Anxiety and depression in adolescents

Depression and social anxiety increase in prevalence during adolescence and arelinked to long-term difficulties. The aetiology of increased onset of depression andsocial anxiety during adolescence is likely to be complex, encompassing social,biological and neuropsychological factors. The present study aimed to investigatesome of these factors, in terms of parental attachment, stage of puberty and emotionallateralization.One hundred children aged 9 to 14 undertook the chimeric faces test, evaluating theirlateralization for facial emotion processing. Children also completed self-reportmeasures to assess their levels of depression and social anxiety, stage of puberty andparental attachment. Data were entered into hierarchical regression analyses, witheither depression or social anxiety as outcome variables. Known predictors wereentered at Block one with emotional lateralization, stage of puberty and parentalattachment entered at Block two. Interactions between laterality, attachment andpuberty were entered into Block three.The results showed that higher parental attachment trust was linked to higherdepression scores. Furthermore, the interaction between laterality and parentalattachment trust was also shown to be a significant predictor. This revealed thathigher attachment trust scores were predictive only when children had bi-lateral orleft hemisphere lateralization for emotional processing. For social anxiety, bothhigher parental attachment trust and parental attachment alienation were linked tohigher social anxiety scores. There was no effect of the interactions for social anxiety.Additionally there was no unique effect of puberty or lateralization for eitherdepression or social anxiety.The results provide insight into the complex aetiology of depression and socialanxiety, suggesting that they are related to similar but subtly different predictors. Thestudy also revealed that social factors were more important than either biological orneuropsychological factors, suggesting targets for clinical intervention when workingwith young children and adolescents with depression and social anxiety.