Abstract

Depression increases in adolescence and reaches its highest rate in adulthood. Identifying processes operative developmentally prior to the increase is essential to understanding the causes. This research includes two studies in which processes linking adolescents' insecure attachment to parents to psychological distress are examined. The first study examined the association of insecure attachment to parents with depressive symptoms among early adolescents ( n =140) and assessed the mediating roles of attributions and self-esteem. Adolescents more anxiously attached to both mother and father reported most depressive symptoms. Anxious attachment to mother was associated with depression for adolescent girls only, and maladaptive attributions to negative events partially mediated the association. For girls, self-esteem also mediated between anxious attachment to mother and depression. The second study investigated the role of attributional processes to stressful interpersonal events as a process linking insecure attachment and psychological distress among early adolescents ( n =164) and young adults ( n =132). Because working models are hypothesized to crystallize with age and cognitive rigidity is expected to increase, the association between insecure attachment and negative attributions was expected to be stronger for young adults than for adolescents, and negative attributions were expected to mediate more strongly for the older age. More anxious attachment to mother was associated with higher dysphoria whereas more avoidant attachment to mother was associated with lower dysphoria. Negative attributions mediated between anxious attachment to mother and dysphoria. Negative attributions were more strongly associated with psychological distress for young adults than for adolescents, and thus, attributions to interpersonal stressors mediated more strongly between attachment and dysphoria at the older age. In conclusion, results of both studies support cognitive models of depression and highlight the importance of quality of attachment to mother in adolescence, in particular attachment anxiety. Attributional processes are indicated as one pathway from anxious attachment to mother to psychological distress for girls in study 1 and for both boys and girls in study 2, a pathway that the results of study 2 suggest is stronger at older ages. Study 1 found self-esteem as another pathway for adolescent girls