Mental Health
Adolescent worry typologies and associations with psychological distress, 1976-2021 Marco Thimm-Kaiser* Marco Thimm-Kaiser Noah T. Kreski Katherine M. Keyes
Adolescents’ interactions with news, media, and the world around them have changed dramatically over the past decade. Psychological distress has increased in the same period. To examine whether patterns in adolescent concerns about societal challenges and their environment can explain recent increases in psychological distress after 2010, we conducted latent profile analyses of 121,471 12th grade students from annual cross-sectional Monitoring the Future surveys, 1976-2021, with ten ordinal items about reasons to worry (e.g., the economy, nuclear war) to identify adolescent “worry types.” We then examined associations of worry typologies with loneliness and self-derogation before and after 2010 using logistic regressions adjusted for complex sampling and potential confounders. The results suggest four worry typologies: low worry, high worry, high urban problems worry (elevated worry about crime, drugs, poverty, race relations), high sustainability worry (elevated worry about pollution, energy shortages, etc.). Prior to 2010, high worry, urban problems worry, and sustainability worry, respectively, were associated with elevated adolescent loneliness (OR: 1.55 [1.45-1.67]; OR: 1.26 [1.18-1.35]; OR: 1.26 [1.17-1.37]) and with lower self-derogation (OR: 0.87 [0.81-0.94]; OR: 0.85 [0.79-0.92]; OR: 0.81 [0.74-0.88]). After 2010, all three worry typologies consistently predicted elevated levels of both loneliness (OR: 1.92 [1.69-2.19]; OR: 1.47 [1.30-1.66]; OR: 1.41 [1.22-1.63]) and self-derogation (OR: 1.38 [1.22-1.56]; OR: 1.15 [1.02-1.29]; OR: 1.25 [1.09-1.42]) and the observed associations were stronger than prior to 2010. In all cases, pre-to-post 2010 association changes were larger for females than for males, consistent with greater increases in psychological distress among female adolescents. In sum, adolescent worry typologies more strongly predicted adolescent psychological distress after 2010 and may in part explain recent increases.