The role of pubertal progress in the development of depression in early adolescence

Background: Lack of longitudinal studies on the relationship between pubertal progress and changes in depression during adolescence. Methods: Changes in the Anxious/Depressed scores of the Child Behavior Checklist and Youth Self-Report were predicted from pubertal progress. Subjects were young adolescents from the Dutch general population, aged 10-12 years at T1 and 12-14 years at T2. From the 1327 parent reports, 207 showed a change that exceeded the cut-off for inclusion in the analyses. From the 1414 self-reports, 476 exceeded the cut-off. Results: Apart from increase, decrease in depression was common. Pubertal progress was inversely related to the parent reports of boys' depression only. Conclusion: Self-perceptions of depressive symptoms change independently from pubertal progress, whereas changes observable to parents are inversely related to it in boys. Limitations: Progress was not measured across the whole pubertal development. Clinical relevance: One can expect parents to observe a decrease in boys' depression in the period when most pubertal progress is made. More attention should be paid to decreases in depressive symptomatology. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.