Review of Development and Psychopathology: A Vulnerability-Stress Perspective.

Abstract

BENJAMIN L. HANKIN and JOHN R. Z. ABELA (Eds.) Development and Psychopathology: A Vulnerability-Stress Perspective Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2005, 520 pages (ISBN 1-41290-490-0, CDN$72.95 Paperback) Reviewed by PAUL D. HASTINGS and JACOB N. NUSELOVICI In this edited volume, Hankin and Abela seek to advance perspectives on the development of various psychopathologies by calling attention to the joint contributions of individual susceptibilities - vulnerabilities - and adverse environmental circumstances stressors. Vulnerability-stress models of psychopathology are rooted in such early work as Beck's diathesisstress model of depression, and Sameroff's transactional model of development. The interactions of dispositional and environmental influences together lead to the unfolding, maintenance, or change of individual competencies over time. Cicchetti, Luthar, Rutter, and others have led efforts to incorporate the interdependencies of nature and nurture, with the implications this has for continually re-directed growth and change throughout the life-course, firmly into the tenets of developmental psychopathology. Despite these theoretical advances to our understanding of developmental processes, few researchers have empirically evaluated vulnerability-stress models. One limiting factor in the progression of the science of developmental psychopathology has been the absence of a thoughtfully articulated and integrative summary of the relevant vulnerabilities and stressors affecting children and adolescents. This book begins to fill that void. There is a disclaimer in the preface of the volume, though, as the editors confide that more questions are posed than answers given. The volume starts with one chapter on stress, followed by one chapter on vulnerability-stress models. Part II follows with seven chapters on specific areas of vulnerability. Herein lies a shortcoming of the book, and arguably of the field of developmental psychopathology: Stress is not given the same degree of careful and detailed consideration as vulnerability. Many chapters refer broadly to negative events as if they were all created equal. As Grant and McMahon argue in the first chapter, the field needs new and complete taxonomies of stress. For research on the development of psychopathology to progress, as much attention needs to be given to identifying the circumstances that objectively qualify as stressors as has been devoted to identifying vulnerabilities and symptoms. In the second chapter, Ingram and Luxton introduce a number of models of how stress and vulnerability factors might interact to affect functioning and development. In so doing, they illuminate the potential for vulnerabilities to generate new stressors in a person's life, and for stressors to introduce or exacerbate vulnerabilities. The interdependence of stress and vulnerability, therefore, may call into question the extent to which they truly can be meaningfully distinguished, particularly in early development. Consider the contributions of parental care for infants and young children. Soothing and regulation of infant arousal occurs through the relationship with a sensitive and effective caregiver. Thus, should an abusive or neglectful parent of an infant be considered a vulnerability, or a stressor? As both Davila and colleagues (Chapter 9) and Johnson and colleagues (Chapter 15) indicate, this may be a meaningless distinction. One cannot accurately extend adult-based perspectives on psychopathology into a developmental framework without necessarily acknowledging that the rules of the game have changed. Factors or processes that may be clearly distinguishable in adulthood as internal (vulnerability) or external (stress) break down when one seeks to understand the initial origins and etiology of any aspect of functioning in the earliest periods of childhood. The chapters in Part II describe genetic, neurophysiological, affective, cognitive, attachment, social cognitive (interpersonal), and personality vulnerabilities. …