Risk Factor for Depression Can Be 'Contagious'
Within one month of arriving on campus, the roommates completed an online questionnaire that included measures of cognitive vulnerability and depressive symptoms. They completed the same measures again 3 months and 6 months later; they also completed a measure of stressful life events at the two time points.Their hypothesis is "negative thinking" is "contagious" during major life transitions, when "social environments are in flux". And they believe this data supports that flying ass monkey.
The results revealed that freshmen who were randomly assigned to a roommate with high levels of cognitive vulnerability were likely to "catch" their roommate's cognitive style and develop higher levels of cognitive vulnerability; those assigned to roommates who had low initial levels of cognitive vulnerability experienced decreases in their own levels. The contagion effect was evident at both the 3-month and 6-month assessments.
Most importantly, changes in cognitive vulnerability affected risk for future depressive symptoms: Students who showed an increase in cognitive vulnerability in the first 3 months of college had nearly twice the level of depressive symptoms at 6 months than those who didn't show such an increase.
How about a little Occam's Razor: Depression is caused by an infection and living with someone who has it is a good way to catch it.
Not to mention- people often change their diet, exercise and hygiene when their "social environments are in flux".
This is basic epidemiology. Just because you don't know what it is- doesn't require you to make stuff up to explain it.
