Depression Symptoms Increase with Age in Addiction-Prone Women
A new study has found that depression increases with age in addiction-prone women in their 30s and 40s. Researchers from the University of Michigan Health System looked at the influences of women’s family life, history, and neighborhood instability on their symptoms of alcoholism, antisocial behavior, and depression over a 12-year period, including the earlier years of marriage and motherhood.
The study is part of the Michigan Longitudinal Study, an ongoing project that focuses on families that are at a high risk of substance abuse and associate disorders. The study has already collected more than 20 years’ worth of data.
The current study found that the women’s partners’ struggles with addiction, depression, and antisocial behaviors worsened the women’s own symptoms and behaviors, and that their children’s behavior also negatively impacted the women. When the children acted out and got in trouble, their mothers’ alcohol and antisocial problems worsened. When children were sad, withdrawn, or isolated, the women’s depression also increased. In addition, living in an unstable neighborhood negatively affected the women’s alcoholism symptoms and depression level.
Robert Zucker, Ph.D., a professor of psychiatry and psychology at the University of Michigan Medical School and director of the U-M Addiction Research Center, said that the findings demonstrate the complexity of the different factors that affect alcoholism, antisocial behavior, and depression in certain women.
He added that the findings challenge common ideas that depression, alcoholism, and antisocial behavior are just genetic disorders or that they are just caused by environmental factors. In fact, it’s a combination of biological, social, and environmental factors that influence these disorders over time.
The study also found that unlike alcoholism and antisocial behavior, depression does not decrease over time by itself, and instead gets worse—at least among women with a high risk for substance abuse.
For the study, the researchers examined 273 women and their families from four counties in the Midwest. Those with the highest risk were found using drunk-driving convictions involving the father, and a blood alcohol content of .15 was required to ensure that the men had long-standing difficulties with alcohol abuse, rather than having been caught when out drinking heavily one night. The rest of the families were recruited from the neighborhoods where the convicted fathers lived.
The study also highlights the association between alcohol abuse and antisocial behavior over long periods of time, according to the study’s lead author, Anne Buu, Ph.D., a research assistant professor in the Substance Abuse Section of the U-M Department of Psychiatry. Interventions targeting antisocial behavior could benefit by also targeting addiction, she said.
Buu added that interventions for women with young children might be more effective I they improve social support systems, education opportunities, access to family counseling, and neighborhood environments.
Source: Science Daily, Depression Symptoms Increase Over Time for Addiction-Prone Women, February 20, 2011
