Insecure Attachment and Depression Across the Life Span: The Paradox of Early Versus Late Development

• In Event: 3-234 - Attachment and Psychopathology across the Life Span: Key Findings, Issues, and Future Directions

Integrative Statement

Depression is one of the most frequently diagnosed psychological disorders, with persistent patterns of impairment evident from childhood to adulthood. While determined by multiple variables, one robust predictor of depressive symptoms across the life span is interpersonal stress (Sheets & Craighead, 2014). Attachment theory suggests that early child-parent interactions set the stage for lifelong differential vulnerability to interpersonal distress, which in itself is a characteristic of depression (Slavich, Way, Eisenberger, & Taylor, 2010). As such, attachment theory offers an important framework for understanding the etiology and development of depressive symptoms across the life span.

Empirical findings regarding the association between attachment patterns and depression across the life span have been inconsistent as to both the nature and the strength of the association, but recent meta-analyses helped summarize the state of the field. Overall, taking into account two meta analyses conducted in children (Groh, Roisman, van IJzendoorn, Bakermans-Kranenburg, & Fearon, 2012; Madigan, Atkinson, Laurin, & Benoit, 2013) and one meta-analysis conducted in adults (Dagan, Facompré, & Bernard, 2018), findings suggest that individuals classified as insecure in infancy, childhood, adolescence and adulthood exhibited more depressive symptoms than individuals classified as secure.

However, when assessing the different insecure attachment strategies - deactivating and hyperactivating - a paradoxical picture comes to light. In early life, infants and children using deactivating attachment strategies (i.e., insecure-avoidant individuals), are more likely than infants and children using hyperactivating attachment strategies (i.e., insecure-resistant individuals) to experience depressive symptoms. Specifically, insecure-avoidant children were reported to experience significantly more depressive symptoms than both secure children (d = 0.29, 95% CI [0.120.45]; Madigan et al., 2013) and children of all other attachment patterns combined (d = 0.17, 95% CI [0.03, 0.31]; Groh et al., 2012). In contrast, infants and children using hyperactivating attachment strategies did not differ in depressive symptoms from secure attachment children (d = 0.10, 95% CI [-0.120.32]; Madigan et al., 2013) or children of all other attachment patterns combined (d = 0.03, 95% CI [-0.11, -0.17]; Groh et al., 2012).

In adulthood, an opposite pattern emerges. Hyperactivating attachment strategies are more strongly linked to depressive symptoms than deactivating attachment strategies. Adults categorized with deactivating attachment strategies (i.e., insecure-dismissing adults) were not found to report significantly elevated depressive symptoms compared with secure-autonomous adults (d = .09, 95% CI [-0.03, -0.22]; Figure 1a). Moreover, adults who were classified as using hyperactivating attachment strategies (i.e., insecure-preoccupied adults) had significantly more depressive symptoms than secure-autonomous individuals, with results showing a medium and significant effect size (d = 0.48, 95% CI [0.30, 0.65]; Figure 1b).

Taken together, contradictory meta-analytic findings regarding the link between insecure attachment and depressive symptoms across the life span highlight to the complexity of the dynamics between the two constructs. Presentation will focus on several methodological and conceptual explanations as to why may the two insecure attachment patterns manifest differently at different developmental stages, as well as on future research directions to empirically determine the dynamics of the link between insecure attachment and depressive symptoms across the life span.

Authors

• Or Dagan, Stony Brook University
  Presenting Author

• Kristin Bernard, Stony Brook University
  Non-Presenting Author