Anxiety and Depression in Early Adolescence

Anxiety and Depression in Early Adolescence

Introduction

Anxiety and depression in children and adolescents have been continuously found to have a strong correlation (). Similarly, the generalized diagnosis of anxiety disorder, including other major depressive disorder, often have high levels of comorbidity. It has been argued that anxiety and depression provide essential measure of negative affectivity. Indeed, there are combined symptoms of anxiety and depression. That is, there are internalizing issues that arise due to emotional syndrome in childhood and adolescence.

Adolescence is a period that is characterized by increased vulnerability for the beginning of internalizing psychopathology (McLaughlin and King 311). Among children, the prevalence of depression is about 3 percent, but the figure doubles among adolescents aged between 13 years and 18 years (McLaughlin and King 311). The case of major depression cases is prevalent between the ages of 15 and 18. The increasing rates of depression symptoms occur between the ages of 13 and 15 among females (McLaughlin and King 311). The gender parity in depression can be first observed during early adolescent stages, and they become pronounced in late adolescent periods. The beginning of most anxiety disorders occurs during a similar period, including panic disorder, anxiety, and generalized anxiety disorders (). There is a wide range of adverse consequences between adolescent anxiety disorders and depression across the life course. This includes the risk of recurrent episodes in adulthood, suicidality, and poor psychological functioning (). Besides, symptoms of anxiety and depression are related to the increased risk of late psychopathology.

https://www.cdc.gov/childrensmentalhealth/depression.html

Most teens have fear and worries, and therefore, they may feel hopeless from time to time. However, intense fears may occur at different development periods. For instance, adolescents are always distressed about being away from their peers, even if they are safe (). Even though worries are typical in teenagers, extreme forms of fear and sadness can be a result of anxiety and depression. Since symptoms majorly involve thoughts and feelings, they become internalizing disorders.

Anxiety

The teenagers fail to outgrow both fears and worries, or when there are many fears and worries, this will interfere with schooling and playing. Therefore, the teenager may be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. Thus, different types of anxiety disorder are: being afraid while away from parents, and this leads to separation anxiety. Secondly, having a strong fear of specific situations, as well as being worried about the future, and this is general anxiety. Lastly, experiencing repeated incidents of unexpected and fear that is accompanied with heart pounding. This is a panic disorder. Anxiety leads to fear, and it can make teenagers irritable and angry. Symptoms of anxiety are trouble sleeping, fatigue, and headaches. Some anxious adolescents keep their worries to themselves, and thus, signs can be missed.

Depression

Sometimes being sad and feeling hopeless can be part of daily life among teenagers. But some teens feel uninterested in issues that they used to like. That is, they feel lost in circumstances that they can change; when there is persistent sad situations, teenagers may be diagnosed with depression. The following are some behaviors that are often seen in teenagers with depression:

1. Feeling depressed most of the time and failure to enjoy funny things.
2. Changes in eating and sleeping patterns. That is, they may eat and sleep either a lot or less than usual.
3. Having a hard time paying attention and showing changes in energy. The victim may be sluggish, tense, and restless most of the time.
4. Showing self-destructive conduct.

Why depression is common among adolescents

At times the majority of teenagers feel unhappy. When hormone havoc is added to other body changes in teenage life, it can be seen why the moods of teenagers are swinging like a pendulum. Some findings show that one out of every eight adolescents has been under depression. As well as other serious problems that accompany depression, it can be treated. Therefore, when teens are unhappy for over two weeks, but still showing other symptoms of depression, they should seek help from health professionals.

There are several reasons why teenagers can be depressed. For instance, they can develop worthless and inadequacy feelings over their performance. Therefore, the major causes can be school performance, social interaction with peers, sexual orientation, and family life because they have significant impacts on the feelings of teens. However, depression among teens may be as a result of environmental stress. Whatever the cause, when friends or things that the teen often enjoy fails to help in improving their feelings or sense of isolation, there are high chances of depression.

Even though adolescents are a vulnerability period for internalizing psychopathology, most of them do not become depressed (). Depicting developmental patterns of symptom stability, progression, as well as concurrency, is necessary to identify teenagers that are risk for persistent problems. Regarding the previous studies of adolescents, Hale et al. found that there is a decrease in symptoms of panic disorder and separation anxiety, with the exception of social phobia symptoms that remained relatively stable (2008). The similar findings have been observed in other prospective studies that indicated that most types of anxiety symptoms decline across early to middle adolescence (Burstein et al., 2010). On the other hand, depression symptoms can developmentally increase, especially among girls. Thereby, proposing that anxiety and depression symptoms follow various developmental trajectories during adolescence.

