BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Psychopathology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1448585
This article is part of the Research TopicHow to Objectify the Psychiatric Subject in Clinical Neuroscience: Results of Current Research Programs Running from General Psychopathology to Personalized NeurobiologyView all 8 articles
Investigating Depression Pathways in a Clinical Sample: Childhood Adversity, Reward and Threat Processing
Provisionally accepted
- 1The International Institute for the Advanced Studies of Psychotherapy and Applied Mental Health, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
- 2Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
- 3Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
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Childhood adversity (CA, abuse and neglect) is an important risk factor for depression. However, other variables, such as childhood socioeconomic status (SES), may influence this association. Moreover, the underlying mechanisms that contribute to the devastating consequences of CA for depression are incompletely understood. Still, recent work point toward reward and threat processing. Building on these, we sought (1) to investigate associations between CA, depression, reward and threat processing, (2) to control for childhood SES when investigating these associations, and (3) to test the mediating role of reward and threat processing in the association between CA and depression. Inpatients (N = 33, M = 48.36; SD = 11.76) with a formal diagnosis of major depressive disorder completed self-report measures for all variables of interest. We found significant associations between CA, depression and threat processing, but no other significant associations emerged (p <.05). Results remained similar when we controlled for childhood SES. Furthermore, we did not find support for the potential mediating role of reward and threat processing in the association between CA and depression. These results extend existing research investigating CA and depression, and single out threat processing. Moreover, they suggest that these patterns of associations are robust. While they do not provide support for the proposed mechanisms, they underscore the need for further research and point out relevant directions.
Keywords: Childhood Adversity, Depression, Socioeconomic status, Reward, threat
Received: 13 Jun 2024; Accepted: 11 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Oltean, Miu and Szentágotai-Tătar. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Lia-Ecaterina Oltean, The International Institute for the Advanced Studies of Psychotherapy and Applied Mental Health, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
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