The Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) and Youth Depression - In Context

The Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) system is a valuable framework for researchers seeking to understand the mechanisms underlying psychopathology. Although RDoC provides guidance for studying biological and behavioral mechanisms, it offers relatively little direction for incorporating environmental variables into study designs. Consequently, RDoC studies may overlook or ignore environmental context, reducing the likelihood of evaluating possible interactions of biological and environmental processes.

The current review investigated the extent to which studies utilizing the RDoC framework have included environmental factors when evaluating mechanisms of depression in youth.

Results showed that environmental variables have been measured infrequently, with economic instability measured most often (36% of studies). Additionally, studies of youth adverse childhood events, parental psychosocial factors, and social and community context often have been analyzed as substantive variables of interest, whereas economic instability and parent education primarily have been used as covariates, when included at all. Distinct patterns were identified depending on the age group under study, with generally lower rates of inclusion of environmental variables in studies of adolescents as compared to children.

We provide recommendations for how to incorporate environmental context into RDoC studies to further our understanding of the development of depression in youth.