Objective: Depressive disorders represent a significant burden on mental health care services across the globe, with many cases starting during adolescence. Recent literature provides evidence that...Show moreObjective: Depressive disorders represent a significant burden on mental health care services across the globe, with many cases starting during adolescence. Recent literature provides evidence that both high and low empathy may be risk factors for depression. This study explores the relationship between empathy and depression in a clinical (n=35) and non-clinical (n=80) sample of adolescents, while taking age and gender into account as potential confounding factors. Method: This study uses data from the Relations and Emotions in Parent-Adolescent Interaction Research (RE-PAIR). Participants filled out the PHQ, the perspective taking and empathic concern scales of the IRI, and parents and adolescents were interviewed surrounding the perceived causes of the adolescents’ depression. ANOVA comparisons were used to establish whether there are meaningful differences between depressed and non-depressed adolescents on measures of empathy while controlling for age and gender. To investigate whether low or high empathy scores are associated with higher severity of depression, depressed adolescents were divided in three groups for each measure of empathy according to empathy scores and compared in terms of PHQ scores. Finally, adolescents were grouped and compared based on empathy-associated reported causes of depression to determine whether those causes are associated with differences in empathy. Results: There was no association between depression and empathy scores. There was a significant difference on only one item of the IRI, which may drive a false positive correlation between affective empathy and depression. Gender was associated with significant differences in reported empathy scores, as was age. There was no significant relationship between empathy and severity of depression, nor between empathy and reported causes of depression. Conclusion: This study finds limited evidence for the relationship between empathy and depression. It highlights the importance of studying empathy in combination with other factors, and the challenges in measuring empathy in the context of depression. Limitations and implications of the findings are discussed.Show less
Different studies have investigated the adolescents’ causal beliefs about their major depressive disorder. However, the beliefs of the parents about the causes of their adolescent’s depression and...Show moreDifferent studies have investigated the adolescents’ causal beliefs about their major depressive disorder. However, the beliefs of the parents about the causes of their adolescent’s depression and the extent to which the parents agree with their adolescent on these causes has not been studied yet. In addition, the relation between this agreement and the parental bond has also not been studied yet. The aim of the current study was thus to investigate the possible relationship between the extent to which the parents of adolescents with depression and their adolescent share the same ideas on the causes of the adolescent’s depression and the parental bond. This was tested with a multivariate analysis of variance using data of the qualitative interview and the Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI) from the RE-PAIR study. The agreement score was dichotomized into a low agreement group, reflecting the group of parents that agreed with 49% or below of the causes their adolescent mentioned, and a high agreement group, reflecting the group of parents that agreed with 50% or above of the causes their adolescent mentioned. The main finding of this study was that the two most frequently mentioned causes, ‘problematic social contacts’ and ‘heredity/genes’, overlapped between adolescents, mothers and fathers. Other causes that were frequently mentioned by adolescents did differ from the causes most frequently mentioned by their parents. For example, both mothers and fathers frequently mentioned causes that were related to the category ‘characteristics of the child’, while adolescents did not mention this frequently. The second main finding of this study was that there was not a significant difference between the low and high agreement group on the parental bond scores for both mothers and fathers. A limitation was that the current sample was not normally distributed on the categories of gender. Further research should examine a different population.Show less
