Depression and coping in stressful episodes

Abstract

Fifteen depressed and 72 nondepressed middle-aged persons were repeatedly assessed over a 1-year period with respect to the thoughts and actions they used in coping in specific stressful episodes. Depressed persons tended to appraise situations as requiring more information in order for them to act, but they were less likely to appraise situations as requiring their acceptance. Overall, the coping of depressed persons was characterized by the seeking of emotional and informational support and by wishful thinking, but they did not differ from nondepressed persons in amount of problem-focused coping or self-blame. Results were generally inconsistent with the learned helplessness model of depression and highlight the need to examine interpersonal aspects of depression. Despite a paucity of data, there is considerable speculation as to how depressed persons cope with everyday difficulties. Many recent studies of depressed persons examine their reactions to contrived success and failure experiences in the laboratory or their performance on impersonal tasks such as anagrams. Authors assume that such laboratory behavior captures rather broad deficiencies associated with depression and generalize in discussions of their results what depressed persons think and do in everyday life situations. For example, Abramson, Seligman, and Teasdale (1978) interpret the poor anagram performance of depressed persons as evidence of a general tendency to perform ineptly that results from their negative expectancies, inability to perceive the connection between response and outcome, and low response initiation. Depression researchers have thus borrowed a common strategy from the stress literature. Essentially, they attempt to relate well-defined laboratory variables to speculations about more vaguely delineated and poorly understood clinical phenomena.