A network analysis of psychosocial risk factors and depression in adolescence

Adolescence is a period marked by social, psychological and physiological change, coinciding with a peak in depression onset. Over the last few decades, incidence of depression in adolescents has increased substantially, presenting a serious public health concern. The risk factors associated with depression have mostly been studied in isolation or without consideration for differences between age groups, limiting our ability to infer how factors are associated with each other and with depressive symptomatology. In the current study, we explored the relationships between different psychosocial risk factors and depression in adolescence, using cross-sectional data collected from adolescents aged 11-18 years (n = 202). We estimated two network models. The first focused on depression severity and the second on core depressive symptoms (low mood and anhedonia). In both networks, roughly half of all possible edges were estimated as non-zero (52.78% and 53.32%, respectively). Emotion regulation difficulties, perceived stress and school environment were among the most central factors and showed some of the strongest associations with both depression severity and presence of individual core symptoms. The network structure was largely independent of age, but the quality of school environment was more strongly related to depression severity in older adolescents. The study expands our understanding of the multivariate associations of risk factors and depression at different ages. The findings highlight emotion regulation, stress management skills and school environment as potential prevention and intervention targets, and point towards a need to consider differences between age groups when addressing depression in adolescence.