Abstract

Three studies investigated the stability of and structural relationships among anxiety, depression, neuroticism and extraversion during adolescence. At their initial assessment, 627 high school juniors (432 females) were assessed for Axis I psychopathology using structured clinical interviews and completed questionnaires that assessed depression and anxiety symptoms and personality. The same questionnaire battery and structured clinical interview were administered at 12-, 24-, and 36-month follow-up. The studies reported here are based on these interview and questionnaire data.

Study 1 examined the structural relationships among symptoms of anxiety and depression. The best-fitting model was a three-level hierarchical arrangement with a broad general factor (general distress), two factors of intermediate breadth (anxious-misery and fears), and five conceptually meaningful, narrow, group factors. These were the first symptom-level findings to provide direct support for a model with a factor central to major depression, additional factors specific to particular anxiety disorders, and a broad general distress factor shared by all symptoms and common to disorders of anxiety and depression.

Study 2 examined relative stabilities of symptom (depression, social anxiety, and specific phobia) and personality constructs (neuroticism and extraversion). When considering one-, two-, and three-year durations, stabilities of anxiety and personality constructs were similar and were all significantly greater than depression stability. Traitstate-occasion structural equation modeling revealed that anxiety and personality constructs were significantly more trait-like than depression. These findings indicate that depression symptoms are more episodic in nature, whereas symptoms of anxiety are similar to personality variables in their stability.

Study 3 investigated the dimensional, vulnerability, and complication models of the relationship between personality and symptoms of psychopathology for neuroticism, extraversion, depression, social anxiety, and specific phobia. For the portion of these constructs that remained stable over the three-year period, the expected dimensional relationships were found: neuroticism was associated with depression and all anxiety constructs whereas extraversion was associated with symptoms of depression and social phobia. There was little support for either the vulnerability or complication models as after accounting for the dimensional relationships, there were few significant relationships when predicting future symptoms from personality or future personality from symptoms.