Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
The number of moderate to severe undesirable life events and the quality of friendships were compared between a consecutive series of 100 children aged 7-16 years with emotional disorders and a series of community controls matched for age, sex, and social class. Undesirable events and friendship difficulties exerted independent direct effects of similar magnitude on the probability of developing emotional disorders; 33% of disturbed children experienced both adversities compared with 6% of controls. An additive interaction was found for the two factors. The results were uninfluenced by the sex or pubertal status of the subjects. There appears to be no greater probability of being anxious rather than depressed in the presence of life events, alone or in combinations with friendship difficulties. Recent undesirable life events and friendship difficulties arise through independent social pathways and may exert their effects through different psychological mechanisms.
Goodyer et al. (Tue,) studied this question.
Synapse has enriched 5 closely related papers on similar clinical questions. Consider them for comparative context: