The temple-Wisconsin cognitive vulnerability to depression project: Lifetime history of axis I psychopathology in individuals at high and low cognitive risk for depression

The authors tested the cognitive vulnerability hypotheses of depression wit h a retrospective behavioral high-risk design. Individuals without current Axis I diagnoses who exhibited either negative or positive cognitive styles were compared on lifetime prevalence of depressive and other disorders and the clinical parameters of depressive episodes. Consistent with prediction s, cognitively high-risk participants had higher lifetime prevalence than l ow-risk participants of major and hopelessness depression and marginally hi gher prevalence of minor depression. These group differences were specific to depressive disorders. The high-risk group also had more severe depressio ns than the low-risk group, but not longer duration or earlier onset depres sions. The risk group differences in prevalence of depressive disorders wer e not mediated by current depressive symptoms.