中華心理衛生協會

Purpose: The aim of this study is three-fold: first, to capture the overall development trajectory of early adolescent depression as well as the latent heterogeneity among development trajectories; second, to analyze gender differences in the depression trajectory; and last, to investigate relationships between types of depression and the odds of a conduct disorder a year later. Methods: Empirical data were retrieved from the Taiwan Youth Project, with a valid sample of 1,975 subjects (50.1% are boys). Depression was measured by the SCL-R-90. Results: Results from the growth mixture modeling showed that depression trajectories can be classified three ways, namely: ”typical depression” with a high-low-high trajectory, ”cumulative depression” with a low-high-high pattern, and ”emotionally stable” with low scores across the 3 years of the study. ”Typical depression” boys demonstrated more dramatic fluctuations than their counterparts, and ”emotionally stable” girls demonstrated higher initial depression scores than boys. Conclusions: ”Cumulative depression” adolescents are at a much higher risk for conduct disorders than those with ”typical depression” or those who are ”emotionally stable”.