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Chronic Environmental Stress and the Temporal Course of Depression and Panic Disorder: a Trait-State-Occasion Modeling Approach

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Chronic Environmental Stress and the Temporal Course of Depression and Panic Disorder: a Trait-State-Occasion Modeling Approach W&M ScholarWorks Arts & Sciences Articles Arts and Sciences 2016 Chronic Environmental Stress and the Temporal Course of Depression and Panic Disorder: A Trait-State-Occasion Modeling Approach Christopher C. Conway Coll William & Mary, Dept Psychol, Williamsburg, VA 23188 USA Lauren A. Rutter Boston Univ, Ctr Anxiety & Related Disorders, Boston, MA 02215 USA Timothy A. Brown Boston Univ, Ctr Anxiety & Related Disorders, Boston, MA 02215 USA Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/aspubs Recommended Citation Conway, C. C., Rutter, L. A., & Brown, T. A. (2016). Chronic environmental stress and the temporal course of depression and panic disorder: A trait-state-occasion modeling approach. Journal of abnormal psychology, 125(1), 53. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Arts and Sciences at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Arts & Sciences Articles by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Journal of Abnormal Psychology © 2015 American Psychological Association 2016, Vol. 125, No. 1, 53–63 0021-843X/16/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/abn0000122 Chronic Environmental Stress and the Temporal Course of Depression and Panic Disorder: A Trait-State-Occasion Modeling Approach Christopher C. Conway Lauren A. Rutter and Timothy A. Brown College of William & Mary Boston University Both acute stressful life events and ongoing strains are thought to confer vulnerability to emotional disorders. Unremitting stressful conditions may be particularly pathogenic, but prior research has struggled to delimit chronic versus transient stressful experiences. We aimed to isolate stable stressors— theorized to be indicators of a latent stress proneness trait—and to examine their effects on the temporal course of depression and panic disorder. We recruited 677 patients diagnosed with an emotional disorder and administered interviews for psychopathology and life stress 3 times over 12-month intervals. Trait-state-occasion modeling revealed that 74% of the variance in life stress was stable over the follow-up period. These stable stressors were associated with a more refractory course of depression and, to a smaller degree, panic disorder over time. In addition, neither gender nor participation in cognitive– behavioral therapy affected the persistence of environmental stress over the study time frame. We discuss implications of these findings for explaining depression recurrence, improving psychological interven- tions for emotional disorders, and the measurement and evaluation of stress proneness. General Scientific Summary Some life stressors are transient, with acute negative consequences, whereas others endure and take a toll over long periods of time. This study found that mental health patients’ stressors can be highly stable and that these ongoing strains put them at risk for persistent anxiety and depression. Keywords: depression, panic, stress, trait-state-occasion modeling Some stressful conditions are transient, whereas others endure There are several possible mechanisms of stress continuity. and transform into ongoing strains. There is reason to believe that First, many relationship, health, and occupational stressors are continuously stressful environments have a particularly strong essentially continuous (e.g., chronic marital strain, obesity). Sec- influence on the temporal course of emotional disorders (Brown & ond, stress can beget stress (Paykel, 2003), in the sense that one Harris, 1978; Rutter & Sandberg, 1992). However, researchers stressful condition eventually can tax resources in other domains conducting cross-sectional studies have struggled to isolate the (e.g., divorce settlement leads to financial difficulty). Third, ac- signal of enduring stressors amid the noise of transitory, and likely cording to stress generation theory (Hammen, 1991), several trait- less pathogenic, life stress (Hammen, 2005). In the present study, like psychological characteristics (e.g., excessive reassurance we aimed to (a) estimate the degree of stress continuity over time seeking) confer vulnerability to stress exposure (Liu & Alloy, 1 and (b) evaluate the effect of individual differences in chronic 2010). Consistent with these putative mechanisms of stress conti- stress exposure on the longitudinal course of emotional disorders nuity, several lines of research have documented rank-order sta- in a large clinical sample. bility in stress exposure across both brief (e.g., weeks) and long This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. (e.g., decades) intervals (e.g., Hazel, Hammen, Brennan, & Naj- This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. man, 2008; Pearlin, Schieman, Fazio, & Meersman, 2005; Turner Editor’s Note. David A. Cole served as the guest editor for this & Butler, 2003). article.