Depression Hurts: Self-Concept Correlates of Depression among the Teenaged Children of Mothers with Serious Mental Illness

Background and Purpose: Mental illness is a common problem, 40% of Americans will experience a diagnosable mental health problem. Their teenage children are at risk of experiencing depression. The current study goes beyond demonstrating this association to ask about the influence of depression on those aspects of self-concept associated with motivation and self-regulation: self-efficacy and possible selves. By using a community sample of teens growing up with mothers with a serious mental illness, it is possible to examine impacts on teens. In particular, this study examines effects of teen depressive symptoms on teen efficacy and possible selves, hypothesizing that depressive symptoms are associated with less efficacy and more salient negative or feared possible selves for the coming year. Methods: The study design included maternal and child report. Youth interviews used CASI (computer assisted interviewing methods to obtain both response and time-to-response (latency). Latency was recorded from keystroke. Youth interviewers were blind to hypotheses and maternal mental health diagnosis and unaware that latency was being recorded but were instructed to complete the interview as rapidly as possible. Participants were 160 teens whose mother had participated in a larger study of experiences of mothers with a serious mental illness. The 35 item Center for Epidemiology Scale –Depressive (CESD) was used to assess youth depressive symptoms. Possible selves (content and response latency) were responses to open-ended probes using the standard open-ended format. Mean response time in ml seconds was recorded. Because the first screen included instructions, latency for the first possible self generated was not included and since almost all youth generated at least four feared possible selves, mean latency of the 2nd-4th possible self generated was log transformed. For efficacy, Harter's self-efficacy scale was used recording both mean responses and response latency (log transformed). Results: Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were used. Because content of self-concept, risk of depression, and general cognitive processing speed may be influenced by youth age, gender, race, grades, household income, and maternal depression, we used all of these variables as controls, entering youth demographics (age, gender, and race) at block 1, family income at block 2, youth grades at block 3, maternal depression at block 4 and youth depressive symptoms in the final block. Compared to youth with less depression, youth with more depressive symptoms were lower in efficacy. It took them longer to generate responses to the efficacy questions and less time to generate feared possible selves. Conclusions and Implications: Maternal depression is known to increase teen risk of depression. What the current study demonstrates is that when youths experience depressive symptoms, these symptoms also impact youths' sense of self. In particular, depression hurts by increasing the salience of feared possible selves while undermining efficacy and the chronic accessibility of efficacious self-images. The impact of depression on self-efficacy and possible selves may explain some of the lingering effects of depression once an episode of depression lifts. Interventions to reduce depression can have their resiliency increasing consequences in part by reducing these spillover effects.