Peer Attachment Theory

In 1990, Armsden, McCauley, Greenberg, Burke, and Mitchell published an article in the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology called, “Parent and Peer Attachment in Early Adolescent Depression” (p. 683-697). Understanding the cause of parent-depressed child relations would help in a comprehensive theory of childhood depression. Also, examining social influences like peer relations for contributions to the risk of depressive disorder. “Attachment theory provides a valuable conceptual model for understanding the role parent-child relations play as a risk factor for depression” (p. 684). The purpose of this study was to examine self-reported parent and peer attachment in a sample of depressed adolescents and the relationship between attachment and

A., Kolko, D. J., Birmaher, B., Baugher, M., Bridge, J., Roth, C., & Holder, D. (1998). Predictors of treatment efficacy in a clinical trial of three psychosocial treatments for adolescent depression. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 37(9), 906-914. In 1998, Brent, Kolko, Birmaher, Baugher, Bridge, Roth and Holder published a clinical trial in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry called, “Predictors of Treatment Efficacy in a Clinical Trial of Three Psychosocial Treatments for Adolescent Depression” (p. 906-914). The main objective of this clinical trial was to “assess the predictors of treatment outcome across treatments, as well as those associated with differential treatment response” (p. 907). The sample consisted of adolescents between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, who met the criteria for DSM-III-R (American Psychiatric Association, 1987), major depression and with the Beck Depression Inventory (Beck et. al., 1988) score greater than or equal to 13 (p. 907). All participants were nonpsychotic, non-bipolar, without obsessive-compulsive disorder, eating disorder, substance abuse, or ongoing physical and/or sexual abuse. There were 122 adolescents who were eligible for the study but only 107 (87.7%) participants agreed to randomization. One third (32.7%) of participants were chosen through

“Patients with comorbid anxiety responded much better to CBT than to the other two treatments because SBFT and NST did more poorly with comorbid anxious patients” (p. 912). Strength of this clinical trial would be the results might help explain the failure of treatments developed in research clinics to generalize to community settings (912). Limitations include concern of the trial being university-based and lack of generalizability to the “real world”. Also, participants tend to be homogeneous and less complex than patients seen in clinical practice (p. 913). Nonetheless, these findings have implications for further research for entry criteria, stratification of subjects, and treatment modification. “Improvement in the outcome of adolescent depression may be achieved by more aggressively targeting comorbid anxiety disorder, hopelessness and other cognitive distortions, and parental psychopathology” (p.