The interpersonal nature of depressive symptoms: The impact of biased perceptions and reassurance-seeking on experiences of support within romantic relationships

Abstract

This thesis investigated whether biased perceptions and reassurance-seeking undermine the support people with elevated depressive symptoms need from their romantic partners. I predicted that greater depressive symptoms would be associated with more negatively biased perceptions of partners’ support, and that these negative perceptions would contribute to (1) lower feelings of support and more negative emotions toward the partner, and (2) increases in depressive symptoms across time, especially for those individuals who were initially higher in depressive symptoms. I also explored whether greater reassurance-seeking previously shown to be associated with depressive symptoms, contributed to these effects by (1) reducing support provision by the partner, thereby (2) increasing depressive symptoms over time. I examined these processes using self-report questionnaires of couples’ (N = 100) support experiences over the past month as well as behavioural observations of support provision as couples engaged in support-relevant discussions. In both methods, participants reported on the support they received from their partner and their feelings of support, negative emotions, and evaluations of the support transaction. Couples were also followed up across the following six months to assess changes in depressive symptoms across time. Women with elevated depressive symptoms held negatively biased perceptions of the support they received from their partners when compared to their partners’ reported support provision and ratings of their partners’ support provision by independent coders. Moreover, these negatively biased perceptions were associated with lower felt support and more negative emotions toward partners, and contributed to the exacerbation of depressive symptoms across time for women who were initially high in depressive symptoms. The results also demonstrated that women’s depressive symptoms were associated with greater reassurance-seeking. However, rather than undermining support provision as predicted, greater reassurance-seeking was associated with greater observer-rated support provision from partners, and greater support provision predicted decreases in depressive symptoms for women who initially had elevated depressive symptoms. These findings advance understandings of the development and maintenance of depression within an interpersonal context, highlight the importance of considering interpersonal dynamics behaviourally and dyadically within actual interactions, and have important implications for the treatment and assessment of people with depressive symptomatology.