Childhood Origins of Depression: Evidence from Native and Nonnative Women in Alaska and the Russian Far East

Abstract

Explanations for depression usually implicate contemporaneous Stressors, although biologic predispositions and childhood violence may also serve as precursors. This study evaluates the relative influence of contemporaneous Stressors and both intrafamilial and interethnic violence experienced in childhood. Logistic regression is applied to data collected from a random sample of 355 women aged 20-89 in 1993 who lived in Chukotka and Kamchatka in the Russian Far East and in the Aleutians and the Northwest Alaskan Native Association region of Alaska. Although two contemporaneous Stressors influence the likelihood of depression, intrafamilial violence experienced in childhood and, for natives of both Alaska and the Russian Far East, childhood emotional abuse by nonnatives exhibit dramatically more important effects that do not decay with time. These findings point to a violence-induced biologic mechanism for depression in adulthood. They also warrant interventions that extend their focus to the subtle forms of emotional violence that members of one ethnic group may inflict on another and to the social power relationships that may give these forms of violence a lifelong impact.