4 Risk Factors That Increase Your Chances of Developing Depression

There are many factors that can contribute to depression. Here, we'll walk through five key risk factors that research shows can meaningfully raise your likelihood of developing it.

#4 — Neuroticism

One well-established personality framework is the Big Five, which measures traits like openness, extraversion, and conscientiousness. Among these is neuroticism — a tendency to experience negative emotions like sadness, anxiety, and distress more easily and more intensely than others.

People high in neuroticism tend to feel stress more deeply and recover from it more slowly. This pattern significantly raises the risk of depression. Research using odds ratios — a measure of how much more likely an outcome is in one group versus another — found that people with neurotic personality traits are roughly twice as likely to develop depression compared to those without this tendency.

This connects closely to what's known in the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) as harm avoidance — the tendency to anticipate negative outcomes even in neutral situations. Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs) often show a similar pattern, processing stimuli more deeply and defaulting toward negative interpretations, which can push neuroticism scores higher.

In short, if you're someone who ruminates heavily and gravitates toward negative thinking, you may be more biologically predisposed to depression.

#3 — Family History

Having a family history of depression is another significant risk factor. Multiple studies have found an odds ratio of roughly 2.0 to 3.0 — meaning it doubles or triples your risk.

A large 2023 population-wide cohort study examined how a family member's depression affects an individual's own risk of developing major depressive disorder. The key findings:

Having a parent or sibling with depression approximately doubled an individual's risk of developing major depression (odds ratio: 2.04–2.10).
This pattern was consistent across both men and women.
Risk increased cumulatively — the more family members affected, the higher the individual's risk. Having both parents and siblings with depression raised the risk more than having only one affected family member.

The timing of exposure also matters. Being exposed to a family member's depression during childhood carries a higher risk than developing a family history later in adulthood. Early childhood is a critical period for forming secure attachments, and a parent's depression during that window can have an outsized negative impact. Family history reflects both genetic vulnerability and environmental influence — the biological predisposition and the developmental context both play a role.

#2 — Childhood Abuse and Trauma

This risk factor connects directly to the previous one: just as early exposure to a parent's depression increases risk, so does experiencing abuse or neglect in childhood.

A 2017 meta-analysis by Nelson et al. synthesized findings from 184 studies and looked at two key questions: Does a history of childhood abuse or neglect increase the risk of depression in adulthood? And among people who already have depression, does abuse history affect the severity and course of the illness?

People who experienced childhood abuse or neglect were 2.6 to 3.7 times more likely to develop depression in adulthood. Among people already diagnosed with depression, nearly half reported a history of abuse or neglect — making it one of the most common shared characteristics in that population.

A history of abuse also increased the likelihood of treatment-resistant depression by roughly twofold. These individuals were more likely to have a longer, more chronic course of illness and were less likely to respond fully to standard treatments.

One counterintuitive finding: emotional abuse and neglect were more strongly associated with depression severity than physical or sexual abuse. This may be because emotional abuse tends to be chronic and ongoing — and often goes unrecognized, even by the person causing it. Emotional neglect disrupts a fundamental developmental process: the experience of being responded to, seen, and validated — the very foundation of believing that you matter. When that process is consistently blocked, it shapes how a person relates to others for years afterward, increasing the likelihood of further negative relational experiences.

From a neurological standpoint, early trauma can cause the amygdala to become overactivated while the prefrontal cortex — which regulates emotional responses — remains underdeveloped, creating a brain state that is chronically more vulnerable to depression and anxiety.

#1 — Severe Stressful Life Events

The single strongest risk factor for depression identified in research is exposure to a severe stressful life event, particularly one that occurred recently. The type of stressor matters significantly:

Stressful Event	Increased Risk
Financial collapse	4.4×
Relationship breakdown (divorce/separation)	3.9×
Serious illness or health threat	3.1×
Death of someone close	5.1×
Violence, crime, or abuse	6.8×

These studies focused specifically on stressful events within the past six months — because that's when the most significant stress-related brain changes are observed. Depression most commonly develops within one to three months after a major stressor, when what researchers call "stress sensitization" is at its peak. After a severe stressor, the brain becomes more reactive to subsequent — even smaller — stressors, making it easier to be knocked off balance again.

Acute stress isn't simply an emotional experience. It's a biological one. Severe stress activates the body's HPA axis (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis), and when that system is overloaded, it can cause real structural damage to the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex. Stress also elevates inflammatory markers in the body, which suppress the release of serotonin and dopamine — contributing directly to both the mood and physical symptoms of depression.

This explains something many people find confusing: why depression sometimes hits after the crisis has already passed. Someone might get through a lawsuit, a loss, or a major life upheaval feeling relatively functional — and then crash weeks or months later. The brain doesn't always fall apart in the moment. Sometimes it waits.

Bonus Factor — Being Female

A 2017 meta-analysis found that women are approximately twice as likely as men to develop major depressive disorder. Importantly, this effect held even after controlling for social and environmental stressors — meaning biological factors independently contribute to the difference.

Several mechanisms are thought to be involved. Genetic variants associated with depression appear slightly more frequently in women. More significantly, estrogen — a hormone that directly influences the synthesis, breakdown, and receptor binding of serotonin — fluctuates dramatically at key life stages: puberty, the premenstrual phase, pregnancy, postpartum, and menopause. These hormonal shifts create windows of biological vulnerability that aren't present in the same way for men.

What to Do With This Information

Knowing you have one or more of these risk factors isn't a diagnosis, and it isn't a verdict. The goal isn't to look at this list and feel hopeless. The goal is to understand your own vulnerability so you can manage it.

Think about how people with a family history of diabetes or high blood pressure approach their health — they don't give up. They take it more seriously and build habits that account for their specific risk. Mental health is no different. If you're more vulnerable to depression, that's a reason to be more intentional about habits that support your emotional well-being: sleep, social connection, stress management, and building a life that has enough room in it for things that bring you genuine meaning and pleasure.

Knowing your risk is the first step toward doing something about it.