The diverging patterns of anxiety and depression among adolescents are confusing because symptoms of anxiety and depression are concurring. Both sequential comorbidity between anxiety disorders and key depression are prevalent in adolescents (Wittchen et al., 2000). This can raise significant issues concerning the relationship between symptoms of anxiety and depression in adolescence. Multiple studies have tried to distinguish the temporal sequence of anxiety and depression to determine whether the presence of anxiety foresees the subsequent increases in depression and whether depression can predict subsequent rise in anxiety. All these studies nearly find that anxious adolescents have increased risk for the beginning or major depression, and that prediction from anxiety to depression is reliable (Costello et al. 2003).

It can be observed in some studies that the connection between anxiety and depression symptoms is cross-lagged. For instance, Cole 1998 found the anxiety symptoms at a given point increase in depressive symptoms at a given point of time. However, depressive symptoms cannot predict improvements in anxiety in adolescents (). Major depression begins in adolescence, and it is associated with the future onset of anxiety disorders (). Hence, this predicts explicitly future onset of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). The connection between anxiety and depression symptoms can be observed during adolescence stage in the sense that adolescents with increasing anxiety symptoms can tend to show more symptoms of depression over time, and the reverse is true (Thompson & Gruppuso, 2012).

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3488279/

Psychosocial risk factors

There has been research in association with depression and environmental factors such as exposure to acute stressful events like personal injury and chronic adversity such as maltreatment, discord within the family, bullying among peers, poverty, and physical illness (). Such exposure does not often lead to the development of depression in adolescents. But the victims that are at high genetic risk seem to be susceptible to the influence of such stressors (70). The stressful life events are strongly associated with the onset instead of the recurrence of depression. Therefore, risk is considered to be more in adolescents with several adverse life events as compared to those exposed to a single event (). Chronic stressors that affect the relationships are essential, but negative family interactions such as victimization among peers through bullying and maltreatment are the primary risks for depression.

Some adolescents are exposed to traumatic events such as war, displacement, HIV infection, and torture. Therefore, they have high chances of developing prolonged psychiatric disorders, particularly if there is a family background of such disorders and exposure to several traumas. Even though record relationships between psychological stressors and depression may show revered causation, there is consistent research that indicates a positive causal risk impacts.

Environmental relationship

Hereditary factors appear to contribute to depression in adolescents in the following ways:  first, not only through increasing direct risk, but indirectly through gene interplay in a given environment by increasing sensitivity to adversity, secondly, by increasing the chances of environmental risk exposures (60, 79, and 80). Studies suggest that adolescents, especially girls, are at high familial risk of depression. This indicates increased sensitivity to psychological risk factors such as stressful life events and adversity among family members. Thus, they are more likely to be exposed to such risks that cause depression.

Findings

The connection between anxiety and depression takes place as a result of higher developmental processes. Therefore, anxiety affects depression either because the extent of one is related with the development rate of another or because the developmental rate is both are interrelated. The approaches used in determining the relationship between anxiety and depression in early adolescence have some challenges. For example, the use of regressive models fails to distinguish individual variances because some adolescents show higher anxiety than others other than the period and within-individual differences such as changes from the typical anxiety symptoms to depression. The process growth models only focus on individual differences in symptom relations and, therefore, ignore within-individual associations.

Adolescence is a stage characterized by major depression. Anxiety and depression are strongly associated with each other during the adolescent period, it has been characterized by the dynamics of anxiety and symptoms of depression. Other studies propose that anxious adolescents are at elevated risks for future depression.

Conclusion

The adolescence stage is a unique and informative period. It is characterized by numerous physical, emotional, and social changes such as exposure to poverty and violence. These factors can make an adolescent at his or her early age to become vulnerable to health problems. So, enhancing the well-being and safeguarding adolescents from negative experiences, as well as risk factors that can influence the potentiality of adolescents to thrive, is a significant thing because it promotes their physical and mental health.

The paper finds that the decline of anxiety and depression is less among adolescents with a high level of depressive signs.  The link between symptoms of depression and anxiety over a period is substantial. This suggests that the increase in symptoms from a given period is important since it identifies early changes in symptom trajectories to prevent symptom acceleration and the ultimate onset of anxiety disorders.

Despite the importance of depression in adolescence around the globe, there are numerous knowledge gaps. Further advancement in cost-effective detection techniques, assessing and treating adolescent depression in both low-income and middle-income countries is a significant priority in terms of scarcity resources. Therefore, the knowledge difference regarding relapse prevention can be noticed among adolescents. Lastly, prevention methods seem important due to complexities and costs that are related to the treatment of depression in adolescents. Nevertheless, it is not yet clear on the critical components of the programs and policies because cost-effectiveness must be determined.  Such plans need to be the priority for further studies. Interestingly, females have higher chances of anxiety and depression symptoms, but there is no evidence for such difference in symptom trajectories and their association with one gender to another by age.