Social predictors of depression are aspects of one's social environment that are related to an individual developing major depression. These risk factors include negative social life events, conflict, and low levels of social support, all of which have been found affect the likelihood of someone experiencing major depression, the length of the depression, or the severity of the symptoms.
Negative social life events Negative social life events have been found to greatly increase one's risk of depression and clinicians are often quick to check if any major life events have preceded their patient's symptoms. This relationship is largely thought to be causal, with the strongest evidence of causation coming from findings that negative events outside of one's control are strongly associated with depression, making it unlikely that depression symptoms had anything to do with the negative event. Additional support comes from twin studies, which allow for researchers to control for endogenous factors that may be related to its onset. However, noncausal associations are also likely as individuals who are more likely to be depressed may increase their chance of experiencing a negative social event due to placing themselves into relationships where these events may be more common. Evidence for the association between negative life events and depression comes largely from case studies and studies that compare the frequency of these events in depressed individuals to rates in people who are representative of the larger population. Negative life events are often reported by the depressed, with up to 80% of cases of major depression are preceded by some major life event, and symptoms tend to occur within one month of the event if a diagnosis of major depression is made. This high frequency of negative events is also seen relative to representative samples of the non-depressed population, with studies often showing the depressed to have experienced twice as much of these negative experiences. In addition to this, depressed individuals are more likely to have experienced negative life events preceding their symptoms compared to other mental health issues like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Although negative social experiences are often reported as preceding depression, most people do not get diagnosed with major depression. Part of this stems from the fact that grieving or sadness behavior is often seen as normal and healthy and not worthy of a diagnosis indicating pathology. However, one's history with major depression, levels of social support, gender, sex, and personality differences have all been suggested to play roles in mediating one's sensitivity to pathological depression.
Dependent versus independent events The negative life events that lead to depression are often classified as dependent or independent, with dependent events being those an individual has some control over and independent events being those which are mostly due to unavoidable chance. Dependent events typically involve most stressors that result from interactions with people in addition to variables like performance-based job security and avoidable financial problems. They are more strongly associated with depression than independent events when controlling for severity and may be the result of traits that lead individuals into situations that are more likely to result in depression. In addition to this, they are likely to be more directly related to interpersonal content, at least immediately following when the stressor is felt. Dependent events are also thought to be more strongly associated with major depression symptoms in people who have a history of it than those experiencing it for the first time. However, the validity of this statement may be dependent on whether one is focusing on relapse or recurrence, with the evidence from recurrent major depression being more supportive. Although independent events are less associated with depression and social content, they are still positively associated with depression. In addition to this, they have helped contribute evidence for the causal relationship between negative life events and depression, as with dependent events there is always the question of whether depression symptoms played a role in their occurrence.
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