Background and objectives: Comorbidity among anxiety and depression disorders and their symptoms is high. Rumination and worry have been found to mediate prospective cross-disorder relations... Show moreBackground and objectives: Comorbidity among anxiety and depression disorders and their symptoms is high. Rumination and worry have been found to mediate prospective cross-disorder relations between anxiety and depression disorders and their symptoms in adolescents and adults. We examined whether generic repetitive negative thinking (RNT), that is content- and disorder-independent, also mediates prospective cross-disorder associations between anxiety and depressions disorders and their symptoms.Methods: This was studied using a 5-year prospective cohort study. In a mixed sample of 1859 adults (persons with a prior history of or a current affective disorder and healthy individuals), we assessed DSM-IV affective disorders (Composite Interview Diagnostic Instrument), anxiety (Beck Anxiety Inventory) and depression symptoms (Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology) and RNT (Perseverative Thinking Questionnaire).Results: We found that baseline depression disorders and symptom severity have predictive value for anxiety disorders and symptom severity five years later (and vice versa) and that these associations were significantly mediated by level of RNT as assessed two years after baseline. The significant and rather large mediation effects seemed mainly due to the mental capacity captured by RNT, especially in the prospective relation of anxiety with future depression.Limitations: The mediation effects were greatly attenuated or even nullified after rigorously controlling for concomitant psychopathology at two years after baseline.Conclusions: From these results it can be concluded that repetitive negative thinking could be an important transdiagnostic factor, that may constitute a suitable target for treatment. Show less
Spinhoven, P.; Penninx, B.W.; Krempeniou, A.; Van Hemert, A.M.; Elzinga, B. 2015
This thesis aimed to investigate the neurobiological mechanisms of adolescent onset depression and anxiety disorders. A longitudinal fMRI study design was used that included both task related brain... Show moreThis thesis aimed to investigate the neurobiological mechanisms of adolescent onset depression and anxiety disorders. A longitudinal fMRI study design was used that included both task related brain activation and resting state functional connectivity. All participants were scanned three times in a six-month period. In between scan sessions the adolescents from the clinical group received treatment as usual. Adolescents from the control group were scanned within the same time interval but did not receive treatment. During a scan session several MRI parameters were collected including task based fMRI (emotional face processing task) and resting state fMRI. We also administered several questionnaires about derpession and anxiety symptomatology. It was demonstrated that adolescents with depressive and anxiety disorders show differentiating patterns of amygdala reactivity and connectivity compared to a healthy control group. Furthermore, using a dimensional approach and taking individual differences in self-reported depression and anxiety symptoms into account highlighted the role of self-reported anxiety symptoms in amygdala reactivity during emotional faces processing. These findings indicate that the amygdala indeed is an important region involved in emotional face processing and that focusing on this region can provide further insights in the development and persistence of depressive and anxiety disorders in adolescents. Show less
