Not only do anxiety and depression diagnoses tend to co-occur, but their symptoms are highly correlated. Although a plethora of research has examined longitudinal associations between anxiety and depression, these data have not yet been effectively synthesized. To address this need, the current study undertook a systematic review and meta-analysis of 66 studies involving 88,336 persons examining the prospective relationship between anxiety and depression at both symptom and disorder levels. Using mixed-effect models, results suggested that all types of anxiety symptoms predicted later depressive symptoms (r = .34), and all types of depressive symptoms predicted later anxiety symptoms (r = .31). Although anxiety symptoms more strongly predicted depressive symptoms than vice versa, the difference in effect size for this analysis was very small and likely not clinically meaningful. Additionally, all types of diagnosed anxiety disorders predicted all types of later depressive disorders (OR = 2.77), and all depressive disorders predicted later anxiety disorders (OR = 2.73). Most anxiety and depressive disorders predicted each other with similar degrees of strength, but depressive disorders more strongly predicted social anxiety disorder (OR = 6.05) and specific phobia (OR = 2.93) than vice versa. Contrary to conclusions of prior reviews, our findings suggest that depressive disorders may be prodromes for social and specific phobia, whereas other anxiety and depressive disorders are bidirectional risk factors for one another. (PsycINFO Database Record

Background The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has led to dramatic changes worldwide in people’s everyday lives. To combat the pandemic, many governments have implemented social distancing, quarantine, and stay-at-home orders. There is limited research on the impact of such extreme measures on mental health. Objective The goal of this study was to examine whether stay-at-home orders produced differential changes in mental health symptoms using internet search queries on a national scale. Methods In the United States, individual states vary in their adoption of measures to reduce the spread of COVID-19; as of March 23, 2020, 11 of the 50 states had issued stay-at-home orders. The staggered rollout of stay-at-home measures across the United States allows us to investigate whether these measures impact mental health by exploring variations in mental health search queries across the states. This paper examines the changes in mental health search queries on Google between March 16-23, 2020, across each state and Washington, DC. Specifically, this paper examines differential changes in mental health searches based on patterns of search activity following issuance of stay-at-home orders in these states compared to all other states. The participants were all the people who searched mental health terms in Google between March 16-23. Between March 16-23, 11 states underwent stay-at-home orders to prevent the transmission of COVID-19. Outcomes included search terms measuring anxiety, depression, obsessive-compulsive, negative thoughts, irritability, fatigue, anhedonia, concentration, insomnia, and suicidal ideation. Results Analyzing over 10 million search queries using generalized additive mixed models, the results suggested that the implementation of stay-at-home orders are associated with a significant flattening of the curve for searches for suicidal ideation, anxiety, negative thoughts, and sleep disturbances, with the most prominent flattening associated with suicidal ideation and anxiety. Conclusions These results suggest that, despite decreased social contact, mental health search queries increased rapidly prior to the issuance of stay-at-home orders, and these changes dissipated following the announcement and enactment of these orders. Although more research is needed to examine sustained effects, these results suggest mental health symptoms were associated with an immediate leveling off following the issuance of stay-at-home orders.

Current approaches to psychiatric assessment are resource-intensive, requiring time-consuming evaluation by a trained clinician. Development of digital biomarkers holds promise for enabling scalable, time-sensitive, and cost-effective assessment of both psychiatric diagnosis and symptom change. The present study aimed to identify robust digital biomarkers of diagnostic status and changes in symptom severity over ~2 weeks, through re-analysis of public-use actigraphy data collected in patients with major depressive or bipolar disorder and healthy controls. Results suggest that participants’ diagnostic group status (i.e., mood disorder, control) can be predicted with a high degree of accuracy (predicted correctly 89% of the time, kappa = 0.773), using features extracted from actigraphy data alone. Results also suggest that actigraphy data can be used to predict symptom change across ~2 weeks ( r = 0.782, p = 1.04e-05). Through inclusion of digital biomarkers in our statistical model, which are generalizable to new samples, the results may be replicated by other research groups in order to validate and extend this work.

Prior research has recently shown that passively collected sensor data collected within the contexts of persons daily lives via smartphones and wearable sensors can distinguish those with major depressive disorder (MDD) from controls, predict MDD severity, and predict changes in MDD severity across days and weeks. Nevertheless, very little research has examined predicting depressed mood within a day, which is essential given the large amount of variation occurring within days. The current study utilized passively collected sensor data collected from a smartphone application to future depressed mood from hour-to-hour in an ecological momentary assessment study in a sample reporting clinical levels of depression (N = 31). Using a combination of nomothetic and idiographically-weighted machine learning models, the results suggest that depressed mood can be accurately predicted from hour to hour with an average correlation between out of sample predicted depressed mood levels and observed depressed mood of 0.587, CI [0.552, 0.621]. This suggests that passively collected smartphone data can accurately predict future depressed mood among a sample reporting clinical levels of depression. If replicated in other samples, this modeling framework may allow just-in-time adaptive interventions to treat depression as it changes in the context of daily life.

Anxiety and depression are often highly correlated with each other. To explain this connection, the present study examined the longitudinal relationship between earlier anxiety and later depression, using avoidance as a mediator and trauma as a moderator. Participants (N = 6504 adolescents) completed baseline measures of anxiety and depression, a measure of avoidance one year later, a measure of trauma six to eight years later, and a measure of depression 12–14 years later. Analyzed with structural equation models, the results showed that anxiety predicted later depression, and this relationship was partially mediated by avoidance. The relationship between avoidance and depression was not moderated by trauma. Together, these findings suggest that anxiety may influence later depression through avoidance, and this relationship remains unaffected by experiencing a traumatic experience.