Highs and lows: Naturalistic changes in mood and everyday hassles over school and vacation periods in adolescents

Abstract

This study investigated changes in adolescents' mood and everyday hassles across school-terms and vacation periods. 146 (52.7% female) community-dwelling adolescents aged 16.2 ± 1.0 years (M±SD) completed self-report measures on depression, anxiety, and everyday hassles at four time points: during a school vacation, and the start, middle, and end of school-terms. Latent growth modeling showed that the end of a school-term was associated with significantly higher symptoms of depression, anxiety, and hassles; these measures were lower during the vacation. Hassles were strongly associated with more negative mood at all times. Our findings suggest significant fluctuations in adolescent mood and everyday hassles across school-vacation cycles. These findings call for careful consideration and reporting of timing in mood and stress assessment in adolescent research, as school-vacation cycles may have strong influence on both. Naturalistic changes in mood over school-vacation cycles reported are also clinically informative for designing and delivering adolescent wellbeing programs.