—SG Although previous longitudinal data have indicated that a stable aspect to major stress exposure almost certainly exists (e.g., Hazel This article was published Online First November 23, 2015. et al., 2008), no researchers to date have attempted to quantify it Christopher C. Conway, Department of Psychology, College of William directly. In other words, we do not know what proportion of life & Mary; Lauren A. Rutter and Timothy A. Brown, Center for Anxiety and stress observed or reported at any given time is a reflection of Related Disorders, Boston University. This research was supported by U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Mental Health 1 Except where otherwise noted, we use the term “chronic” in this article Grant MH039096 awarded to the third author. to describe stressors that are “perfectly” stable over a given time frame. In Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Christo- other articles, the term has been used to denote conditions that are more pher C. Conway, Department of Psychology, College of William & Mary, protracted than a discrete stressful life event, but do not necessarily span 540 Landrum Drive, Williamsburg, VA 23188. E-mail: [email protected] the entire time period of interest. 53 54 CONWAY, RUTTER, AND BROWN persistent environmental conditions versus more transient chal- wax and wane in severity, although the role of stress in the lenges. This is an important omission in the literature, given that temporal course after onset has only been systematically studied in (a) stressor chronicity is theoretically and empirically related to one of them (depression). That is, longitudinal studies have shown pathogenicity (Brown & Rosellini, 2011; Hammen, 2005), and (b) stress exposure to worsen the course of depressive symptoms over examining the stability of stressful conditions in clinical samples time (e.g., Brown & Rosellini, 2011). In contrast, the literature on can shed light on how effectively psychological interventions life stress and panic is largely restricted to retrospective studies of address environmental, in addition to psychological, vulnerabili- the presence of acute stress at the time of panic disorder onset (e.g., ties (cf. McMain, Guimond, Streiner, Cardish, & Links, 2012; Faravelli & Pallanti, 1989; Last, Barlow, & O’Brien, 1984), and Zanarini, Frankenburg, Reich, & Fitzmaurice, 2010). very little research has addressed the role of stress as it relates to The trait-state-occasion (TSO) modeling framework was formu- the maintenance of panic symptoms (cf. Wade, Monroe, & Mi- lated to parse stable versus unstable elements of psychological chelson, 1993). In addition, we explored differences in the stability constructs (Cole, Martin, & Steiger, 2005). TSO is a form of of life stress across multiple subgroups: men versus women and structural equation modeling that partitions a condition at any treated versus untreated participants. Women are known to be at given point in time (i.e., state) into time-invariant (i.e., trait) and higher risk for emotional disorders as well as many forms of social time-variant (i.e., occasion) components. In the present study, the stress (Hammen, 2005; Kendler & Gardner, 2014; Kessler et al., trait factor captured environmental stressors that were temporally 2003). It has yet to be determined, however, whether women are stable (i.e., constant across all waves), whereas the occasion factor prone to more stable, as compared with more frequent, exposure to captured situational stressors that were not continuously present. stressful conditions. Along the same lines, most psychotherapies Stress stability represented by the trait factor is theorized to reflect directly target intrapsychic processes, and the extent to which they stress proneness, that is, “personological” characteristics or behav- interrupt ongoing stressors is unknown. ioral tendencies that promote stressful circumstances (e.g., impul- In the present study, we applied TSO modeling to annual sive decision-making style, affiliation with deviant peers). Those interview-based assessments of major stress exposure over 2 years higher on a stress proneness trait would be expected to elicit, in a large clinical sample. Our first objective was to determine the evoke, and maintain a variety of stressful circumstances that are degree of stability (vs. transience) of stressful events. By isolating due, at least in part, to their attitudes, behaviors, and personality the “perfectly” stable component of life
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