The Dynamic Interplay of Anxious and Depressive Symptoms in a Sample of Undergraduate Students

Abstract

The network perspective on psychopathology suggests that mental disorders can be regarded as networks of elements that influence each other. In this study, we used network analysis to explore the temporal interactions of anxiety and depression symptoms at the level of day-to-day experiences and find potential explanatory pathways for their comorbidity. We collected intensive longitudinal data from a sample of undergraduate students and fitted a Multilevel Vector Autoregressive model on GAD and MDD DSM-5 symptoms. “Sad mood” and “Concentration difficulties” were responsible for the most connections between anxiety and depression symptoms and were also among the most central symptoms. It is possible that anxio-depressive comorbidity can be explained by the presence of “Sad mood” and “Concentration difficulties” and targeting these two symptoms in therapy can lead to beneficial effects in comorbid cases.

Anxiety and Depression Symptoms among Youth Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse: A Network Analysis

“…In two network analyses based on clinical psychiatric samples, sad mood was the most central symptom in the anxiety and depression network structure, followed by uncontrollable worry [ 37 , 57 ]. Also, a near-term study on non-clinical undergraduate students supported that sad mood had a high centrality and bridge centrality in the anxiety and depression network structure [ 35 ]. One study on patients with clinical major depression found that loss of energy or fatigue was the most central symptom in the anxiety and depression network [ 58 ], and the same finding was stated in another network analysis based on non-clinical nursing undergraduate students [ 59 ].…”

“…As a systematic review noted, network analysis has been applied to the general or clinical samples to investigate a plethora of psychiatric disorders, including anxiety and depression in adolescents and adults [ 34 ]. For example, a network analysis on anxiety and depression among non-clinical undergraduate students found that “sad mood” had a high central and bridge influence in the comorbidity network structure of these two disorders [ 35 ]. In a network, each symptom is regarded as a node, and each edge is viewed as a possible relationship between any two nodes, whose weight is defined by its partial correlation coefficient [ 36 ].…”

Personality and Pain Outcomes in Rheumatic Disease: The Mediating Role of Psychological Flexibility

“…Investigations of the frequent comorbidity between anxiety and depression indicate the existence of a network consisting of common symptoms, such as sad mood and concentration difficulties, emerging from underlying interacting elements that contribute to disorder onset. The transdiagnostic nature of these elements suggests the involvement of common risk factors explaining these interrelations [ 6 , 7 ]. Also, the overlap between neural activity patterns in chronic pain and emotional disorders shows several common particularities, like gray matter changes within the prefrontal cortex and insula, which indicates the presence of shared mechanisms that potentiate each other, paving the path toward chronicity across these diagnoses.…”