Inhibited and impulsive subgroups of socially anxious young adults: Their depressive symptoms and life satisfaction

Socially anxious people are typically thought of as being behaviorally inhibited; however, an atypical subgroup, which is impulsive rather than inhibited, has recently been identified [1]. Theoretically, inhibition and impulsivity could be viewed as different strategies for coping with anxiety that have the same goal—escape from negative emotions—but they seem to have different implications. Previous studies have found that the socially anxious-impulsive subgroup was higher on risk-prone behavior, as for example drug use, compared with a socially anxious inhibited subgroup. In this study, we aimed to identify these subgroups in a general population, and asked whether they also experience various levels of depressive symptoms and life satisfaction, as well as moderating effects of gender. Methods: Cluster analysis was used to identify subgroups of young adults (20 - 24 years old; N = 772) characterized by different profiles of social anxiety and impulsivity. These subgroups were compared on levels of internal adjustment, and the moderating effects of gender were also tested. Results: We identified five clusters, including an Anxious-Inhibited and an Anxious-Impulsive cluster. In the interaction between gender and cluster membership, gender showed evidence of moderation regarding both depressive symptoms and life satisfaction, with the young women in the Anxious-Inhibited and the Anxious-Impulsive clusters faring worst. Conclusions: We replicated previous findings demonstrating the existence of a socially anxious-impulsive subgroup, thus solidifying current knowledge that may be important when it comes to diagnostics and treatment. This may prove particularly important for young women regarding internalizing symptoms

What if you could see yourself with my eyes? – A pilot study of the impact of a Virtual Reality-environment on relational responding to self

People's sense of self plays an important role in psychological wellbeing and it is often targeted by perspective taking interventions in psychological treatments. The present study investigated if seeing oneself from the outside perspective in a virtual reality (VR) environment could be used to influence the patterns of relational responding that constitutes the sense of self. Changes in participants' (N= 9) patterns of relating themselves vs. others with positive attributes and negative attributes were investigated using an Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) that was delivered before and after the one session perspective-taking intervention in VR. In addition, participants' self-ratings about their experience of the VR intervention were investigated immediately after and one month after the VR-intervention. The results showed changes specifically in seeing oneself more positively, reflected by the increase in the Me - positive trial type in the IRAP. No systematic changes were seen in participants' relational responding to themselves as being "negative " (i.e. bad, unloved, incompetent) or in patterns of relational responding considering others. In addition, participants experienced moderate positive emotions during the VR-intervention and evaluated the experience as meaningful based on their self-ratings. Together these results suggest that seeing oneself in the VR promoted positive experiences relating to oneself

Evaluation of the psychometric properties of a modified version of the Social Phobia Screening Questionnaire for use in adolescents

© 2009 Gren-Landell et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licens

Development of a Shortened Version of the Adolescent Stress Questionnaire (ASQ-S): construct validity and sex invariance in a large sample of Swedish adolescents

Background: Stressor experience is an important topic of research concerning adolescent health and ill-health. For this, valid and reliable measures of adolescent stress are needed. The Adolescent Stress Questionnaire 2 was developed to tap into stressor domains specific for adolescence. Psychometric evaluations in Australian and European samples have indicated adequate psychometric properties. However, the ASQ-2 is quite extensive, which may render its use in large cohort studies, where several aspects of adolescent health are investigated, inconvenient and problematic. Objective: To evaluate the psychometric properties of a short version of the ASQ-2 (ASQ-S) in terms of construct validity and factorial invariance across gender. Method: The ASQ-2 was translated into Swedish and items were retained from nine of the ten scales based on factor loadings. One scale (stress of emerging adult responsibilities) was removed entirely due to low internal consistency and variance explained. The remaining 27 items were piloted and then included in an ongoing 5-year longitudinal study involving the participation of all students in the 7th and 8th grade in public schools from three Swedish municipalities (N = 2768, 47.5 % girls, mean age 13.64 years). For this study data from the first and second wave was used. Results: A nine factor Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) showed a good fit to the data and invariance across sexes was supported. The nine scales correlated positively with depressive symptoms, anxiety and worry and negatively with self-esteem. Girls reported higher stress levels than boys in eight of the nine scales. Stressors related to peer pressure predicted reported levels of anxiety and worry one year later, whereas stressors related to romantic relationships predicted depressive symptoms. Conclusions: Overall this study suggests that the ASQ-S could be a valid measure of adolescent stressor experience and psychometrically equivalent to the full ASQ-2.This research was supported by Forskningsrådet Formas, Forskningsrådet för Arbetsliv och Socialvetenskap (FAS), Vetenskapsrådet, and Vinnova

