Dependent Stressful Life Events and Prior Depressive Episodes in the Prediction of Major Depression

Abstract

Elucidating causal pathways to psychiatric illness is a critical research goal. However, with many risk factors for psychopathology, causal inference is problematic because randomized controlled trials—the gold standard for clarifying causation—are, for ethical or practical reasons, impossible. Two approaches remain to evaluate causal processes: natural experiments and statistical methods.^1-3