Comorbidity in Context: Patterns of Depressive and Anxious Symptoms in Black Adolescents

• Published in: Journal of child and family studies Vol. 32; no. 11; pp. 3312 - 3326
• Main Authors: Behrhorst, Kathryn L., Sullivan, Terri N., Jones, Heather A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01-11-2023; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Adolescents; African American Children; Anger; Anxiety; Anxiety disorders; Behavioral Science and Psychology; Black people; Child and School Psychology; Comorbidity; Confirmatory factor analysis; Coping; Cultural sensitivity; Depression (Psychology); Early Adolescents; Emotional regulation; Emotional responses; Evaluation Problems; Factor Structure; Factor structures; Grade 8; Interpersonal relations; Interpersonal Relationship; Mental depression; Original Paper; Perceptions; Personal relationships; Physiology; Profiles; Psychological Patterns; Psychology; Ratings & rankings; Sleep; Sleep disorders; Social anxiety; Social problems; Social Sciences; Sociology; Student teacher relationship; Students; Worry; Latent profile analysis; Depression; Anxiety; Anger regulation; Black youth
• ISSN: 1062-1024; 1573-2843
• DOI: 10.1007/s10826-022-02445-4

Anxious and depressive symptoms often co-occur and are associated with difficulties in academic, social, and emotional areas of functioning. The current study identified the factor structure and profiles of symptoms of anxiety and depression among 169 Black early adolescents in sixth through eighth grade (M
age
 = 12.6 years; 50% female) using confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) and latent profile analyses (LPA), respectively. CFAs supported a six-factor model for depressive symptoms (i.e., dysphoria, social problems, externalizing, self-deprecation, biological dysregulation, and school problems) and a four-factor model for anxiety symptoms (i.e., social evaluation, worry, affective response, and physiological symptoms/sleep problems). These factors formed the profiles for the LPA analyses, and results supported a three-profile solution that included: (a) a low-severity group who reported few anxious or depressive symptoms, (b) a group who reported high levels of externalizing behaviors and moderate levels of school and social evaluation problems, and (c) a group who reported high levels of social evaluation problems and physiological/sleep anxiety. The three groups differed significantly in their ratings of anger regulation difficulties (i.e., anger emotion regulation coping, anger inhibition, and anger dysregulated expression) and their perceptions of the quality of school interpersonal relationships (i.e., student-teacher relationships and student-student relationships). These findings add to our knowledge about how patterns of depressive and anxious symptoms present for Black youth during adolescence and have important implications for the conceptualization, treatment, and prevention of anxiety and depression using culturally sensitive approaches.
Highlights
The experience and presentation of depressive and anxious symptoms differed for Black youth.
Factor structures of depression and anxiety measures were confirmed prior to running latent profile analyses.
Three profiles of anxious and depressive symptom dimensions were identified.
Profiles differed in youths’ ratings of anger regulation difficulties and perceptions of the quality of school interpersonal relationships.