Depression symptoms increase over time for addiction-prone women
While alcohol problems and antisocial behavior tend to decrease in women as they age, depression does not, U-M study finds
Unlike alcohol problems and antisocial behavior, depression doesn’t decline with age in addiction-prone women in their 30s and 40s – it continues to increase, a new study led by University of Michigan Health System researchers found.
The analysis examined the influences of the women’s histories, family life and neighborhood instability on their alcoholism symptoms, antisocial behavior and depression over a 12-year period covering the earlier years of marriage and motherhood.
The research, published in Development and Psychopathology, is part of an ongoing project focusing on families at high risk for substance abuse and associated disorders that has already collected more than 20 years worth of data.
Among the current study’s other top findings:
- The women’s partners’ struggles with addiction and antisocial behavior, such as run-ins with the law, worsened the women’s own symptoms and behaviors.
- Children’s behavior also had a negative impact on their mothers. When children exhibited behaviors that included acting out and getting into trouble, their mothers’ alcohol problems and antisocial behavior tended to worsen. Meanwhile, when children were sad, withdrawn or isolated,their mothers’ depression increased.
- Living in an unstable neighborhood, where residents move in and out frequently, also had a significant effect on the women’s alcoholism symptoms and level of depression.
“Our findings demonstrate the complexity of the factors affecting changes in alcohol problems, antisocial behavior and depression for these women,” says the study’s senior author Robert Zucker, Ph.D.
The research shows that unlike alcoholism symptoms and antisocial behavior, depression does not, by itself, moderate over time – it actually gets worse, at least in this high risk population, Zucker notes.
“Unlike the other two disorders, biological differences appear to be more of a constant factor in depression,” he says.
“Based on these findings, interventions for women with young children might have the most impact if they improve social supports, educational opportunities, access to family counseling and neighborhoods environments,” Buu says.
Citation: “Changes in women’s alcoholic, antisocial, and depressive symptomatology over 12 years: A multilevel network of individual, familial, and neighborhood influences,” Development and Psychopathology. DOI: 10.1017/S0954579410000830
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