Background
Little is known about long-term profiles of depressive and anxious symptomatology
over the life course and about the developmental determinants of different trajectories.
The objective of this study was to identify a novel typology of symptoms of depression
and anxiety over the life course and examine its neurodevelopmental antecedents in
an epidemiological sample.
Methods
A longitudinal latent variable analysis was conducted on measures of anxious and depressive
symptoms at ages 13, 15, 36, 43, and 53 years among 4627 members of the Medical Research
Council National Survey of Health & Development (the British 1946 birth cohort). Early
life predictors of class membership were studied with ordinal logistic regression.
Results
We identified six distinct profiles up to age 53: absence of symptoms (44.8% of sample);
repeated moderate symptoms (33.6%); adult-onset moderate symptoms (11.3%); adolescent
symptoms with good adult outcome (5.8%); adult-onset severe symptoms (2.9%); and repeated
severe symptoms over the life course (1.7%). Heavier babies had lower likelihood of
depressive and anxious symptoms (odds ratio [OR] = .92; 95% confidence interval [CI]
.85–.99), whereas delay in first standing (OR = 1.19; 95% CI 1.11–1.28) and walking
(OR = 1.22; 95% CI 1.14–1.31) was associated with subsequent higher likelihood of
symptoms, controlling for social circumstances and stressful life events during childhood.
Conclusions
There was evidence of distinct profiles of depressive and anxious symptomatology over
the life course and associations with markers of neurodevelopment. This suggests very
early factors are associated with long-term experience of symptoms of depression and
anxiety.
Key Words
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: August 13, 2007
Accepted:
May 6,
2007
Received in revised form:
April 4,
2007
Received:
January 16,
2007
Footnotes
The authors have no conflicting interests to declare.
Identification
Copyright
© 2007 Society of Biological Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
