Life experiences of humiliation, entrapment, and frontoparietal-cerebellar connectivity predict adolescent anxiety and depression symptoms

Exposure to major life stressors and aberrant brain functioning have been related to anxiety and depression in adolescence. However, whether these associations differ based on the specific characteristics of the stressors and/or brain functional networks remains unclear.

In a longitudinal sample of adolescents enriched for anxiety and depressive disorders, we examined cumulative lifetime stressor frequency and severity of five stressor characteristics: physical danger, interpersonal loss, humiliation, entrapment, and role change/disruption. Anxiety and depression symptoms were assessed at three time points: baseline, 6-month, and 12-month follow-ups. Linear mixed-effect models tested if lifetime frequency and severity of these stressor characteristics were associated with anxiety and depression symptoms across the three time points. We also identified whole-brain resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) features linked to the predictive stressor characteristics and examined their associations with anxiety and depression symptoms across time.

Controlling for all other stressor characteristics and covariates, lifetime frequency and severity of humiliation and entrapment predicted greater anxiety and depression symptoms across the three time points. After additionally accounting for co-occurring depression and anxiety symptoms, only entrapment frequency and severity remained significant. More negative RSFC between the frontoparietal network and the left cerebellum were linked to greater entrapment severity at baseline, and associated with greater anxiety and depression symptoms across time.

Our study highlights lifetime exposures to humiliation and entrapment as central stressor characteristics linked to adolescent internalizing symptoms. Our results also suggest that frontoparietal-left cerebellar connectivity may be a stress-sensitive marker of adolescent internalizing problems over time.