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Depressive symptoms over first grade and their response to a developmental epidemiologically based preventive trial aimed at improving achievement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2008

Sheppard G. Kellam*
Affiliation:
Prevention Research Center, Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene & Public Health
George W. Rebok
Affiliation:
Prevention Research Center, Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene & Public Health
Lawrence S. Mayer
Affiliation:
Prevention Research Center, Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene & Public Health Arizona State University
Nick Ialongo
Affiliation:
Prevention Research Center, Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene & Public Health
Cynthia R. Kalodner
Affiliation:
Washington College
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Dr. Sheppard Kellam, Prevention Research Center, Mason F. Lord Building, Suite 500, 4940 Eastern Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21224.

Abstract

This article is about the course of depressive symptoms during a classroom-based randomized preventive field trial aimed at improving reading achievement among first-grade children in an urban population of mixed ethnicity and lower middle to low socioeconomic status. In the fall, children reported high levels of depressive symptoms, a risk factor for major depressive disorder. There was a linear relationship in the fall between depressive symptoms and achievement test scores. Among male children in intervention classrooms whose gain in achievement was at least the national average, depression from fall to spring was decreased, compared to those whose achievement gain was lower. Among female children both in the control and in the intervention classrooms, there was also a significant relationship between gain in achievement and the course of depression.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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