This study measured the prevalence of depression among 191 tenth and eleventh grade students, and investigated its relationship to gender, sex-role, ego identity achievement, and concerns about the future. Ninety-one males and 100 females completed the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), Bem Sex-Role Inventory (BEM), Ego Identity Scale (EIS), and Future Concerns Scale (FCS). Twenty-five percent were found to be depressed. Ego identity achievement was significantly correlated with depression, and a Stepwise Multiple Regression Analysis indicated that ego identity achievement predicted 44 percent of the variance in depression scores. Results of a Two-Way Multivariate ANOVA indicated that females were significantly more depressed than males, but found no significant effect for gender on ego identity. Both Feminine and Undifferentiated subjects had significantly higher depression scores and significantly lower ego identity scores than either Masculine or Androgynous subjects. Results support the observation that it is not the presence of feminine characteristics, but the absence of masculine characteristics, that is associated with more deleterious outcomes. A post-hoc analysis of the FCS illuminated both gender and sex-role differences in the issues associated with depression among this group. Other correlates of depression were also examined. The interrelationship of sex-role and ego identity achievement is discussed, and implications for clinicians and educators are considered.

This study compared the rate of behavioral inhibition among children of parents with panic disorder to the one exhibited by children whose parents have no identified psychiatric disorder. Two groups of 20 White children aged two, three or four years old were matched for age, sex, socioeconomic level and ordinal position. Group assignment depended on the parent's diagnosis. In the clinical sample, at least one parent was suffering from panic disorder with or without agoraphobia. Neither parent of the children in the comparison group had ever met the requirements for psychiatric disorder. The Psychiatric Diagnostic Interview-Revised was used for the parent's assessment. The assessment of behavioral inhibition was made from scoring obtained in two play situations. In the first one, involving physically mildly challenging stimuli, three variables were considered: proportion of time the child remained proximal to the parent, number of tasks initiated and imitated. The second experimental situation involved play with an unfamiliar child of the same age and sex. The scoring elements included: latencies to first comment, to touch toys and to approach the other child as well as proportion of time proximal to the parent, staring at the other child and vocalizing. No significant difference was found between the two groups. There was a trend for children whose mother had panic disorder to be more inhibited than children whose father was symptomatic and for girls to be more inhibited than boys. The parents of the most inhibited youngsters in the clinical sample had all been severely symptomatic during the child's lifetime. Rather than rejecting outright the hypothesis of an increased rate of behavioral inhibition among children of parents with panic disorder, the author suggests some modifications. How acutely symptomatic the parent was during the child's lifetime would be a modulating factor as well as the gender of the child and of the symptomatic parent. More specifically, daughters of symptomatic mothers may be more at risk for behavioral inhibition. These qualifications suggest pathways for environmental influence on the course of behavioral inhibition in families where one of the parents is affected by panic disorder.

This study explored whether there were enduring memory and attention deficits in a nonclinical group of undergraduate women who had experienced child sexual abuse (CSA). Thirty-five women who were severely (n=18) or moderately (n=17) sexually abused and eighteen control subjects volunteered for the study. Subjects were matched on race, age, and grade point average. Measures of implicit and explicit memory as well as two measures of attention were administered under both no-threat and threat conditions. The threat paradigm employed was the use of words judged by 7 independent clinicians as either "threatening" or "very threatening" to adult survivors of child sexual abuse. Measures of depression and dissociation were also administered. It was hypothesized that there would be no baseline memory and/or attention deficits in the CSA population but that the experience of either internally or externally generated CSA-related threat would have an intermittent negative effect on these cognitive functions effecting attentional and memory disruptions in ongoing tasks. It was further hypothesized that the severely abused subjects would experience more disruption in the threat condition than the moderately abused subjects. Depression and dissociation scores were analyzed to ascertain both their presence in the three groups and their relationship to performance on the memory and attention tests. Under the no-threat condition, the severely abused subjects showed significantly poorer implicit memory than the controls in a between-groups univariate analysis of variance. An analysis of covariance with depression and dissociation as covariates showed this deficit could be attributed to the severe group's significantly greater depression. Under the threat condition, between-groups ultivariate analyses of variance showed there were no significant findings of memory or attention deficits in the CSA subjects although within-group univariate analyses showed trends in the hypothesized direction for both implicit memory and attention. These findings suggest that while some women who were sexually abused as children have enduring implicit memory and attention deficits as sequelae, the experience of the abuse, itself, is not a sufficient predictor of these deficits.

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In this study, 153 dual-earner, working-class couples were interviewed on five occasions during the first transition to parenthood. New parents' depression and anxiety was examined during a span of 14 months to test hypotheses that mental health would deteriorate over time for new parents, but that having a sense of control would buffer some parents against negative mental health outcomes. It was speculated that the working-class sample may be at risk for poor mental health outcomes due to having less access to occupational, financial, social, and personal (e.g., perceived sense of control) resources. Findings challenged the notion that a sense of control is exclusively a stable psychological trait and revealed that control is comprised of two distinct components: an enduring component and a malleable component that changes with context. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to demonstrate that, on average, mothers' depression followed a curvilinear pattern, dropping across the transition to parenthood and then rising again. On average, fathers reported a curvilinear pattern of anxiety, increasing over time and beginning to drop over the course of one year. There was also significant variability around new parents' mental health, illustrating that some parents increased, while others decreased or maintained stable levels of psychological well-being over time. Having a higher sense of enduring control predicted lower levels of psychological distress for new parents, and increases in control over time predicted decreases in depression and anxiety. Results hold important implications for intervention with new parents. Increasing expectant parents' sense of control can help them manage the transition to parenthood with psychological health, and can generalize to their taking action in other arenas such as the workplace.