Abstract: Research focusing on the predictors of depression for persons with a congenital disability, especially cerebral palsy, is sparse. This research examined the relationship between functional disability and depressive symptoms. It was hypothesized that high levels of disability will lead to low task coping, high emotional coping, high avoidance coping and high levels of alexithymia. Furthermore, it was hypothesized that high levels of disability would interact with low levels of positive family environment leading to even less task coping, higher emotional coping, higher avoidance coping and higher levels of alexithymia. Lastly, it was further hypothesized that disability, family environment, low levels of task coping, high levels of emotional and avoidance coping and low levels of alexithymia are related to high levels of depression. The model predicted 47% of the variance in depressive symptoms, partially supporting the hypotheses. Emotional coping contributed the largest unique variance to depressive symptoms (14%) and positively predicted depressive symptoms, followed by avoidance coping at 4%, then FES at 3%, both of which negatively predicted depressive symptoms. There are several limitations to this study as it is cross sectional, the measures are mostly self-report, there may be interviewer bias and confounding variables. This study is also under powered. This study identified three future studies, the need to replicate the findings from this study, the need to compare congenital vs acquired disabilities and their influence on depressive symptoms, the need to research influence of family environment on adult depressive symptoms and coping.