Special Issue: Demographic and Mental Health Assessments in the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development Study: Updates and Longitudinal Trajectories

Abstract

The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study of 11,880 youth incorporates a comprehensive range of measures assessing predictors and outcomes related to mental health across childhood and adolescence in participating youth, as well as information about family mental health history. We have previously described the logic and content of the mental health assessment battery at Baseline and Year 1. Here, we describe changes to that battery and issues and clarifications that have emerged, as well as additions to the mental health battery at the 2-, 3-, 4-, and 5-year follow-ups. We capitalize on the recent release of longitudinal data for caregiver and youth report of mental health data to evaluate trajectories of dimensions of psychopathology as a function of demographic factors. For both caregiver and self-reported mental health symptoms, males showed age-related decreases in internalizing and externalizing symptoms, while females showed an increase in internalizing symptoms with age. Multiple indicators of socioeconomic status (caregiver education, family income, financial adversity, neighborhood poverty) accounted for unique variance in both caregiver and youth-reported externalizing and internalizing symptoms. These data highlight the importance of examining developmental trajectories of mental health as a function of key factors such as sex and socioeconomic environment.

Air pollution and emotional behavior in adolescents across the U.S.

“…Specifically, the statistical approach and data used here contribute to a rigorous assessment of longitudinal behavioral and emotional problems associated with one-year annual air pollution exposure during the transition to adolescence. While standardized scores are often used to study dimensions of psychopathology and behavior between-subjects, we utilized raw longitudinal CBCL scores in the current study to better capture developmental change (Barch et al, 2021). However, raw CBCL scores are zero-inflated and over-dispersed in normative developmental samples, violating assumptions of general linear models.…”

Parsing Heterogeneity in Developmental Trajectories of Internalizing and Externalizing Symptomatology in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study

“…The aims of the present study were to (1) characterize trajectories of internalizing and externalizing symptomatology across the sample, (2) identify latent subgroups with distinct internalizing and externalizing symptomatology trajectories, (3) clarify the co-development of internalizing and externalizing symptomatology, and (4) examine demographic factors (i.e., sex, age) associated with trajectory class membership. Though we have noted that the extant literature is quite mixed, we hypothesized longitudinal increases in internalizing symptoms and decreases in externalizing symptoms based on prior studies in similar age ranges and preliminary results from the ABCD Study (Barch et al, 2021). At the same time, we expected that there would be significant variability in the rate of change of symptoms and that we would be able to identify multiple latent subgroups of symptom trajectories.…”

“…Male youth tend to demonstrate higher levels of externalizing symptoms, whereas female youth demonstrate higher internalizing symptoms (Copeland et al, 2011;Nolen-Hoeksema & Girgus, 1994). In the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, male youth had higher mean levels of externalizing symptoms, but there were no sex differences in internalizing symptoms (Barch et al, 2021). In addition to sex differences in levels of symptomatology, there is evidence of sex differences in longitudinal changes in symptoms, though this literature is also quite mixed.…”