Co-rumination buffers the link between social anxiety and depressive symptoms in early adolescence

Objectives: We examined whether co-rumination with online friends buffered the link between social anxiety and depressive symptoms over time in a community sample. Methods: In a sample of 526 participants (358 girls; Mage = 14.05) followed at three time points, we conducted a latent cross-lagged model with social anxiety, depressive symptoms, and co-rumination, controlling for friendship stability and friendship quality, and adding a latent interaction between social anxiety and co-rumination predicting depressive symptoms. Results: Social anxiety predicted depressive symptoms, but no direct links between social anxiety and co-rumination emerged. Instead, co-rumination buffered the link between social anxiety and depressive symptoms for adolescents with higher but not lower levels of social anxiety. Conclusions: These findings indicate that co-rumination exerted a positive influence on interpersonal relationships by diminishing the influence from social anxiety on depressive symptoms over time

Social Phobia : The Family and the Brain

The present thesis investigated family history and neurobiology of social phobia. Social phobia is a disabling disorder characterized by a marked fear of scrutiny in a variety of social situations. By using a validated questionnaire, study I related family history of excessive social anxiety to social phobia and avoidant personality disorder in epidemiologically identified probands in the Swedish general population. A two- to threefold increased relative risk of social anxiety was observed for both diagnostic groups. Thus, having an affected family member is associated with approximately a doubled risk for both social phobia and avoidant personality disorder. The neurobiological studies explored situational and anticipatory elicited anxiety by means of positron emission tomography and 15O-water. Study II examined the functional neuroanatomy of social anxiety provocation in social phobics and a healthy comparison group during a public speaking task. Social phobia symptomatology was associated with higher neural activity in the amygdaloid complex, i.e. "the alarm system" of the brain, and lower activity in the prefrontal cortex. Study III examined the neural correlates of anxiety elicited by the anticipation of public speaking in individuals with social phobia. Anticipatory anxiety was accompanied by enhanced regional cerebral blood flow in the dorsolateral prefrontal and inferior temporal cortices as well as in the amygdaloid-hippocampal region. Brain blood flow was lower in the temporal pole and in the cerebellum. These results suggest that social phobia has a neuroanatomical basis in a highly sensitive fear network centered in the amygdaloid-hippocampal region and encompassing the prefrontal cortex

Social Anxiety-Impulsivity Subgroups and Links to Later Emotional Adjustment in Adolescence : A Latent Transition Analysis

A growing body of research has acknowledged the heterogeneity of subclinical social anxiety, identifying a subgroup of individuals who exhibit high levels of impulsivity. In a sample of Swedish early adolescents (N = 2,509, M-age = 13.64; 52.8% girls), we conducted latent transition analyses (LTA) to identify four classes of subclinical social anxiety-impulsivity across three time points. We identified a Low Social Anxiety-Low Impulsivity class, as well as a High Anxiety-High Impulsivity class for girls and boys, which had high levels of Time-4 internalizing problems. The latter class was less stable but larger for boys. There was also a more typical High Anxiety-Low Impulsivity class for both genders. Nevertheless, Low Anxiety-High Impulsivity girls and boys fared the worst in terms of both internalizing and externalizing problems later on. To our knowledge, this is the first study to adopt an LTA framework to investigate trajectories of early adolescent social anxiety-impulsivity over time

Sources of stress and worry in the development of stress-related mental health problems : A longitudinal investigation from early- to mid-adolescence

Background and Objectives: Stress and stress-related mental health complaints are common and increasing among adolescents, especially girls. Identifying typical sources of stress as well as central intervention targets is an important effort in the development of effective prevention and treatment protocols. This study investigated worry as potential mediator in the development of mental health problems in response to common stressors in adolescence. We also examined to what sources adolescents ascribe their stress over the years from the 7th through the 9th grade. Design: Prospective cohort study. Methods: Self-reported subjective stressor load, worry, anxiety and depressive symptoms were assessed in a sample of Swedish 7th graders (N = 1137; 46% girls, mean age 13.2) with follow-up assessments one and two years later. Results: School was the most common source of stress across all time-points, with girls reporting considerable more stress than boys. Worry mediated the relationship between overall stressor load and depressive symptoms and anxiety over time and was not moderated by gender. Conclusions: Worry may be an important target in stress prevention and efforts to prevent stress-related problems would benefit from focusing on early adolescence as especially school stress is already relatively common in grade 7.