Teenage girls with symptoms of depression may have a higher risk of subsequent physical abuse by their partners than those who don't have symptoms of depression, according to a study in the March issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Depressive symptoms and disorders during adolescence have been linked to a number of negative outcomes later in life, including low self-esteem, interpersonal difficulties, divorce, impaired social functioning and problems at work.
Depression is understood to often occur as a consequence of partner violence, but few studies have examined whether depression early in life puts women at an increased risk for subsequent exposure to such violence.
The study focused on a total of 1,659 girls who were involved in an opposite-sex relationship of three or more months' duration at the time of the second interview.
Editor's Note: This research uses data from Add Health, a program project funded by a grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Rockville, Md., with cooperative funding from 17 other agencies.
Partial funding for research came from the National Institute of Mental Health Academic Fellowship on Mental Health and Developmental Disorders.
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