Transdiagnostic Symptom Burden Shapes Cognition and Brain Structure in Adolescence: A Longitudinal Study

Adolescence is a period of rapid neurodevelopment during which psychiatric symptoms may emerge, yet symptom-specific markers show inconsistent associations with cognition and brain structure and can rarely be generalised longitudinally. Using data from the ABCD Study, we derived a transdiagnostic mental-health burden measure that integrates multiple symptom domains and examined its cognitive and structural brain correlates in early adolescence longitudinally. Adolescents with higher burden showed consistently lower performance in vocabulary, memory, and processing-speed, alongside widespread reductions in whole-brain, cortical, and white-matter volumes at baseline and after 2 years. These effects were strongest in a subgroup with persistent high burden and replicated in cross-sectional analyses. After 4 years, mental-health differences remained robust, although brain-behaviour associations weakened, likely reflecting developmental reorganisation and reduced sample size. Our study demonstrates that global mental-health burden provides a scalable, developmentally appropriate marker of early psychiatric vulnerability that overcomes limitations of symptom-specific approaches.