ArticleBMC psychology2013
Life changes and depressive symptoms: the effects of valence and amount of change.
Article in BMC psychology, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed, 9 citations in OpenAlex.
- Weighing the predictive role of neural factors for adolescent anhedonia in the presence of demographic and clinical factors.Journal of mood and anxiety disorders · 2025Article
- Depression among general outpatient department attendees in selected hospitals in Somalia: magnitude and associated factors.BMC psychiatry · 2024Article
- Article
- Cohort Profile Update: the TRacking Adolescents' Individual Lives Survey (TRAILS).International journal of epidemiology · 2015Observational
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundOnly few studies have focused on the effects of positive life changes on depression, and the ones that did demonstrated inconsistent findings. The aim of the present study was to obtain a better understanding of the influence of positive life changes on depressive symptoms by decomposing life changes into a valence and an amount of change component.
methodsUsing hierarchical multiple regression, we examined the unique effects of valence (pleasantness/unpleasantness) and amount of change on depressive symptoms in 2230 adolescents (M age: 16.28 years) from the TRAILS study.
resultsAdjusted for age, gender and pre-event depressive symptoms, the amount of life change was positively associated with depressive symptoms. A small excess of positive life changes predicted fewer symptoms, but experiencing a large excess of positive life changes did not have any additional beneficial effects, rather the opposite. Valence was more strongly associated with cognitive-affective than with neurovegetative-somatic symptoms.
conclusionsMore positive life changes relative to negative life changes can protect against depressive symptoms, yet only when the amount of change is limited. This study encourages examination of the effects of life changes on specific symptom clusters instead of total numbers of depressive symptoms, which is the current standard.
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