The temporal relationship between anxiety and depression during the school transition between primary and high-school
Depression and anxiety are among the most prevalent disorders in the adolescent population. An increase of the prevalence of these disorders is taking place during adolescence, this developmental period being experienced in synchronicity with the high school transition. Also, some studies suggested the existence of a developmental trend between the onset of anxiety and depression. This longitudinal study explored the temporal relationship between anxiety and depression during the transition from primary to high school. Goals: first, this study examined whether the presence of anxiety in grade 6 (Time 1) increases the risk of depression in grade 8 (Time 2). Then a subgroup of comorbid students, who presented anxiety and depression, was compared with a subgroup of anxious ones on the presence of cognitive distortions. It was assessed whether cognitive distortions in the anxious group in Time 1 influenced the development of comorbidity between anxiety and depression in Time 2. Method: 146 students from 12 public schools, 62 girls and 84 boys (mean = 11.22 years) participated in this study. This sub sample was drowned from a larger sample of 499 students, in a 9 years longitudinal study (2003-2012). Participants completed the questionnaire and were met for an interview at the beginning of each school year. Parents consent was obtained. In Time 1, students were divided into two subgroups, anxious and non-anxious students. At time 2, two subgroups of students were constituted, either anxious or comorbid anxious and depressed students. Depression was controlled at time 1.The Dominic Interactive for Adolescents (Valla, 2000) was used to measure the presence of anxiety and depression. The correlation (.34 to .62) between the three anxiety scales (separation anxiety, generalized anxiety and phobia) allowed to create an unique anxiety score. Cognitive distortions (related to dependence, achievement and self control) were measured by the Dysfunctional Attitudes Scale (Weisseman & Beck, 1978). Results: The hierarchical log linear analyse revealed a tendency between the presence of anxiety in Time 1 and the development of depression in Time 2, only for girls (p=.08), so that 25% of anxious girls at Time 1 became depressive at Time 2, compare to 0% of non anxious girls. For boys, whether anxiety is present or not, the two subgroups presented the same risk to develop depression. Then, results of a Manova analysis revealed that anxious students at time 1 already adopted cognitive distortions related to dependency and to achievement, usually associated with depression. At time 2, the result of the Manova revealed that comorbid students presented more cognitive distortions related to dependency then the anxious students. However, non significant results were found for the longitudinal analyse, which did not supported the existence of a predicting link between the presence of depressogenous cognitive distortions at Time 1 in the anxious subgroup of students and the emergence of comorbidity at Time 2. Conclusion: The results of the present study testified the importance to prevent depression, especially for anxious school girls. Anxiety seems to have a different role for girls and boys. A trend was observed between the presence of an anxiety disorder in Grade 6 and the development of a depressive disorder 2 years later, among girls only. This result raises the importance to understand the role of anxiety in girls to reduce their risk to develop a depressive disorder. Our results also showed that anxious students in grade 6, already presented cognitive distortions related to dependency and achievement which are associated with depression while comorbid students in the second year of high school presented more cognitive distortions related to dependency only, when they were compared with the anxious group.