Background: The Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety (NESDA; Nbaseline=2981) is an ongoing longitudinal, multi-site, naturalistic, cohort study examining the etiology, course, and... Show moreBackground: The Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety (NESDA; Nbaseline=2981) is an ongoing longitudinal, multi-site, naturalistic, cohort study examining the etiology, course, and consequences of depression and anxiety. In this article we synthesize and evaluate fifteen years of NESDA research on prominent psychological risk factors for the onset, persistence, recurrence, and comorbidity of affective disorders.Methods: A narrative review of 62 NESDA articles examining the specificity and predictive value of neuroticism, behavioral inhibition, repetitive negative thinking, experiential avoidance, cognitive reactivity, locus of control, (implicit) self-esteem, (implicit) disorder-specific self-associations, and attentional bias for the course of affective disorders.Results: All self-reported risk factors showed cross-sectional relationships with singular and comorbid affective disorders, and prospective relationships with the development and chronicity of depression and anxiety disorders. High neuroticism, low self-esteem, and negative repetitive thinking showed most prominent transdiagnostic relationships, whereas cognitive reactivity showed most pronounced depression-specific associations. Implicit self-esteem showed predictive validity for the persistence and recurrence of anxiety and depression over and above self-reported risk factors. Automatic approach-avoidance behavior and attentional bias for negative, positive, or threat words showed no relationship with affective disorders.Conclusion: NESDA identified both (a) transdiagnostic factors (e.g., neuroticism, low implicit self-esteem, repetitive negative thinking) that may help explain the comorbidity between affective disorders and overlap in symptoms, and (b) indications for disorder-specific risk factors (e.g., cognitive responsivity) which support the relevance of distinct disorder categories and disorder-specific mechanisms. Thus, the results point to the relevance of both transdiagnostic and disorder-specific targets for therapeutic interventions. Show less
Background: Signs and symptoms of psychopathology can be chronic but are generally regarded as less stable over time than markers of cognitive vulnerability and personality. Some findings suggest... Show moreBackground: Signs and symptoms of psychopathology can be chronic but are generally regarded as less stable over time than markers of cognitive vulnerability and personality. Some findings suggest that these differences in temporal stability are modest in size but a rigorous examination across concepts is lacking. The current study investigated the temporal stability of affective symptoms, cognitive vulnerability markers and personality traits at various assessments over nine years.Methods: Participants of the Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety were assessed at baseline and reassessed after 2, 4, 6 and 9 years. They were grouped on the basis of waves of depression and anxiety CIDI-diagnoses into stable healthy (n = 768), stable patients (n = 352) and unstable patients (n = 821). We determined temporal stability by calculating intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) and consistency indices of latent state-trait analyses (LST).Results: Temporal stability was moderate to high for symptoms (range ICC's 0.54-0.73; range consistency 0.64-0.74), cognitive vulnerability (range ICC's 0.53-0.76; range consistency 0.60-0.74) and personality (range ICC's 0.57-0.80; range consistency.60 -0.75). Consistency indices for all measures were on average a bit lower in the unstable group (ICC = 0.54) compared to the stable groups (ICC = 0.61). Overall stability was similarly high after 2, 4, 6 and 9 years.Conclusion: The 9-year stability over time of symptoms of affective disorders and that of indices of cognitive vulnerability and personality are remarkably similar and relatively high. Show less
Struijs, S.Y.; Lamers, F.; Verdam, M.G.E.; Ballegooijen, W. van; Spinhoven, P.; Does, W. van der; Penninx, B.W.J.H. 2019
