Study identifies risk factors for high anxiety in young adults during the COVID-19 pandemic

Press release

Friday, February 12, 2021

Findings about the impact of childhood temperament can help prevent anxiety.

A new study has identified early risk factors that predicted increased anxiety in young adults during the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19). The conclusions of the study, supported by the National Institutes of Health and published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, could help predict who is most at risk for developing anxiety during the stressful events of life in early adulthood and inform prevention and intervention efforts.

The researchers examined data from 291 participants who had been tracked from childhood to adulthood as part of a larger study of temperament and socioemotional development. The researchers found that participants who continued to show a temperament characteristic called behavioral inhibition in childhood were more likely to experience a deregulation of concern in adolescence (15 years), which in turn predicted high anxiety. during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic when participants were in young adulthood (around 18 years old).

“People differ a lot in how they handle stress,” said Daniel Pine, MD, author of the study and head of the Developmental and Affective Neuroscience Section at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). “This study shows that children’s level of fear predicts the amount of stress they experience later in life when faced with difficult circumstances, such as a pandemic.”

Behavioral inhibition is a childish temperament characterized by high levels of prudent, fearful, and avoidant responses to unknown people, objects, and situations. Previous studies have established that children who exhibit behavioral inhibition have a higher risk of developing anxiety disorders later. However, less research has investigated the specific mechanisms by which a stable pattern of behavioral inhibition in childhood is related to anxiety in adulthood.

The authors of this study hypothesized that children who demonstrate a stable pattern of behavioral inhibition may have a higher risk of anxiety deregulation in adolescence, i.e., difficulty managing concern and showing expressions. of inadequate concern, and this would put them at greater risk of increased anxiety during stressful events such as the pandemic.

In the larger study, behavioral inhibition was measured at 2 and 3 years of age through observations of children’s responses to new toys and interaction with unknown adults. When the children were seven years old, they were observed to be cautious during an unstructured free play task with an unknown partner. Deregulation of concerns was assessed at age 15 using a self-report survey. For the current study, participants, at a mean age of 18 years, were assessed for anxiety twice during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic after home orders were issued ( first between April 20 and May 15 and about a month later).

In the first assessment, 20% of participants reported moderate levels of anxiety symptoms considered within the clinical range. In the second evaluation, 18.3% of participants reported clinical levels of anxiety. As expected, the researchers found that individuals with high behavioral inhibition in childhood who continued to show high levels of social caution during childhood reported experiencing deregulated concerns in adolescence, and this predicted in ultimately an increase in anxiety in adult life during a critical stage of the pandemic. This pathway of development was not significant for children who showed behavioral inhibition in childhood, but showed low levels of social caution later in childhood.

“This study provides further evidence of the continued impact of early life temperament on people’s mental health,” said Nathan A. Fox, Ph.D., a distinguished university professor and director of the Child Development Lab. the University of Maryland, College. Park, and author of the study. “Young children with stable behavioral inhibition have a high risk of worry and anxiety, and the context of the pandemic has only increased these effects.”

The results suggest that targeting social prudence in childhood and deregulating anxiety in adolescence may be a viable strategy for the prevention of anxiety disorders. The results also suggest that addressing deregulated concern in adolescence may be particularly important in identifying those who may be at risk for increased anxiety during stressful life events such as the COVID-19 pandemic and preventing this increased anxiety.

Grant: MH093349, HD017899

About the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH): The mission of the NIMH is to transform the understanding and treatment of mental illness through basic and clinical research, paving the way for prevention, recovery and healing. For more information, visit the NIMH website.

Regarding the National Institutes of Health (NIH):
NIH, the country’s medical research agency, includes 27 institutes and centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the leading federal agency that conducts and supports basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and investigates the causes, treatments, and cures for common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.

NIH … Turning discovery into health^®

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