Key idea: Environmental factors are things that happen to a person, such as a loss, poverty or abuse. They help explain why depression starts when it does.
Environmental factors
Severe life events
Losing a partner, a job or a home: a sudden loss or humiliation.
Long-term strain
Poverty, debt, caring for an ill relative, an unsafe neighbourhood.
Childhood adversity
Abuse, neglect or a chaotic home early in life raises later risk.
Little support
No one to confide in makes every other factor harder to bear.
Events · Strain · Childhood · Support
Brown and Harris (1978) interviewed 458 women in Camberwell, south London, about their lives and their mental health. This is an environmental factor explanation.
Go further: higher-level insight: Environmental factors fit the diathesis-stress model: the life event is the stress, and a vulnerability (genes, thinking style, no support) decides whether it becomes depression.
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Key idea: Life events come before many depressions, but the studies that show this have limits.
Strengths
- Women interviewed in their own community
- Shows a pattern: events plus vulnerability
- Points to prevention: support after a loss
Limitations
- Interviews rely on memory of past events
- Correlational: events cannot be assigned
- One area of London in the 1970s, women only
Causality can run both ways: depression can cause life events, such as losing a job or a partner. Studies that date the event before the first symptoms give the strongest evidence.
Watch out: Not everyone who faces a loss becomes depressed. Say what made the difference: vulnerability and support.