Longitudinal Associations Between Anxiety and Depression in Transition From Childhood to Adolescence.

Background: The transition from childhood to adolescence is often accompanied by an increase in internalizing problems, particularly anxiety and depression. Although anxiety and depression are conceptually distinct, they also frequently co-occur. Some evidence suggests that anxiety may precede depression; however, the longitudinal dynamics between the two remain unclear. In the current study, we used a random intercept cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM) to disentangle between-person stability from within-person fluctuations. This approach allows us to examine how changes in anxiety and depression predict each other over time during the transition from childhood to adolescence. Methods: Participating children ( Results: At the between-person level, which captures stability in the levels of anxiety and depression, there was a strong positive correlation. At the within-person level, which captures within-person variations over time, concurrent associations were significant at most time points. However, cross-lagged effects were unidirectional, with depression predicting anxiety, but not vice versa. These effects were significant from Time 2 to Time 3 and from Time 3 to Time 4 and were consistent across sexes. Conclusions: The findings underscore the significance of the timing of child-specific effects between anxiety and depression, indicating that depression, rather than anxiety, may serve as the primary driving factor in the longitudinal association between the two symptom clusters.