CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 54Child Abuse and TraumaPosttraumatic Stress Disorder ResearchChild and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development

Accumulation of trauma over time and risk for depression in a twin sample

Open access
McCutcheon, V. V., Heath, A. C., Nelson, E. C., Bucholz, K. K., Madden, P. A. F., Martin, N. G.·2009·Psychological Medicine
DOI 10.1017/s0033291708003759PMC PMC2855227
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Few genetically informative studies have examined the effects of different types of trauma on risk for depression over time. The aim of the present study was to examine the relative contributions over time of assaultive trauma, non-assaultive trauma, and familial effects to risk for depression. METHOD: Histories of depression and trauma were obtained during structured diagnostic interviews with 5266 (mean age 29.9 years, s.d.=2.4) members of a volunteer Australian twin panel from the general population. Age at first onset of a DSM-IV major depressive episode was the dependent variable. Associations of depression with traumatic events were examined while accounting for the temporal sequence of trauma and depression and familial effects. RESULTS: Assaultive traumatic events that occurred during childhood had the strongest association with immediate and long-term risk for depression, and outweighed familial effects on childhood-onset depression for most twins. Although men and women endorsed equal rates of assaultive trauma, women reported a greater accumulation of assaultive events at earlier ages than men, whereas men reported a greater accumulation of non-assaultive events at all ages. CONCLUSIONS: Early exposure to assaultive trauma can influence risk for depression into adulthood. Concordance for early trauma is a significant contributor to the familiality of early-onset depression.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1017/s0033291708003759

Cites

72 of 72 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Occurrences of violent SLEs increase depression risk when controlling for shared genetic and environmental factors.

    “We find that occurrences of violent SLEs increase depression risk when controlling for shared genetic and environmental factors, which aligns with previous studies which have assessed associations between various forms of trauma and depression risk (Brown et al., 2014; McCutcheon et al., 2009).”

    From Stressful life events increase the risk of major depressive episodes: A population-based twin study (2023) · cites this paper as McCutcheon et al., 2009

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

1 of the 73 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
McCutcheon, V. V., Heath, A. C., Nelson, E. C., Bucholz, K. K., Madden, P. A. F., & Martin, N. G.
Affiliations
  • Washington University in St. Louis (US)
  • QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute (AU)
Corresponding author
McCutcheon, V. V.
ORCID
Venue
Psychological Medicine
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Published
2008-06-04
Volume
39
Issue
3
Pages
431-441
ISSN
  • 0033-2917 (ISSN-L)
  • 1469-8978
DOI
10.1017/s0033291708003759
PMC
PMC2855227
OpenAlex
W1998028602
Cited by
54
References
73
Citations by year
2026: 1 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 3 · 2020: 1 · 2019: 1 · 2018: 6 · 2017: 3 · 2016: 1 · 2015: 2 · 2014: 2 · 2013: 6 · 2012: 3
FWCI
2.97
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
www.cambridge.org/core/terms (unspecified)
Locations
  • Psychological Medicine (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
  • Digital Commons@Becker (Washington University School of Medicine) (submittedVersion)
Funders
  • National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (AA10240, AA11998, R37AA007728, AA 12640, T32-AA07580, P50AA011998, R01AA007728, T32AA007580, R01AA012640, AA-07728)
  • National Institute of Mental Health (5 T32 MH19960-08, F31MH071039, T32MH019960)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child Abuse and Trauma
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Research
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development
Keywords
childhood trauma, depression, family influence, twin concordance, age at onset of depression, gender differences, cumulative trauma, major depressive episode
MeSH terms
Adult, Australia, Major Depressive Disorder, Depressive Disorder, Major, Depressive Disorder, Diseases in Twins, Female, Health Status, Humans, Life Change Events, Male, Psychiatric Status Rating Scales, Surveys and Questionnaires, Risk Factors, Sex Factors, Twins, Dizygotic, Twins, Monozygotic, Violence, Age of Onset, Stress Disorders, Traumatic

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review