Patterns Of Experience, Expression, And Physiology of Stress Relate To Depressive Symptoms And Self-Injurious Thoughts And Behaviors In Adolescents: A Person-Centered Approach

The article titled “Patterns of experience expression and physiology of stress relate to depressive symptoms and self-injurious thoughts and behaviors in adolescents: a person-centered approach” by Carosella et al. (2023), published in Psychological Medicine, explores the link between stress experience, expression, and physiology (EEP) and the prevalence of depression, suicidal ideation (SI), non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI), and brain functioning among female adolescents. This study utilized a person-centered analysis approach to examine the relationship between stress responses, psychopathology, and neural patterns in adolescents with a particular focus on those who engaged in NSSI.

The study involved 109 adolescent females aged 12-17, who underwent a social stress test. Measurements included self-reported stress experience, observer ratings of stress expression, and physiological metrics of stress through salivary cortisol. The researchers employed multi-trajectory modeling to identify concordant and discordant stress EEP groups and examined their association with depressive symptoms, SI, suicide attempts, NSSI, frontal and limbic activation to emotional stimuli, and resting state fronto-limbic connectivity.

The results identified four EEP groups, three of which showed relatively concordant stress responses and one discordant group (High Experience-High Expression-Low Physiology). The discordant group exhibited higher depressive symptoms, SI, suicide attempts, and NSSI episodes compared to other groups. Notably, no significant group differences in brain functioning were observed.

The study concludes that multi-level patterns in stress responding can capture risks for dysfunction, including depression and self-injurious thoughts and behaviors. It underscores the need for further investigation of system-level stress functioning to better inform assessment and intervention efforts. The research extends evidence that discordance within EEP responses is related to psychopathology and highlights the importance of a person-centered analytical approach in identifying risk factors for psychopathology.

Reference:

Carosella, K. A., Wiglesworth, A., Bendezú, J. J., Brower, R., Mirza, S., Mueller, B. A., … & Klimes-Dougan, B. (2023). Patterns of experience expression and physiology of stress relate to depressive symptoms and self-injurious thoughts and behaviors in adolescents: a person-centered approach. Psychological Medicine, 53, 7902-7912. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291723002003&#8203