were significantly associated with depressive symptoms, and the measures were generally correlated with each other. Although these data are encouraging concerning the role of social-cognitive processing in childhood depression, the field needs to develop psychometrically stronger measures and to test the role of social cognition in prospective studies of depression.

Child↗

PubMed1989

Relations of sociotropic and autonomous personality characteristics to specific symptoms in depressed patients.

A number of writers have suggested that two sets of personality characteristics are associated both with vulnerabilities to depression in response to different classes of events and with different clinical presentations of depression. The present study examined the relations between levels of sociotropic and autonomous personality characteristics and specific, theoretically derived clusters of symptoms in 80 unipolar depressed patients. As was predicted, sociotropy was related to the cluster of symptoms associated with the concept of anxious-reactive depression and was unrelated to the autonomous symptoms cluster. In contrast, the predicted relations of autonomous personality characteristics and symptoms were not found. These results support the idea that the symptom picture in depression may be related to personality characteristics, but they also suggest that the measurement of autonomy may require revision.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1989

Toward greater understanding of depression in deaf individuals.

We compared the prevalence of depressive symptoms among deaf and hearing college students and examined the relationships among depressive symptoms, personality characteristics, and perceived parental attitudes and behaviors in these two groups. Measures were revised to meet the language needs of the deaf subjects. Mild levels of depressive symptoms were more prevalent in the deaf than in the hearing students, but more severe depression was not. In both groups, depressive symptoms were associated with perceptions of lower maternal care and higher maternal over-protection. Deaf and hearing subjects did not differ on these perceived maternal characteristics. Depressive symptoms were associated with socially dependent personality characteristics in the hearing sample only. We discuss the implications of the findings for the role of personality development in depression in deaf individuals.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1988

Modification of the Beck Depression Inventory for use with a deaf population.

Research on depression in deaf individuals has been hampered by difficulties in assessment that result from the linguistic problems many deaf persons have with the English language. We report preliminary psychometric data on a modification of the Beck Depression Inventory in which it was simplified linguistically for use with the deaf population. Internal consistency of the revised version of 56 hearing college students was good and very close to that of the original version in a separate sample of 56 hearing students. Mean scores on the two versions were also very similar. Internal consistency of the revision in a sample of 102 deaf college students was moderately good, but lower than in the hearing sample. The results are considered encouraging for further instrument development.

Adult↗

PubMed1988

Development of experimental mood induction procedures for testing personality-event interaction models of depression.

Cognitive-behavioral and psychodynamic theorists have suggested recently that depressions may be differentiated on the basis of two sets of personality characteristics that each create emotional vulnerability to a different specific class of events. The present paper reports the development of two mood induction procedures that may be useful in testing this specific interactional approach. In these inductions, subjects listen to an audiotape that depicts either a series of social rejections or achievement failures and are instructed to imagine themselves as the main character. Both tapes were found to produce a strong increase in reported depressed affect in a sample of normal undergraduates (N = 119). These effects were large in comparison to those elicited by other mood induction procedures. Women reported greater mood shifts than men in response to both tapes. The present procedures have the advantage of content specificity that permits tests of personality-event interaction hypotheses.

Achievement↗

PubMed1988

Personal vulnerability, life events, and depressive symptoms: a test of a specific interactional model.

We tested Beck's (1983) hypothesis that depressive symptoms occur when an individual experiences a negative life event that specifically matches the individual's personal motivational vulnerability. Ninety-eight undergraduates completed measures of depression level, recent life events, and sociotropic and autonomous achievement motivations. Consistent with the theory, sociotropy was associated with depression level and also served as a moderator of the relations between depression and frequency of recent negative social events. However, sociotropy also demonstrated nonpredicted interactive effects with negative events categorized a priori as autonomy related. Autonomy was unrelated to depression and showed no evidence of being a vulnerability to any type of life event. The findings generally support the value of examining the role in depression of interactions between personality characteristics and life events, although they do not support the specific matching predictions.

Achievement↗

PubMed1988

Attributions and depression: why is the literature so inconsistent?

A large body of literature examining the relations between depression and causal attributions has produced inconsistent findings. Many studies have clearly had inadequate statistical power, however, so that negative findings cannot be readily interpreted. In this review, statistical power was computed for all published analyses relating depression to attributions to any of the following: internal, stable, or global causes, or their composite, ability/character, effort/behavior, luck, or task difficulty. On average, the power of these analyses was very poor. For example, only 8 of the 87 analyses had a probability of .80 or better of detecting a small-medium true population effect (e.g., r = .20). Separating studies by levels of power helped to clarify the inconsistencies in the literature. Whereas across all published studies depression was fairly consistently related only to the composite of internal, stable, and global attributions, those few studies with fairly high power all reported significant relations of depression to stable and global attributions as well as to the composite. It is suggested that increased attention be paid to the power of statistical analyses in planning studies and in drawing conclusions from completed studies.

Cognition↗

PubMed1986

Cognitive distortions among depressed and suicidal drug abusers.

A very high proportion of drug abusers have psychiatric problems, with depressive symptoms particularly common. Nonabusing depressed patients have been found to demonstrate elevated levels of cognitive distortions, relative to normals, and to benefit from therapies that address such cognitive distortions. The present study investigated the prevalence of cognitive distortions in a sample of 52 inpatient depressed and/or suicidal drug abusers. Levels of cognitive distortion were found to be comparable to those reported in other studies for noninpatient depressed subjects, but lower than those of nonabusing depressed inpatients. Within the present relatively homogeneous sample, degree of cognitive distortion was nevertheless related to levels of depression, hopelessness, and suicidality. It is concluded that cognitive therapy may be indicated for depressed drug abusers.

Adjustment Disorders↗