A new study has identified early risk factors that predicted increased anxiety in young adults due to coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19). The results of the study, supported by the National Institutes of Health and published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychology, that may help predict who is at greater risk of developing anxiety at difficult life events in early adults and inform prevention and intervention efforts.
The researchers examined data from 291 participants followed from childhood to adulthood as part of a larger study of temperance and socio-social development. The researchers found that participants who continued to exhibit a temperature feature called behavioral inhibition in childhood were more likely to experience anxious dysregulation in adolescence (age 15), which was then predicting elevated anxiety during the early months of COVID-19 pandemics when participants assumed they were young adults (approximately age 18).
“People differ greatly in how they handle stress,” said Daniel Pine, MD, study author and head of the Department of National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH) Department of Affective Development and Neuroscience. “This study shows that children’s degree of fear predicts how much weight they will gain later in life when trying difficult situations, such as the pandemic. “
Behavioral inhibition is a temple of childhood characterized by high levels of cautious, fearful and avoidant responses to unfamiliar people, objects and situations. Previous studies have shown that children who present with behavioral inhibition are at greater risk of developing anxiety disorder later in life. However, less research has examined the specific mechanisms by which a consistent pattern of behavior inhibition in childhood is linked to anxiety in young adults.
The authors of this study accepted that children who exhibit a stable pattern of behavioral inhibition may be at increased risk for anxiety dysregulation in adolescence – that is, difficulties with anxiety management and inappropriate anxiety – and this would put them at greater risk for higher anxiety later on at stressful events such as the pandemic.
In the larger study, behavior inhibition was measured at ages 2 and 3 using observations of children’s responses to novel toys and interactions with unfamiliar adults. When the children were 7 years old, they were spotted for social warm-up during an unstructured free play activity with unfamiliar peers. Anxiety dysregulation was assessed at age 15 through a self-report study. For the current study, participants, at an average age of 18, were assessed for anxiety twice in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic after home stay orders were issued (initially between April 20 and 15 May and about a month later).
At the initial evaluation, 20% of participants reported moderate levels of anxiety symptoms that were thought to be clinical. At the second evaluation, 18.3% of participants reported clinical levels of anxiety. As expected, the researchers found that individuals with high behavioral inhibition in infants who continued to exhibit high levels of social aggression in childhood reported experiencing dysregulated anxiety in adolescence, and this ultimately predicted increased anxiety in young adults at an acute stage of the pandemic. This developmental pathway was not important for children who exhibited behavioral inhibition but showed low levels of social warfare later in childhood.
“This study provides further evidence of the ongoing impact of early life temperance on individuals’ mental health, ”said Nathan A. Fox, Ph.D., a distinguished University Professor and director of the Children’s Development Lab at the University of Maryland, Park College, and the author of the study. “Young children with persistent behavioral inhibition are at higher risk for increased anxiety and worry, and the context of the pandemic only exerted these effects.”
The findings indicate that targeting social warming in childhood and anxiety dysregulation in adolescence may be a viable strategy for the prevention of anxiety disorder. The findings also suggest that targeting dysregulated anxiety in adolescence may be particularly important for identifying those who may be at risk for higher anxiety at life events. stress like the COVID-19 pandemic and prevent that heightened anxiety.
Story source:
Materials provided by NIH / National Institute of Mental Health. Note: Content can be edited for style and length.