Gratitude: A Resilience Factor for More Securely Attached Children
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Gratitude: A Resilience Factor for More Securely Attached Children Veronica Scott1 Martine Verhees2 Rudi De Raedt3 Patricia Bijttebier4 Michael W. Vasey5 Magali Van de Walle2 Theodore E. A. Waters6 Guy Bosmans 2 ●
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Accepted: 24 October 2020 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Research on the association between childhood attachment and depressive symptoms has primarily focused on the role of risk factors. This resulted in a lack of research on the role of potential resilience factors. In the current study, we suggest that middle childhood secure attachment is linked to adolescents’ trait gratitude, which is linked to the enhanced resilience against the development of depressive symptoms in adolescence. In a longitudinal study, we measured 157 children’s (9–12 years old, 48% boys) attachment appraisals (anxiety, avoidance, and trust), attachment representations (secure base script knowledge, and coherence) and depressive symptoms at baseline, and gratitude and depressive symptoms at follow-up two years later. Results supported our hypotheses that middle childhood attachment was robustly linked with adolescent trait gratitude. Moreover, trait gratitude indirectly linked middle childhood attachment avoidance, trust, and secure base script knowledge to change in depressive symptoms over time. These findings may help explain why more securely attached children are less likely to develop depressive symptoms. Keywords Resilience Gratitude Attachment Depression Middle childhood ●
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Highlights Middle childhood secure attachment links to more trait gratitude in adolescence. ● Associations were found both for self-reported attachment appraisals and attachment representations derived from narratives. ● Trait gratitude indirectly linked attachment appraisals and representations to longitudinal changes in depressive symptoms. ● Trait gratitude is a resilience feature of more securely attached children. ●
Supplementary Information The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-020-01853-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Guy Bosmans [email protected] 1
University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA
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Clinical Psychology, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
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Department of Experimental Clinical and Health Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium
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School Psychology and Child and Adolescent Development, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
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Department of Psychology, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA
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Department of Psychology, New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, UAE
Depression is one of the most common and urgent mental health issues in adolescence (Lee et al. 2010; Murray and Lopez 1996; Saluja et al. 2004). Depressive symptoms, which are the similarly damaging precursors of clinical depression (Cuijpers and Smit 2002; Lewinsohn et al. 2000), increase considerably throughout childhood to adolescence (Brooks-Gunn and Petersen 1991; Dujardin
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