According to some studies, anxiety-depressive symptoms in adults are more common in insecure attachment relationships during childhood.
Let us remember that the styles of insecure attachmentAccording to the , they are divided into ambivalent anxious attachment, avoidant attachment and disorganized attachment. All of them facing the style of secure attachmentwhich is usually associated with greater emotional balance and more adjusted relational behaviors in adulthood.
The role of early relationships in psychopathology
Bowlby and highlighted the role that early relationships play in the development of different psychopathologies. Subsequently, various studies have supported its theories in a wide variety of disorders.
In any case, specifying the relationship between a specific attachment style and a specific psychopathology requires extensive studies, since until now most of those that have been carried out have been designed and tested with non-clinical samples.
The influence of insecure attachment on the development of anxious-depressive symptoms in adulthood
Specifically, some studies have been carried out that have highlighted a correlation between insecure attachment models and anxious-depressive disorders.
In general, there is a clear association between insecure attachment styles, the presence of symptoms and depressive disorders. However, there is still no agreement in terms of which style is predominant in individuals with depression, since research results are disparate.
For example, in Pilkonis’s (1988) study it was found that a high percentage of adults with depressive disorder adjust to patterns of insecure avoidant attachment developed during his childhood. As we will see below, other studies point in another direction. However, more clinical research is required in this regard.
A study carried out more recently with a non-clinical sample of 366 people between 18 and 62 years old, from the Metropolitan and Maule region of Chile, used the CaMir-R questionnaire by Pierrehumbert et al. (1996) to assess attachment in adults. This instrument measures attachment representations and conceptions about family functioning in adolescence and early adulthood.
This study (Santelices Álvarez, Guzmán González, Garrido Rojas, 2010) also strengthened Bowlby’s hypothesis, in the sense that it points out that Security in attachment style has an influence on mental health throughout life.
According to the results obtained, secure attachment developed in the first years of life represents a protective factor against socio-emotional adjustment problems, specifically referring to anxious-depressive symptoms.
Furthermore, this work reveals the other pole of the argument: that the insecure attachment style is a risk factor for mental health and social adjustment.
The research also pointed out that, according to the correlations obtained, Anxious attachment has a greater impact on mental health than avoidant attachment. A hypothesis that opens new avenues of research regarding the differences within the insecure attachment group referring to a psychopathological condition such as depression or anxiety. At the moment there is no agreement on what is the predominant style within the insecure model.
The researchers of this study warn of caution in interpreting the data, since causal relationships cannot be established based on their research design, which is cross-sectional and correlational in nature. In short, it shows associations between both variables, but does not generate causality models. So work in this direction remains open, but still with many issues to resolve.
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