Is Depression Best Viewed as a Continuum or Discrete Category? A Taxometric Analysis of Childhood and Adolescent Depression in a Population-Based Sample.

TLDR

The study aimed to determine whether childhood and adolescent depression is a dimensional or categorical construct using taxometric analysis. The authors assessed DSM‑IV major depressive symptoms from youth and parent reports in a population‑based sample and applied Meehl’s taxometric procedures to analyze the latent structure. Taxometric analyses that accounted for symptom skewness revealed that depression is a dimensional construct, with a dimensional structure evident across all DSM‑IV symptoms, symptom domains, reporter types, and demographic subgroups.

Abstract

The authors examined the latent structure of depression in a population-based sample of children and adolescents. Youth's self-reports and parents' reports of the youth's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.; DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) major depressive symptoms were assessed via a structured clinical interview. The authors used Meehl's (1995) taxometric procedures to discern whether youth depression is dimensional or categorical. Taxometric analyses that explicitly took into account the skewness of depressive symptoms suggested that depression is a dimensional, not categorical, construct. The dimensional structure of depression was obtained for all of the DSM-IV major depressive symptoms as well as for different domains of depression (emotional distress symptoms and vegetative, involuntary defeat symptoms), youth and parent reports, and different subsamples (i.e., boys vs. girls and younger vs. older youth).