Introduction: Childhood maltreatment (CM) and depression are serious global issues with high prevalence and lifelong impacts on physical and mental health. CM has been proposed as a modifiable risk factor for depression that, if prevented, may contribute to a reduction in the global incidence of depressive disorders. Despite this, there is a paucity of reviews examining the strength of the association between these variables. The aim of this systematic review and meta‐analysis was to evaluate the empirical evidence and determine if CM is supported as a preventable risk factor for depression.Methods: A search was performed in July 2024 for all peer‐reviewed journal articles written in English examining the relationship between CM and adult depression in the electronic databases EBSCOhost, Proquest, and Embase. Studies were included in this review if they measured maltreatment before 18 years of age as the independent variable and adult depression as the dependent variable. Studies were excluded if the outcome variable was grouped with comorbidity and if they did not report primary quantitative data. A total of 77 studies with 516,302 participants met the inclusion criteria for review.Results: A random‐effects meta‐analysis was used to generate a pooled odds ratio from 87 effect estimates and demonstrated that individuals with a history of any CM are 2.5 times more likely to experience adult depression (OR = 2.49 [95% CI: 2.25–2.76]). This increase in odds remained regardless of how the primary studies screened for depression.Conclusions: These findings confirmed the strong association between the experience of CM and adult depression. High heterogeneity in the meta‐analytic results also suggested that further research is required that applies consistent adjustments for comorbidities and confounding factors and examines the temporal relationship between the variables to establish causality.

Introduction: Intimate partner violence (IPV) and depression are global health concerns with high prevalence rates and substantial negative impacts on individuals and the wider community. Women are particularly vulnerable to both IPV victimization and depressive disorders, and both are recognized worldwide as priorities for women's health. The aim of this systematic review and meta‐analysis was to determine whether recent longitudinal empirical evidence supports exposure to IPV as a contributing factor to the subsequent onset of depression in women.Methods: A search was performed in August 2024 of the Medline, PsychInfo, and EBSCOHost databases for longitudinal studies published after the year 2013, and 1193 studies were identified. Studies were included if they were written in English and measured IPV as an independent variable with depression as a dependent variable. Studies were excluded if depression was not measured separately from other variables or did not report primary quantitative data. Eleven studies with 118,544 female participants met the inclusion criteria for review.Results: Ten of the 11 reviewed studies reported a statistically significant positive association between exposure to IPV and depression in women. A random effects meta‐analysis was used to generate pooled odds ratios from nine estimates, which demonstrated that female IPV survivors have significantly increased odds of developing subsequent depression (OR = 1.92, (95% CI: 1.28, 2.86); although, there was high heterogeneity across studies (I² = 98.3%, p < 0.001). Ten of the 11 studies were from high‐income, industrialized countries, which limits the global application of these findings.Conclusions: These findings suggest that IPV may be one of many contributing factors for depression in women. However, variability in the definition of IPV and inconsistent adjustment for confounders across studies limits firm conclusions. The findings of this review suggest that strategies to prevent IPV could play a role in reducing the prevalence of depression. They also support the inclusion of depression screening for survivors of IPV in clinical approaches and a review of the effectiveness of IPV‐related depression intervention strategies.

Background: The Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) characteristic of difficulties in social communication and interaction has been previously associated with elevated anxiety and the degree of mental effort required to understand and respond to social cues. These associations have implications for the mental health of autistic youth, but they are usually based on correlational statistics between measures of anxiety and social interaction demands that are collected in formal psychological testing settings. Another index of mental effort that has been found to correlate with anxious arousal is gamma wave activity, which is measured via EEG. Methods: To compare data from both of these indicators of mental effort and anxiety, a two-stage study was conducted using (1) standardized test data and (2) in vivo EEG data in a low-demand social setting. Results: As well as significant associations between social cognition and anxiety from standardized scales, there were also meaningful relationships between social cognition and gamma wave activity. Conclusions: Because gamma wave activity represents the highest level of cognitive complexity for brain activity, is an index of hypervigilance under threatening conditions, and has been associated with anxiety in autistic youth, these findings suggest that even low-level demand social interaction settings may initiate high-level anxiety-related behaviour in autistic youth.

Because of their potential to enhance pathways for diagnosis and treatment, a great deal of research has been conducted to identify brain biomarkers of mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety. Similarly, the investigation of the biomarkers of those protective factors that help individuals resist, or recover from, these mental illnesses is also directly relevant to clinical practice. One such protective factor is Psychological Resilience (PR) but relatively little is known about its neurobiological underpinnings. A literature search was conducted of electroencephalographic data and PR, revealing seven studies that reported brain electrical activity categorised into bands of specified frequencies. Several studies reported significant associations between PR and alpha band activity, and somewhat less on beta band activity, principally via their roles in emotion regulation and problem solving. However, despite having a major role in many aspects of cognition and brain function, and being implicated in depression, only two studies examined gamma band activity specifically, and their results were equivocal. Several possible reasons for these apparently null results of the association between gamma band activity and PR are discussed, leading to a brief description of gamma, and suggestions for future research into its association with PR.

The experience of childhood maltreatment (CM) increases the risk for depressive disorders by two-and-a-half times across the lifespan. Although stress system and immunological models offer some explanation of this vulnerability, further investigation is required to understand the underlying neurophysiological mechanisms and identify potential biomarkers for diagnosis and treatment. Resting-state electroencephalography (EEG) offers a low-cost, non-invasive, and accessible methodology for that purpose. This narrative review synthesizes resting-state EEG findings that are common to CM and depression as a primer for further research and the future formulation of a model that may link these two in a causal manner. Although evidence supports atypical beta and theta band power, frontal alpha asymmetry and altered default mode network functional connectivity as possible indicators of the CM-EEG association, there is a paucity of EEG-based CM research available to complement the extensive depression-focused literature. Large-sample, prospective EEG studies of CM that consider confounding factors and assess the neurophysiological impact of CM independent of psychopathologies are required.

Melancholia remains a severe and complex form of depression. One possible avenue to a better understanding of melancholia and potentially improved methods of treating it, is via examination of the profiles of brain electrical activity of patients suffering from melancholia. However, apart from work using fMRI, relatively little is known about the electrophysiological basis of melancholia despite the potential for this to inform targeted effective treatments such as Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation. To better understand the state of research regarding EEG variables and melancholia, a systematic review was undertaken. Results indicated that there was a large degree of complexity in the association between melancholia and various EEG parameters, and that many specific aspects of brain electrical activity remain under-studied. Suggestions are made for future research.