Abstract
Several studies have investigated the relationship between adolescents’ responses to stress and general anxiety and depression, but only few studies addressed the relationship between responses to stress and social anxiety. The current three-wave longitudinal study, that covered a period of 5 years with a time interval of on average two years between waves, examined concurrent as well as prospective relations between adolescents’ self-reported stress responses, including coping responses, and self-perceived social anxiety. Both the predictive power of social anxiety for different stress responses and, reversely, of stress responses for social anxiety were evaluated. Participants were 331 youth (170 boys) aged 9 to 17 years old at Wave 1. Self-report questionnaires were used to measure social anxiety, responses to social stress, and depressive symptoms. Results showed significant concurrent relations between social anxiety and maladaptive stress responses. Moreover, the study yielded evidence for social anxiety predicting stress responses across time as well as stress responses predicting social anxiety, although evidence for the former link is stronger. The findings suggest that a relative lack of adaptive stress responses may heighten social anxiety and social anxiety in turn may trigger maladaptive as well as adaptive responses to social problems. The relevance of these findings for social anxiety prevention and intervention purposes are discussed.
Highlights
Adolescence is a period of significant changes in many domains of life, physiological, cognitive, emotional, and social
Because adolescence is a period in which social anxiety symptoms increase and social anxiety disorder has its onset (Magee et al, 1996; Wittchen & Fehm, 2003), this age group is of particular interest for studying the role of stress responses in relation to social anxiety development
We evaluated whether the putative links between stress responses and social anxiety could at least partly be attributed to depression
Summary
Data were drawn from the Social Anxiety and Normal Development (SAND) study, a community study that selected students from two primary schools and one secondary school in an urban area in the Netherlands (Miers et al, 2013; Westenberg et al, 2009). Data relevant to the present study were collected at the first, third, and fourth waves (referred to as T1, T2, and T3, respectively) of this four-wave longitudinal study. (At the second wave, only a restricted number of variables were measured). The time interval between these waves was two years on average with intervals varying between one and three years. Participants individually completed a battery of assessment forms at the university laboratory including the three questionnaires used in the present study. The SAND study was approved by the university’s Medical Ethical Committee. Parents gave their written consent and youth their written assent for participation in the study
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