Are Short-Term Temporal Relationships between Depressive and Anxious Symptoms Moderated by Sex?

Paul E Jose,Jason S Spendelow,Jared Watson

doi:10.4236/ojd.2020.93006

Abstract

The chief goal of the present study was to elucidate whether the short-term temporal relationships between depressive and anxious symptoms vary by sex. Three hundred and fifty-seven undergraduate students self-reported depressive and anxious symptomatology with the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II) and the Beck Anxiety Index (BAI) two times 11 weeks apart. A latent variable path model analysis found support for a bi-directional relationship between depressive symptoms and anxious symptoms for the overall sample. An equality constraint analysis revealed that depressive symptoms predicted anxious symptoms over time to a similar extent as anxious symptoms predicted depressive symptoms over time. However, several temporal relationships significantly varied by sex, namely, females demonstrated greater stability of depressive symptoms over time, and evidenced a stronger cross-lag relationship from depressive symptoms at Time 1 to anxious symptoms at Time 2, and males, on the other hand, exhibited a marginally more stable anxious symptoms test-retest relationship over time. The results supported the existence of a bi-directional relationship between depressive and anxious symptoms over a short-term period of time for emerging adults. We conclude that current states of depressive symptoms may be more influential for females’ subsequent negative affective states, whereas anxious symptoms may be more important for males’ subsequent negative affective states.

Highlights

IntroductionThe nature of the depression-anxiety relationship has been a topic of interest for decades (Cummings, Caporino, & Kendall, 2014)
The chief goal of the present study was to elucidate whether the short-term temporal relationships between depressive and anxious symptoms vary by sex
The beta weight for the stability path from BDI Time 1 to BDI Time 2 was .59 and was statistically significant (p < .001), and the beta weight from Beck Anxiety Index (BAI) Time 1 to BAI Time 2 was .46 and was significant (p < .001). These results suggested that anxious symptoms and depressive symptoms scores were moderately stable over the eleven-week period between times of measurement

Summary

Introduction

The nature of the depression-anxiety relationship has been a topic of interest for decades (Cummings, Caporino, & Kendall, 2014). Links between these two mood states have important theoretical and therapeutic implications. Aetiological differences have been found in terms of risk factors (Kessler et al, 2008): the authors found that neuroticism was a stronger predictor of generalized anxiety disorder, whereas childhood adversities more strongly predicted major depressive episodes. Beuke, Fischer and McDowall (2003) have noted differences are found in relative effects on cognition, namely the explicit memory bias is stronger for depressed individuals, but dot-probe performance is degraded by anxiety

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Conclusion